SamuelThe Seven Ladders Canyon (Canionul Șapte Scări) is located a stone’s throw away from Romania’s second city, Brașov. It is consists of a set of metal ladders and platforms cascading up through seven different waterfalls of various heights set in a narrow limestone gorge.
Tucked in the mountainous area southeast of Brașov, this place is popular among locals and tourists alike, who sought to scale the ladders amid the rushing water. We initially heard about this place from a fellow traveler we met in Sighişoara and were immediately intrigued by it, enough to convince us to visit this place.
To our delight, we found out that this place offered us another thrilling adventure in the form of zip-lining down the valley among the pine trees, an adventure that we definitely did not want to miss.
We undertook these adventurous activities during our trip in Romania in late May. It’s only fitting in a mountainous country such as Romania that we also did other amazing hikes in Retezat national park and Piatra Craiului mountains.
Getting there:
This canyon can only be accessed from a small settlement of Timişu de Jos, located just outside of Brașov’s metropolitan area. From there, a small trail leads all the way to Seven Ladders Canyon, where the starting point for zip-lining can also be found.
We reached Timişu de Jos by car, but there are also public transport available from Brașov, such as bus and train. When booking your journey, don’t be mistaken with the nearby town of Timişu de Sus further down the road.
To access the ladders, trekkers must pay a small entrance fee. Likewise, for the zip-lining be prepared to pay around 90 Romanian Lei, which in our opinion was completely worth it for up to two hours of zip-lining.
Seven Ladders Canyon
On one rainy day, we arrived at the starting point of the hike in Timişu de Jos. It looked quite deserted, not too different to an entrance to a farm. An unassuming and worn out board stood there, indicating that it was indeed the way leading to the ladders.
The path through the wide and forested valley was rather easy with only gentle slopes. There was hardly anyone around to be seen. It got rather monotonous after a while. Certainly so after the two hours it took us to get to the Seven Ladders Canyon.
To our surprise, a bunch of people already arrived there, waiting in front of a small house that’s selling the entrance ticket to the canyon. A large group of school children was also there, accompanied by a couple of teachers. We thus promptly waited for our turn to get ourselves the ticket.
Once everybody else had gone into the depths of the canyon, we slowly followed behind. Directly behind the group of children, aged around eight to ten I supposed. The kids made a slow progress, supervised by their teachers.
One of them told us that it was a holiday week in Romania, and on that particular day the school children around the country were all taken on an excursion to all kind of places, be it natural park, museums, castles, and many more. Such a good nationwide initiative I thought.
The rain and the waterfall made the steel ladders extra slippery. And the ladders were not that short, some went more than 10 meters up vertically. We just stood there, anxiously watching these little kids making their way up slowly hoping that nothing would go wrong.
Up seven ladders we climbed and through seven waterfalls we went. I did count them just to be sure. Well, if the kids could make it, so could we. It was quite a thrilling climb admittedly, holding on to the slippery metal handle as tight and as firm as we could, all while admiring the impressive canyon wall surrounding us.
After navigating through the canyon, we started making our way back down to the entrance of the canyon together with the group of kids. These kids were fearless, running down the steep trail hastily, something that I wouldn’t dare to do. No wonder they also climbed the ladders earlier without any fear, because that’s what kids do, right.
Zip-lining down the valley
Back at the small house, we could ask for the zip-lining activity. To be honest, I was a bit concerned at first with its safety but nevertheless decided to give it a go anyway.
We were given the harness and hard hat, followed by a brief instruction by the staff there. Click here, click there, go! That’s all. I seriously thought that the guide would follow us along, but we were left to zip-line down by ourselves. I mean, we had to do it all the way down after just one demonstration.
All my fear was gone after the first zip. What a nice and exhilarating ride. We zipped from one platform to another as we zig-zagged our way down the valley, flying among the trees, over the creeks, and above the path that took us up earlier.
Two hours of zip-lining went by so quickly and we arrived back to where we started. I initially presumed that it would take us a fraction of the time it took us to walk up as we were half-flying after all. But it took us just about the same time to zip our way down. Well, time flies when you’re having fun I guess.
