After the New Year’s Eve trip in the Apuseni Mountains, we realized that these places are very suitable for hiking on snowshoes. Although the road from Timisoara is quite long, about 4.5h, in the weekend in which we planned to reach Vârtop it was also closed the access from the col with same name. So here we are Saturday morning in Brad to a coffee with the clear destination Cabana Cetățile Ponorului.
To the hut we will start from the Vârtop slope area on a route that mostly follows a forested ridge but offers in good weather a view to the main peaks of the Bihor massif, namely Cucurbăta Mare and Cârligatele. Unfortunately, we did not have this view, but we enjoyed plenty of fresh snow.
After a warm soup at the hut we left the luggage and started in a nocturnal walk to the Poiana Ponor with a return through Glăvoi to see if it is open at the Mall ..
The next day, as the plan was, we tried to reach the balconies of the Cetățile Ponorului, but the very heavy snow and the fallen trees made us give up. We went back on the same road to the car but this time we also had blizzard with heavy snowfall so we have 2 different days.
