Sergiu Olteanu is also the one who reveals with great irony the show offered by the stubborn tourists who reach the ridge in flip-flops, with a purse and an umbrella. The expressions coined by Sergiu, dedicated to those who confuse, as he says, the coast with the rocks, have already entered the folklore of the Bucegis: the “slapangiul de cresta”, the “fashionist” of Bucegi, the “Mimbo” of the crista or the “Indianca Talpă Iute”.
He worked in sales
Until he became a meteorologist, he worked in sales, but over time he realized that office work did not suit him at all. Originally from Brașov, he climbed the mountain frequently, and the weather station at Vârful Omu was a kind of second home for him since he was 20 years old. He slept here with the tent whenever the weather permitted and stole work from the weathermen who had accepted him around them.
“And I was really thinking then, at 20 years old, what would it be like to work as a meteorologist, what would it be like to work at Omu? That’s what I thought then. I also met the people at the station, I followed them, so to speak. I liked what I was doing, I liked their job, how they observed hour by hour what was happening, the phenomena, nature and simply the thought was that I want to get here and work as a meteorologist. But I didn’t necessarily set out to do that, to focus only on that, I was actually working in sales at that time”, says Sergiu Olteanu.
18 years later from the first thought, his wish came true. In 2018, he was employed as a meteorologist at the weather station located at the highest altitude in Romania. He was not a mountain novice, in the meantime taking the courses that qualified him as a mountain guide, local guide and national guide.
“I did all those schools and got out in the open air a lot, in nature. The experience of these over 20 years of walking in the mountains helped me a lot. On Vârful Omu is a somewhat isolated place. About seven, eight months a year there is snow, it is blizzard, it is cold, many extreme phenomena, things that some people fear and are afraid to come here. I don’t know, they attracted me, I liked it”, says Sergiu Olteanu.
He is currently preparing to complete the courses at the Faculty of Geography at the University of Bucharest, and his undergraduate thesis is based on his studies of the snow level at Omu Peak.
Cf. Omu, as not known to tourists
However, he admits that working in this corner of the world is not easy at all, as it often appears in his photos. There are seven months a year of snow and blizzards, however, with snowdrifts of more than two meters even in early summer, when the cabin door and windows are completely blocked by frozen snow.
“We also have the forecast on our side so to speak. We know what’s coming. We know how we calculate to do the shift change and what we are going to do during the bad weather period. But if we are here and there are extreme phenomena, we take care. We don’t leave the cabin if there are electrical discharges, for example, and during blizzards, we stay in the cabin for two or three days without going outside at all. Then time passes harder. You are not bored. I mean, it’s not bad, it’s a little different.
When you come from the bottom, the first 3,4 days can be a little harder. But after a week, time flies here and you don’t even realize you’ve been here for a month. Many people ask me how you manage to stay in isolation for two weeks or a month. It seems to me that time flies after the first week. Especially when the shift comes and you have to get off, sometimes you just don’t want to leave. Here, no day is the same as another day, but never”, confesses Sergiu Olteanu.
The complicated life with the toupee Foxy and the mistress Rodica
In the apparent desolation of the mountain, two foxes, Lili and Foxy, and the cat Rodica somehow crept towards the weather station. The latter is “Bucharestian”, brought to Omu by a friend of the meteorologists with a specific purpose: to exterminate the mice that are constantly nesting around the cottage. Rodica is a veteran, he has been at the station for almost ten years, and since he befriended Sergiu he has become a star on the Internet, being often photographed especially while “fighting” through the window with the foxes.
“Sometimes she has such an attitude… of the mistress of the place. The shepherds climb with the sheep, they pass from one valley to the other, and the sheep are accompanied by the big shepherd dogs. Rodica is very authoritative, several dogs tried to enter the station area, but she made them run away. In autumn, the bear climbs here. I remember one evening hearing some noises. I went outside to see what it was. The cat came out with me. I saw the bear a few meters ahead. Rodica made an extremely strange sound, I had never heard it before because the bear got scared and ran away”, the meteorologist says.
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With Foxy the toupee, life is a bit more complicated. He comes night after night when he sees the light come on in the kitchen. He approaches the window and waits for dinner. If she is not served, she often manages on her own.
“There are about two, three foxes that still come here. Foxy is still present. She is sly, sly. If I left the window open, he would enter the kitchen without any problem. One day the colleague even left a pot outside with something we were going to prepare for food. He grabbed the pot and ran off with it. We found the pot a few months later, around the station, in the snow, but of course it had eaten all our meat”, says Sergiu Olteanu.
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He says that soon the weather station will have a new star: a marten that runs circles around the weather station. “This one will follow soon. Let them gather a little more courage”, predicts Sergiu.
The buzz that heralds the storm
Three, four months a year, from June to the end of September, the mountain comes alive, Omu Peak becoming a new point of attraction, unfortunately, for all kinds of reckless people. Trained, thanks to his job, to pay attention to details, Sergiu Olteanu discreetly stalks them and turns them into stars on the Internet. He understood that good, honest words, natural advice, given by an experienced man to tourists dressed on the mountain ridge as if on the beach, have no effect, on the contrary, it hardens them.
“I try to draw their attention to the fact that they are not properly equipped, when I walk around the area and notice the tourists. He gets a bit upset… If you tell him that it’s not good, he tries to prove to you that he can also end up in flip-flops”, explains the meteorologist from Vârful Omu.
Mountain guide with over two decades of experience, Sergiu Olteanu gives some advice to those who will start to climb the Bucegilor plateau, with the opening of the mountain hiking season. Next is the time of the year with the most electrical discharges, and there is no shelter on the plateau. It is important, even vital, to follow at least two simple rules:
“Stay away from the metal poles where the trail markers are mounted and turn off your cell phones for the duration of the storm. There are two things that can save your life. In a blizzard, you take shelter, dig in the snow, make a bivouac. You take shelter from the rain, but from lightning it is much more difficult. It’s very dangerous and you never know where it’s coming from. The tourist markers that are made of metal begin to buzz as the electrical discharges begin. It buzzes like high voltage poles. Then it’s good to go down or get very far away from them, go down as low as possible from the plateau”.
In addition, the meteorologist insists that we do not ignore weather alerts, and before scheduling a hike, it is mandatory to check the weather conditions for the day.
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