CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Built as a military road across the Făgăraș ridge, the Transfăgărășan spends its best kilometres above the treeline. The northern ramps are the spectacular half; the southern side runs longer and gentler past the Vidraru dam. It is only open in the warm months and the top can shut with no notice, so treat any plan as provisional.
A steady rhythm suits this better than bursts. The height arrives whether you hurry or not. The ground tilts up and stays tilted for 17 km. 634 m of it, taken steadily rather than in one wall.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
This part of the ride is 1 km of Transfăgărășan.
For 33 km this is Transfagarasan Highway, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it. Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
This is where a day makes up time without anyone trying. Third and fourth, and very little else. 17 km that neither climbs nor drops much. The road settles into the ground rather than fighting it.
Cârțișoara is the village at the northern foot of the Transfăgărășan, at roughly six hundred metres above the sea, where the road from the Făgăraș mountains reaches the Olt valley. Behind it rises the highest range in Romania, a wall of ridges and glacial cirques topped by Moldoveanu, around 2,544 metres, and in front lies the gentle farmland of southern Transylvania. The contrast is sudden: a few kilometres of fields and orchards, and then a wall of forest and rock that climbs out of sight.
Read the complete Cârţişoara write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cârțișoara is where the day begins. Next is Bâlea Cascadă, climbing 634 m.
Bâlea Cascadă is the waterfall that gives its name to the stop, a thin silver plume that drops down a steep glacial step in the Fagaras Mountains, just below the Transfagarasan summit road. It sits at 1,234 metres, and the hairpins above it climb to a high lake and a tunnel at around two thousand metres. Victoria, a small town of about ten thousand people, is the nearest place of any size, some fifteen kilometres away as the crow flies, and fuel and food are down there or in the villages on the northern approach.
Read the complete Bâlea Cascadă write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bâlea Cascadă comes up 22 km in. The road climbs 634 m on the way up to it, steadily. Reckon on about 5 °C colder than the valley, and more in the wind. Next is Bâlea Lake tunnel, climbing 808 m.
The Bâlea Lake tunnel marks the roof of the Transfăgărășan, the highway that crosses the Făgăraș Mountains in Romania, and at 2,042 metres the air is thin and cold, even in summer. The road was ordered by Nicolae Ceaușescu after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, as a military route in case of an invasion from the east, and was built between 1970 and 1974 largely by army conscripts using dynamite and hand tools. It was an extraordinary and costly effort, and many workers lost their lives. Today it is known as one of the best driving and riding roads in the world.
Read the complete Bâlea Lake tunnel write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
2042 m, and the road stops climbing. The road climbs 808 m on the way up to it, steadily. Reckon on about 10 °C colder than the valley, and more in the wind. Nothing on this route is higher. At this height the road is a summer one: snow gates can stay shut into June and shut again in October. Next is Vidraru Dam, mostly downhill.
The Vidraru Dam closes off the Argeș river in a deep, narrow gorge in the Făgăraș mountains, and it is one of the most imposing pieces of engineering in Romania. An arch dam about 166 metres high, completed in the mid-1960s, it holds back a long, dark lake, whose surface reflects the steep, forested slopes around it, and the view from the top of the wall is dizzying. A statue of Prometheus stands on the edge of the dam, with the lake behind him, and a bungee platform has made the dam a place of some notoriety.
Read the complete Vidraru Dam write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Vidraru Dam, about halfway at 830 m. You lose 1212 m on the way down to it, hard. Reckon on about 2 °C colder than the valley, and more in the wind. Next is Curtea de Argeș, mostly downhill.
Curtea de Argeș was one of the first capitals of Wallachia, in the fourteenth century, and its great monument is a monastery that everyone in Romania knows. The cathedral, built in the early sixteenth century by Prince Neagoe Basarab, is a white stone building covered in carved lace, with slim towers and delicate patterns that look more like ironwork than masonry. A legend tells that the master builder, Manole, was made by the prince to wall his own wife into the structure so that it would stand, and that he fell to his death trying to escape the roof. The tale is told in ballads, and every Romanian child knows it. The church also holds the tombs of the country's kings, including Carol I and Ferdinand.
Read the complete Curtea de Argeş write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Curtea de Argeș sits at 87 km, about halfway. You lose 380 m on the way down to it, steadily. Next is back through Vidraru Dam, climbing 380 m.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Vidraru Dam write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Vidraru Dam comes up 109 km in. The road climbs 380 m over at least 25 km before it, steadily. Next is back through Bâlea Lake tunnel, climbing 1212 m.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bâlea Lake tunnel write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
131 km in you reach back through Bâlea Lake tunnel. The road climbs 1212 m over at least 27 km before it, hard. Next is back through Bâlea Cascadă, mostly downhill.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bâlea Cascadă write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Bâlea Cascadă, late in the day at 1234 m. You lose 808 m on the way down to it, steadily. Next is Cârțișoara, mostly downhill.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cârţişoara write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 233 km. You lose 634 m on the way down to it, steadily.