Five days, 188 photos, a tracked Curmătura saddle hike
Read from 188 photo timestamps along the Predeluț to Piatra Craiului east flank to Brașov axis, locality density across 8 valley villages, and one tracked Sunday hike (Curmătura saddle, 14.2 km · 1,023 m ascent).
I drove up to Predeluț on the Saturday afternoon, four nights at the same Bran-Moieciu hamlet I’d stayed in across 2016, 2017 and 2018, then home via Râșnov on Wednesday. The week’s centrepiece was a long Sunday on the east flank of Piatra Craiului - a tracked 14.2 km hike with 1,023 m of climb out of Zărnești, up through Măgura to the Curmătura saddle and back via Peștera, the first time I’d put a workout on this corner. Monday was a broader wander through seven villages of the upper and lower Moieciu valley, and the quiet surprise came Tuesday: a half-day at Brașov and Râșnov, the first time in four trips to this valley I’d ever turned the camera on either.
The drive up on the Saturday afternoon, and almost nothing of it kept - a frame or two at Predeluț before dark, and a short evening walk around the lodging that just barely registered on the tracker. The classic unphotographed start: arrive, settle in, dinner, sleep, with the real trip waiting for Sunday.
The big walking day, and the cleanest east-flank loop I’d done here in four visits - and the first one tracked. 14.2 km, 1,023 m of climb out of the Zărnești / Măgura trailheads up through Peștera to the Curmătura saddle and back. Earlier Bran-area trips brushed these villages loosely; this one walked them properly, summit-saddle and all. Just over eight hours from first frame to last, saddle and back.
The widest day - seven villages drifting through the upper and lower Moieciu valley within a dozen kilometres of the base. A slower mix of short walks and short drives, late-August fields and barns of the valley in full harvest light, less a single hike than a day spent moving gently around the whole valley.
The surprise of the trip. For the first time in four visits to this valley, the camera went to Brașov - the city I’d always driven near and never shot - and to Râșnov, the medieval fortress just north of Bran, as a deliberate stop rather than a thing passed by. Only a half-day’s worth, but a long-standing pattern of avoidance quietly broken.
A last few frames at Râșnov on the way out, and then the road home - the trip over by mid-morning, Bucharest by the afternoon.
The trip-level off-path is ~40% - but the cross-trip signal is more interesting than the geographic one. I finally photographed Brașov and Râșnov after three prior Bran-area trips that consistently avoided them. Whether this is a genuine first visit or the first time photographing on a Bran trip the data can’t say, but the previously-consistent absence is now broken.
I keep coming back to a 12-km-radius mountain valley without ever fully committing to its signature summits or castles. A return to a known comfort area with a marginal expansion each visit (Brașov, Râșnov and a proper logged ridge hike this time), not a sightseeing campaign.