Tigăile Mari Rock Towers

From Bratocea Pass on DN1A, the red-band trail leaves the road near a shepherds' stâna and climbs north on an old forestry track past a disused TV relay mast, breaking out of beech and spruce forest onto the open grass of Culmea Bratocei. The first landmark is Colții Bratocei, a cluster of weathered conglomerate spurs, followed by the broad grassy summit of Bratocea din Jos and the level shoulder of Vârful Bratocea, where the path contours just below the actual high point. Beyond Vârful Bratocea the ridge dips past the smaller rock cluster of Tigăile Mici before a final rocky pitch onto Tigăile Mari itself, a kilometre-long crest of Cretaceous conglomerate carved by frost, wind, and rain into mushroom caps, leaning pillars, and turrets up to 100 metres tall, the single most photographed formation in the Ciucaș range. The towers sit on the southern edge of the main ridge, and from among them the ground drops away into the forested bowl of the Chirușca valley, with the rooftops of Cheia and the headwaters of the Teleajen visible below and, on a clear day, the pale wall of the Bucegi massif rising on the horizon to the west. The return simply retraces the outbound ridge back to the pass on the same well-marked, rock-and-turf trail.