Todirescu Mountain Hay Meadows

High on the Rarău, beyond the rocks called Popii Rarăului, the forest stops and a wide meadow opens, mown by hand for generations. It has no rocks to show and no postcard view: what is protected here is the carpet of flowers in the grass.

Its legal name is Fânațele montane Todirescu, the Todirescu mountain hay meadows. It is a floristic nature reserve of 44.30 hectares, listed in Law 5/2000 and placed in IUCN category IV. The meadow belongs to the Rarău – Giumalău Natura 2000 site. The name „Rarău – Todirescu”, under which the place circulated for a long time, belongs to no protected area at all.

What grows in the meadow

Mountain hay meadows are rich precisely because they are mown: grass cut once a year leaves room for low flowers. Todirescu has arnica, edelweiss, globeflowers, gentian, bent grass, yellow-wort, bellflowers, oxeye daisies and mountain clover. These are plants of old hay meadows, some of them protected; you look at them, you do not pick them.

Getting there from Crucea

The way is the same as to Pietrele Doamnei, only it carries on along the crest. From the centre of the commune you drive 9 kilometres on the DN17B to Chiril, then climb the DJ175A, the road known as the Transrarău, to the Rarău chalet at 1,520 metres.

From the chalet you walk the crest on the red triangle waymark: past Pietrele Doamnei, below Rarău peak at 1,651 metres, through the Ciobanilor saddle at 1,550 metres and under Popii Rarăului, to the Todirescu meadow. The crest also carries the red stripe waymark, which continues over Todirescu mountain. This is not a short stroll: count on a full mountain day, with water and rain gear.

The rules here

Camping and fires are forbidden in the reserve. Keep to the path as far as you can, and do not cut through the tall grass before the mowing — these meadows are a protected area and somebody's winter fodder at the same time.

Where you actually are

The meadow lies on the Rarău mountain, beyond the boundary of Crucea commune; official sources disagree about which locality it belongs to, but none of them places it in Crucea. The commune is the way in from the Bistrița valley, through Chiril, and you climb from there just as you would to the other places on the crest.