Retezat Mountain Run

Retezat Mountain Run bills itself as the only race that takes runners to the summit of Retezat itself, in one of Romania's wildest mountain ranges. The courses climb from the ski area at Râușor on hiking paths and forest roads, then on into steep slopes, boulder fields, alpine ridges, scree and dwarf-pine thickets.

Almost every aid station on the course can only be reached on foot, so volunteers carry the supplies up themselves. There is no mobile signal, the team works by radio, and runners are expected to know the mountains well enough to handle fog and the sudden weather changes that come above 2,000 metres.

The event was relaunched in 2023 by a new team as the successor to Retezat Maraton, a traditional race that had run for a decade, with a plan to keep it going for years to come.