Grădiştea of Mountain, Under Cununi, Tree of Life and Plateau of Vârtoapelor (Whirlpool), the magical place near Sarmizegetusa Regia where the most beautiful wild snowdrops grow in Hunedoara County.

The main organizer Călătoriile Mele ”My Trips” along with facebook groups: Drumeții în Valea Jiului (Hiking in the Jiului Valley), Drumeții în Județul Hunedoara (Hiking in Hunedoara County), Drumeții în România (Hiking in Romania) and Clubul de Drumeții (Hiking Club) offers you a trip at the beginning of spring, in a lesser-known area of the Șureanu mountains.

Whoever comes to this event, we recommend entering the Whats app group where information about this event will be sent.

Click here!

This hike will take place on 16.03.2024 (Saturday) and will last around 9-10 hours with transport included (Depends on the group how long it will take). 

Don't forget to reserve your place in time for this hike, as places are limited.

Trasport:

• The meeting at the departure point will be at 6:00 a.m. in Lupeni Municipality at Parcul Mare CAP.
• The departure will be at 6:10 a.m. from Lupeni to Vulcan. At 6:15 there will be a departure from Vulcan in the car park at Penny, Street Romanilor 7.
• At 6:45-6:55 there will be a departure from Petroșani, Strada 1 Decembrie 1918 in the car park behind the bus station what is going towards Petrila.
• If necessary, there will be other stops on our route where other people who reserve their seats in advance will get on.
• The meeting place with people coming from opposite directions will be at 8:00 a.m. at the Royal Restaurant in Călan - Orașul Nou, Str. Streiu. (please, if you have ordered something, integrate it in time until departure).
• The departure will be at 8:30 and we will stop at Costesti to serve a coffee and/or breakfast specific to the place. All this time, the guides will explain the basic hiking rules that we must respect and the stories of the place.

After a foray into the land of the Dacians, we move to Grădiștea de Munte, but not before giving you the following details.

In 1990, the subsurface in the Western Carpathian area was probed by a Russian satellite, which was looking for ancient and prehistoric sites. On this occasion, a huge underground city was discovered, spread over an area of more than 200 square kilometers, very rich in gold.

In the area called Vârtoape in the Orăștiei Mountains, on an area of approximately four square kilometers there are seventy-five conical pits of various sizes (some with diameters of up to seventy meters), from which several tunnels lead to the nearby mountains ( one reaching just below the sanctuaries of Sarmizegetusa Regia, being probably the one through which Decebalus' army left the path of the Romans, crossing the mountains in two days).

There, at Vârtoape, the devices detected many parallelepipedal enclosures that communicate with each other, like the rooms of a house, many of them communicating with the plateau above through ancient roads.

In this area and in the immediate vicinity are the most impressive vestiges of the complex, including sanctuaries made of andesite (a stone that today can only be cut with a diamond), constructions much older than those at Sarmizegetusa, there it is the center of the pre-Dacian mega-city.

This underground city extends not only under Sarmizegetusa Regia, but also under Simeria, Tărtăria (where the oldest writing in the world was discovered), Deva (the area from which the Arians left for Asia) and Rosia Montana.

In the Secret Scroll, Radu Cinamar spoke of a very long tunnel under the mountains of Orăștia, at the end of which was a huge chamber made of pure gold, in which a strange blue light and seven chairs capable of supporting humanoids of almost three were discovered meters high. References to this underground city are also found in the stories of the ancient Greeks, who say that in the land of the Arims (that is, in the same area) lived in ancient times the giant Typhon, well hidden underground, imprisoned there by Zeus.

In the Theogony, Hesiod wrote that in the land of Arima lived the Echidna, a half-nymph and half-snake creature, who lived in a deep cave, made by the gods, resembling a shining palace, from where he watched over the whole land. In fact, the ancient Greeks believed that in the basement of the Western Carpathians was Tartarus, the underground world where the titans, the first gods, were imprisoned, probably referring to this huge underground city.

It was also discovered that not only under the Apuseni Mountains, but under the entire Carpathian chain on the territory of our country, there is a whole network of tunnels, which the Dacian legends claim were built by the god Zamolxis to protect the land and the Dacian people.

And Roșia Montană was apparently the main entrance to this underground city of the gods.

