Page 26 - Wish Stream Year of 2016

on the boil using water from a nearby mountain spring.
Each day was extremely taxing, offering con- stant back breaking climbs and unrelenting, knee jarring descents. It revealed to us how the Southern Carpathians are without doubt some of the most wildlife-rich mountains in Europe as we saw chamoix, marmot, a wealth of birds, particularly kestrels and many amphibians in the pools, puddles, springs and water- lled cart ruts on the trails. Moreover, the ridgeline has over half of the continent’s population of brown bear, wolf and lynx, which we thankfully managed to avoid.
On one particularly tough day, we summited Moldoveanu (Romania’s highest peak at 2544m) in the middle of a biblical rain storm but also set Podragu cabana as our end of destination for the day, a challenging 16km of continuous peaks and saddles away. Nevertheless, it is a day the team looks back on fondly, remembering being on hands and knees, like crawling along rocky precipices to reach the peak – remarkably upon reaching it, the clouds cleared for a moment to allow us vistas down on the rest of Eastern Europe around us. Podragu cabana, where we stayed that night, is as isolated as one can get on the Făgăraș ridgeline, accessible only by
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