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Transylvanian Adventures

Gasper Plesko/Pustolovec Rajd / 21.09.2005

The biggest Romanian adventure race, the Carpathian Adventure, took place this year in the Transylvanian national park of Apuseni. Transylvania is a mountainous and vast province, much bigger than Slovenia, and the landscape (also called the Transylvanian Alps) is furrowed by numerous picturesque valleys and gorges. The homeland of the famous Dracula was much friendlier than we expected at first. The whole region is bilingual due as the area there is populated by a large Hungarian minority.

The event was very well organized by Romanian enthusiasts from Outward Bound in cooperation with the Romanian Mountain Rescue and Perpetuum Mobile, an adventure group who designed the course.

The race venue was at the Apuseni National Park in the Transylvanian Alps and on our journey to the race we passed remote mountain villages and hamlets interconnected by bad, muddy roads full of holes. Along the way we noticed that the Romanians have a rather strange sense for small insignificant things such as fences and shutters, which are in most cases painted in national colors ~ yellow, red and blue.

In the small village of Doda Pili all competitors were warmly welcomed by the Romanian organizers and the local football field became our camp, so local rising stars had to cancel their practice for a few days.

The Course

The race course of the fifth edition of the race was made up of three circles which all began and finished at our base camp. This was logistically much easier for the organizers, but no easier for the competitors.

The first circle was compulsory and consisted of a very diverse 70 km long trekking section. It enabled us to see mountain ridges, extraordinary plateaus, karst gorges with white rivers, caves and sinks. We also had to deal with abseiling, a few river crossings, caving and canyoning. After finishing the first circle, the decision on which circle to do next was up to the tactics of each team. We all had to consider the dark zone on the rafting section between 8 pm and 6 am.

The biking circle was supposed to be 120 km of rugged terrain, but according to our bike computers, by the end of the race we had to ride more than 147 km of ‘very’ rugged terrain.

The third part was rafting. Our task was to make - out of four tubes, five boards and ropes - a floating and manageable raft which we needed for quite a few kilometers at lake Fantanele.

A Slow Start

Early morning, the beginning of the race was accompanied by thunderstorms and heavy showers, and as a result only a few teams appeared at the start. The organizers were running up and down at the camp and were shouting ‘you are free to go!’

Pustolovec Rajd was among those teams adjusting their equipment to the current situation. Half an hour after the official start we finally took off. Our race began.

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