In February of 2012, a Romanian-Canadian geological team was following the remains of the gold vein at one of the galleries dug by grapplers 5,500 years ago in Roșia Montană. Then, the team apparently made a colossal discovery by accident, one that could change human history if it were made public.

Romanian and Canadian geologists discovered at the base of the cavernous gallery the rectangular end of a golden slab, which did not appear to be a natural rock. After taking a sample, the laboratory results showed that it was a composite stone, following a technology impossible to reproduce under the conditions of current science, composed of 15% granite dust, 30% tungsten and 55% gold powder of 50 carats .

This buried city is predacious and very rich in gold. The Romanian specialists drew up some detailed plans with the undiscovered underground sites, which they collected in a file sent to the Ministry of Culture and Religion. A copy of the plans also reached clandestine treasure hunters, who have strong connections in the area of the political class. But let's continue our hike following a dusty road that begins to climb towards the sacred area of Sub Cunini.

The road is unmarked and often passes through the gardens and grounds of the locals, so it would be totally disrespectful to go there on your own without a knowledgeable guide. We make the first stop at an apparently unimportant plateau, a plateau from which polished stones appear that once belonged to a construction. We are in the place where hundreds of years ago the local people worshiped two deities that apparently should not be found on the plains of Dacia and yet... they were born here. The two deities I am talking about are often found in the culture of the ancient Greeks, they are: Apollo and Victoria. We are on the site where there used to be a large temple dedicated to the two gods. The Dacians considered this temple to be one of the most sacred places in the area, more sacred even than Sarmisegetusa.

Today, few people manage to find this place full of energy. Back in the day, Ceausescu had started archaeological excavations in the area. Everything was going well, the archaeologists were unearthing incredible artifacts... until one day when the digs were ordered to be completely plugged and cemented in emergency. What could have led to such a decision? Maybe one day we will find out. Until then we can only walk through the thick grass that has grown over the cemented area with such frenzy.

We continue the climb and reach an incredible spring that comes out of the ground from the root of an old ash tree whose roots intertwine with those of 2 other trees of 2 different species (elm and oak). The spring water is cold and so good that it is hard to stop drinking it. It cannot be a coincidence that this spring with such good water is right in the most sacred place in the Sarmisegetusa area. Its secret is known only to the three centuries-old trees from the root of which it springs, and perhaps some of the inhabitants of this area.

If we delve into the Nordic mythology (of Dacia's neighbors) we discover the stories about the Yggdrasil Tree - the Tree of Life, the one that connected the 9 known worlds. Yggdrasil's roots reach into the underground world of the giants, a world called Yotunheim, much like the roots of this ash tree reach into the huge tunnels and underground chambers here. According to our neighbors, the first humans are of vegetable origin, being carved from the wood of two trees by the gods Odin and Lodur. The names of the first people were Ask ("ash") and Embla ("elm"). Odin gave them life, Hoenir gave them reason, and Lodur senses and anthropomorphic character. Could this be the most revered place in the entire ancient world? Is this the holy tree? Could this be the place where the giant gods first established their Earthly empire? Could this be the cradle of civilization? Should it be...?

Our way passes by huge walls of molten stone and by some dark caves that hide many mysteries. The place called "Under Cununi" is where the elders say that Decebalus took his life in order not to be dragged by the victorious Trajan after his chariot through the streets of Rome. The name of the place comes from the belt of rocks that surrounds the Vârtoapelor area in three parts.

At some point we will reach a kind of wooded plateau full of huge pits. Vârtoapelor Plateau is the most mysterious place in Dacia.

Here we admire and take a picture of the magical place near Sarmizegetusa Regia where the most beautiful wild snowdrops grow on the PLATOUL VÁRTOAPELOR "Wonderful Forest".

Vârtoapelor Plateau is a clearing on a ridge surrounded by forests, at the end of a 2-3 hour walk, which starts from the village of Grădiştea de Munte. Arriving on the Vârtoapelor Plateau, we will admire the beauty of the flowers spread over more than ten hectares in the forest at the foot of the Dacian fortresses.

Every spring, far from the eyes of people, a truly enchanted place in the middle of the mountains of Orăştia dresses up for two weeks with a cloak of snow. They are not ordinary ones, they are part of an endangered species. Locals call them "rich snowdrops", their Latin name being Leucojum Vernum.

