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Mălăiești Saddle - Gaura Valley - Bran Gate

Saddle of the Hornurilor Malaesti (2330) - Gaura Valley - Moara Dracului Waterfall (1640) - Poiana Gaura (1520) - Saua La Poliț(i)e (1600) - Bran Poarta (916 mdm)

Exiting the route

The exit from this route is through Bran Poarta. From Brasov there are 34 km to be covered in just over 0.6 hours via E68, DN73B, DN73G, A3, DN73, DC51. At the base of the Zănoaga slope there is a very wide, unpaved parking area, near which there are many mountain trail signs.

About hiking

This route is the continuation of the one from Bran Poarta to The saddle. It's the descent on Gaura Valley back to Bran Gate. This circuit can be segmented on 2 days with overnight stay at Refugiul Țigănenești, Cabana Mălăiești or Cabana Omu.

Route map

(click on objectives for extended version)

Technical box

Difficulty: hard

Duration / distance: 5 hours / 10 km

Mark: red cross

Water sources: points 2, 3, 4 on the map (Gaura Valley, Moara Dracului Waterfall, Poiana Gaura)

Minimum altitude: 920 meters above sea level at Bran Poarta

Maximum altitude: 2330 mdm, in Saua Malaiesti

Level difference: +180 m / -1540 m

Remarks: forbidden in winter, some small parts with cables

1. Malaesti Horns Saddle (2330) - Gaura Valley - Moara Dracului Waterfall (1640)

1.5-2.5 hours / difficult / red cross

I had climbed the Clincea to Saua Hornurilor in 6 h 20 min and I didn't understand why on the signpost in the saddle were assigned to descend the V. Gaura 6 h 30 min. More than the ascent? Yes, it seemed a bit longer, which was not even true. Where's the riddle, though? Read on and find out. I had hoped to conquer it in 5 hours, with a lunch break and maybe a slower pace at the end, let's say 5,5 hours, let's say 6 but it already seemed long. And we set for the rest of the day red cross marking. We admire the smooth ascent up the mountainside towards Vf. Omuin the continuation of the direction we came, which we will not follow. We zoom our eyes down the narrow slit The Great Horn of Maltesti and we'll go back to the icy warmth of Malaysia, because I'm too much from stories, especially as I don't know when I'll come back to this special and dear place.

We enjoyed the excellent weather, "over" the weather forecast with a high probability of 2 serious showers. It was clear as daylight, we were starting to descend into upper warming of the Gaura Valley, bordered on the left by Mount Doamnele and on the right by Mount Scara.
The first caldera is deep, descending steeply. In the middle of the caldera, but not on the trail, there is an active rock.

We're already in first heat. As in any succession of glacial warmings, you go straight for a stretch, in this case through the grass, on the path, then down another threshold and straight again at the bottom of the warming and so on. The thresholds between the first 3 caldas were small. We had planned to break where we would find water. The Gaura valley was dry on the upper section, probably only active during the snow melt period. We go up, down, but no water. Shall we break for lunch without spring water? Let's keep going. The limestone flanks are getting more rocky and we enter the jnepenis sector. We reach a steeper first threshold, where some well-fixed chains would have eased our descent, as the rescuers' advice, who were in ofsaid at this stage. The miss or pass/fail test. The path slips between 2 rocks higher than man very close to each other through which those who have a belly will be easily challenged by this test. Not me! This is only the beginning of 3 difficult passages to cross. We go down very steeply, we do what's called a descent. The passages in question have steel cables, but not enough to allow easy crossing of this slope break. Carefully, nervously, and even on our asses, we pass this exam.

At one point when I bent down to take a bigger step, the bottle fell out of my backpack. Pro_eco as I am, I looked for it to see how I could retrieve it, even though it had fallen down the path, in a small rocky hollow in the riverbed. I realized I could get down to it and not leave the trash there, and ... where do you think it had rolled and stopped? In a little body of water. Yeah, water! 😊 We filled a bottle and returned to the path, having now a clear sign that we would soon find a place with water or even a spring where we could rest.
And suddenly we see water left and right. And lots of it! On the left a spring with a big flow under a huge rock, on the right a big, steep stream flowing down in steps, the rushing parapet, which washed the limestone it flowed over, whitening it better than a washing machine. This last parau intersected the path, so we stopped near it, feeding from a waterfall with cold water. We also took a break, had 2 sandwiches, 2 chocolates and let's keep going because we have enough.

