Carpathians: Wildlife watching, tracking and trailing (NEW)

This course is not completely finished. Below is a set up, but details might be changed. If you are interested to join, let us know!
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The Carpathians evoke a sense of real wilderness: rugged and vast, where Nature plays the leading role.
The ecologically diverse, richly-storied landscape is deeply wild, and home to an abundance of large animals: brown bears, wolves, lynx, and red deer, to name a few.
Since our first exploration in 2014, we at EXTRA Bushcraft (and our participants) have been awed by the Romanian Carpathians' wild offerings and the wealth of experiences. In an exciting collaboration with WeWilder (wewilder.com), we’d now like to share that with you during this unique, first-of-its-kind course: Wildlife Watching and Wildlife Tracking, Carpathians.

After landing at Timisoara airport we are shuttled to the Tarcu Mountains, South Western Carpathians, which is where we’ll call home for the duration of our stay.
We spend a day and night in local guesthouses, where we will also take part in the daily chores of the local community. This is definitely an interesting part of the entire tour.

The next day we will be dropped of in the wild!
We’ll set up a simple basecamp and take it from there. Each day we’ll wander through rugged valleys, along wild streams, through seas of extensive montane forest up into beautiful subalpine meadows. In the foothills and valleys, a mosaic of woodland, pastures, farmland and villages forms the dynamic interface of human-wildlife coexistence.
It is a truly fascinating landscape.

Along the way, we might pause for lunch and light a small trail fire to grill local sausages and brew fresh coffee. When returning ‘home’ at our basecamp we’ll arrange fires for cooking and chill out in the evening, exchanging our adventures of the day in company of our small fire.
We will also head out and watch wildlife.

We’ve chosen September for the chance of perfect weather, beautiful fall colors and active wildlife - the animals, particularly bears, are especially busy in preparation for winter. The red deer rut hopefully will have started then as well.

This will be an unforgettable, intensive week of tracking and trailing, with each day spent searching out and discussing an endless variety of sign on the landscape, and piecing together wildlife whereabouts and behavior on the larger landscape.

We’ll also spend long hours of following fresh trails, learning effective trailing methodology, sign interpretation, and how to approach bedded or feeding animals undetected.
Evenings will be spent recounting stories, wildlife viewing, or attending mini lectures on a variety of topics. We’ll also bring trail cams (remote cameras) and will cover technique for strategic placement and set up. We encourage others to bring their own as well!

In full, this week will dramatically develop one’s understanding of wildlife and the ability to more fluently read the wild world. We hope you can join us!

EXTRA info

Duration: 10 days (travel days included
Group size: min 8 - max 12
Prerequisites: you must be an experienced camper as we will be self-sufficient while out in the woods.
Level of fitness: this is a physically demanding experience. We will be covering many miles each day, most of them off trail: physical fitness is a must.
Catering: fully catered.
Accommodation: on the first and last night we will be staying in local guesthouses. For the rest of the course we’ll be camping out in the wild.
Location: Tarcu Mountains, South Western Carpathians
Included: transport during the course (transfer to and from airport, local transport into the wild)
Not included: personal items and camping gear. Travel to and from Timisoara.