The round shape is more like that of a teardrop, and the edge of the petals is jagged and edged with a green thread. A carpet of almost 10 hectares of flowers covers the forests in this area between March 15 and April 5, depending on how early spring is.

The point of departure for the meadow is Orăştiora de Sus commune, Grădiştea Muncelului natural park in Hunedoara county.

The people from the land of the Dacian fortresses attribute supernatural significance to the Vârtoapelor Plateau, the "Wonderful Dumbrava" near Sarmizegetusa Regia, which in the spring turns into a huge carpet of wild snowdrops.

The forests that surround the former Dacian capital Sarmizegetusa Regia comprise almost 30,000 hectares in the Grădiştea Muncelului-Cioclovina Natural Park, a nature reserve in Hunedoara County.

Over the centuries, forests covered most of the land at the foot of Godeanu Peak (1,656 meters), hiding and preserving countless historical vestiges and ancient treasures.

The villages in the area have few inhabitants, their households are scattered on the mountain plains, surrounded by small agricultural estates or grouped together in groves. The forest roads in the mountains lead to places little explored by man, which reveal true treasures of nature.

The place adorned by fairies.

One such place is the Vârtoapelor Plateau, a clearing on a ridge surrounded by forests, at the end of a 2-3 hour walk, which starts from the village of Grădiştea de Munte. In March, once the snow melts, the nearby clearing, about two hours' walk from Sarmizegetusa Regia, is covered with huge carpets of wild snowdrops, and hikers attracted by the beauty of the place appear here in increasing numbers.

The old beliefs about the fairies that protect the settlement in the mountains and adorn it with flowers in the spring have taken root in the consciousness of many locals. People call them "Beautiful Alleys" and remember the legends in which supernatural beings - elves, fairies, beauties - make their presence felt in different circumstances, transforming nature to their liking.

Ethnologist Lucia Apolzan said that the Alea Frumoase, i.e. the local alleys, stay in the caves of Vârtoape all winter. And in the spring, when the snowdrops appear, they begin to weave wreaths from these flowers. On the day of the spring equinox, they start singing and flying over the valleys and throw, from the top of the Whirlwinds, the wreaths over these places. Perhaps it is not by chance that the hamlet under Vârtoape is called, so beautifully, Sub Cununi, says Vladimir Brilinsky, the former administrator of the UNESCO site Sarmizegetusa Regia, the man who in the past accompanied Lucia Apolzan on her travels through the land of Dacian fortresses.

The association of the place with fairies is not accidental, in a land where countless ancient artifacts dedicated to female deities have been discovered over time, and many places keep legends attributed to them.

"The ancient myths have an ancient hearth here, on the hills around the Dacian fortresses. The female deities changed their names and sometimes their attributes, but their meaning remained. The ancient Bendis of the Thracians also lived in the Artemis of the Greeks, and later the Diana of the Romans became in the Romanian language Sânziana, which the Romanian people celebrated by the plural of the name, Sânzienele, perhaps summing up several deities between which they so naturally have could find the place and Alea Frumoase", wrote the ethnologist Lucia Apolzan, in the work "Aspects of spiritual culture", published in 1981.

According to the local tradition of the communities in the Orăştiei Mountains, "Beautiful Alleys" make their presence felt at night through musical sounds and distinct vibrations in nature. They are heard, the locals reported, near the rocks, the mouths of the streams and in the clearings surrounded by old trees, and sometimes those who approach them are punished: "their face changes, oblivion is displaced", say the local people, quoted in the works of Lucia Apolzan.

The wild snowdrops (Leucojum Vernum) from the Vârtoapelor Plateau, also called lustes, are plants with bulbs and 3-5 linear, obtuse leaves, from the Amaryllidaceae family. The flowers are large, white and pleasantly smelling, solitary, rarely two, in a cluster, and the fruit is a capsule. They are found in forests, thickets and wet meadows. Snowdrops resemble, and are sometimes confused with, snowdrops. The flower of the sedum, however, is larger than that of the snowdrop, and the stem of the former can measure from 15 to 25 centimeters.