V. The hole, now active, was full of trees brought by floods. We crossed the stream a couple of times, posed a mini-canyon, but the fact was that ... the walking pace was starting to slow down, my companion on this tour, slowing down the pace and as the pace of the group is the pace of the slowest participant, we had to set from now on a very slow moving speed even compared to the ... climbing.

We reach the marker that indicates 5 minutes to the right the main objective on V. Gaura, Moara Dracului Waterfalland (another) 4.5 hours to Bran.

Signs in Saua Malaesti

Upper heating of V. Hole and stall

Gaura Valley

we enter the jnepenis sector

a steeper first threshold

mountain flowers

The path winds between 2 rocks

difficult passages with cables

mini-canion

Moara Dracului Waterfall

2. Moara Dracului Waterfall (1640) - Poiana Gaura (1520) - Saua La Poliț(i)e (1600) - Bran Poarta (916 mdm)

3-3.5 hours / medium / red cross

Let's get a positive charge on the waterfall. From here the difficulty of the trail is low, it goes down through the forest quite smoothly, up to .... Poiana Gaura. Here a path branches off to the left uphill and leads to Poiana Gutanu, ours crosses V. Gaura and on the other side forks into a yellow triangle to Bran via Simon 4 hours, respectively red cross Bran via Saua La Polite also 4 hours (3 to the car) where we arrive in 20 minutes from the waterfall.

Our path enters the forest and starts to climb. Pay attention to the road markings because at a certain point a wider road bends slightly to the left, but it is not the right one, because ours has to ... go uphill.

After 1 hour of slow walking we arrive in Saua La Polit(i)e. I have seen both names in different documentations, Polite and Police. I think the original one is "police" because in the mountains there were many border points. Here I waited longer for my brother (the one I was with on this tour) who was exhausted and had to unwillingly endure pain at every step. So from this point on, the times were no longer relevant. On the indicator there were still 3,5 hours until Bran, so 2,5 until the car), the goal was to reach the car step by step. In the saddle, right at the end of the ascent there is a glade that opens views to the surrounding mountains.

From now on it was all downhill. The path between the spruce trees became wider and wider, but also more and more often barred by fallen trees. My brother had told me a lot about the rescuers on this trail. We picked raspberries again, whistled from the whistle not to meet on the ""open square"" with the bear and lo and behold the trail turned into a cart track, quite dug up by the last rains.

After 3 hours from the gully, we arrive at the intersection with the yellow triangle that descended from the ridge on Ciubotea between the road that we climbed via Clincea sic him that we descended via V. Gaura. Here is Poarta Valley accompanied by a very good forest road, which leads upstream to the Refugiul Ciubotea, but we had to go ... downhill.

About 2 km we followed the forest road, we reached the barrier at the end of it, where after 100 meters we found the car on the place where we had left it at 7 o'clock in the morning.

me at Moara Dracului Waterfall

Poiana Gaura

Our path enters the forest and starts to climb

Saua La Polit(i)e

carriage road, quite washed out by the recent rains

the intersection with the yellow triangle that descended from the ridge on Ciubotea

barrier near the parking lot

Conclusion

In conclusion, the descent on Gaura Valley was more challenging and longer than I thought.

Overall, I had a great day, for me it was the "last practice" before going to Creasta Fagarasului - full ridge. I recommend this route part 1 and part 2 to those who are in good physical condition and know what this kind of route means. Obviously some experienced people will say: if this was a difficult trail, then what will you call the Fagaras ridge?

Read the first part, Bran Poarta - Clincea - Mălăiești Saddle or the route Diham - Mălăiești - Diham.

All the best!

Steps:

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