Detunata Basalt Columns

Detunata Goală is the bare one, and the name fits: a summit where the forest stops and a wall of basalt columns stands exposed, each prism five or six sided and up to about ten metres long, packed together like a bundle of pencils. They formed when a body of lava cooled slowly and cracked into a regular pattern, and the mountain has since been stripped back to reveal them. Below the columns lies a slope of broken prisms, tumbled down over centuries, and walking on it produces a distinctive hollow clacking sound. A second hill nearby, Detunata Flocoasă, has the same rock but keeps its forest cover, which is where the pair of names comes from. The site was declared a protected area early, in 1938, and it sits in the Apuseni mining country around Bucium, where old shafts and headframes still stand in the valleys.

The landscape

• The column wall - the exposed face of hexagonal basalt prisms.
• The prism scree - fallen columns heaped on the slope beneath.
• The forested twin - Detunata Flocoasă, the wooded hill of the pair.
• Mining country - old workings and villages in the valleys around Bucium.

When to go

May to October. The approach path is muddy in spring and after rain, and the exposed summit is unpleasant in wind. Autumn gives the best contrast between the black rock and the beech forest below.

Before you go

The walk up is an hour of steady climbing on a rough forest track with no facilities at either end. The scree is unstable and people twist ankles on it; the columns themselves are not a scrambling playground and rockfall happens. Signposting from the village is poor and the site is easy to drive past entirely. Come for a strange geological place rather than a view.

Nearby

Roșia Montană lies close by; Alba Iulia is about an hour and a half east.