In recent years, the beauty of the flowers spread over more than ten hectares in the forest at the foot of the Dacian fortresses has attracted more and more tourists. Most of them leave their cars at the edge of Grădiştea de Munte village and start on foot, on the forest paths, towards the little paradise of Vârtoape. Other hikers, more comfortable, go up to the mountain plateau with cars or dirt bikes, on the forest road and then directly through the clearings, affecting the balance of nature and displeasing the locals. The plucking of flowers and the trash thrown by hikers are increasingly damaging the wilderness. Please do not litter or step on flowers when you arrive at the Whirlpool Plateau and wherever you will be hiking.

House of the Snowdrops

The Vârtoapelor Plateau is located in the Grădiştea Muncelului-Cioclovina Natural Park, a protected area in the Şureanu Mountains, which includes six of the most spectacular natural reserves in Hunedoara county: the Ponorici-Cioclovina karst complex, the Tecuri Cave, the Şura Mare Cave, the Crivadiei Gorges, the Fossiliferous Place Ohaba-Ponor, the Cave of Disease. Here are the most important ancient settlements on the territory of Romania, the UNESCO archaeological sites of Sarmizegetusa Regia, Costeşti, Blidaru, Luncani-Piatra Roşie and the authentic ethnographic settlements of the Luncanilor Platform.

Grădiştea Muncelului-Cioclovina Natural Park covers an area of 38,184 hectares, on the administrative territory of the communes of Pui, Orăştiora de Sus and Boşorod, and the few villages within its radius are scattered on the mountain, or strung along the valleys of some streams. All the settlements are surrounded by the forest that occupies more than 70 percent of the reserve's surface. The Natural Park was established in 1979, and since 2000 it has been declared a protected area of national interest. It is located in the Şureanu Mountains, with the subdivisions of the Orăştiei Mountains and the Sebeșului Mountains, being bordered by the depressions of Haţeg and Orăştiei. Tourists can reach the park trails from Costeşti, Măgureni, Boşorod, Pui, Ponor, Baru, Crivadia and from the Streiului and Băniţei valleys.

Three legendary places in the vicinity of the Vârtoapelor Plateau

From the village of Grădiştea de Munte, trails start to several places appreciated for the special atmosphere felt by many of their guests.

Sarmizegetusa Regia is the most famous of them. The former capital of Dacia from the time of King Decebalus, in the 1st century it was a flourishing urban settlement, around which the other Dacian fortresses were built, which mainly had a defensive role. At least eight temples, seven of which were completely uncovered in the 20th century, attest to the importance that the Dacian fortress had in Antiquity. Also here, several treasures of ancient gold and silver jewelry and coins were discovered in recent years, many of the objects being considered unique. Among the most precious pieces found in the UNESCO site are several solid gold spiral bracelets, weighing between 500 grams and one and a half kilograms, 13 of which are in the National History Museum of Romania. Sarmizegetusa Regia was devastated at the end of the wars of conquest of Dacia. Currently, its ruins are visited annually by about 70,000 people. Most of the Sarmizegetusa Regia area, hidden in the forest, has not been systematically researched until now.

At the foot of Grădiştii Hill, a path separated from the road towards Sarmizegetusa Regia climbs steeply through the dark forest, towards the Dacian settlement Fețele Albe. After about 40 minutes of walking, travelers arrive in the middle of the ruins of a former flourishing "neighborhood" of Sarmizegetusa Regia, according to some historians. About this fortress, the locals believe that it was the place where the priestesses of the goddess Bendis (known as or confused with Artemis, Luna or Diana) lived - the divinity of the night, of incantations and charms. "In Fețele Albe there was a kind of monastery, as they would say these days. There, from birth, the girls were given, whom the Dacians groomed to serve their deities. In times of drought or war, some of these virgins were sacrificed and brought as a sacrifice to Zamolxis or other divinities", believes Petre, a former forester from Grădiştea de Munte, the village at the foot of the settlement.

Godeanu Peak (1656 meters) is about an hour's climb from Sarmizegetusa Regia and is considered by some historians to be the holy mountain of the Dacians and the place where our ancestors made sacrifices to Zamolxis. The mountain was surrounded by the largest concentration of civilian, military and religious settlements spotted and researched in all of Dacia, and at its foot are the most sanctuaries in all of Dacia. It is also the only peak visible from the tops of all the Dacian fortresses in the area, Vladimir Brilinsky describes it.