Tag: carpathians
Marcus and his friends enjoyed so much their time in Romania during the Carpathian Peaks tour back in 2024, that they decided a second mtb ride here is a no-brainer. And guess what: it wasn't just good, it was ridiculously good :-) . The program of choice was the Bucegi Circuit, with more point-to-point routes, fewer steep climbs and carry bikes, and more flow trails. In a nutshell, a ridiculous amount of fun, loughs, nice mountain landscape, thrilling bike trails and gorgeous weather. It might be a stretch, or rather…
We see it more and more often: groups of mountain biking friends coming for a week of riding our trails in the Romanian Carpathian Mountains in search for an alternative to the tried and tested TransAlps experiences. Sometimes there is a more personal reason, like in the case of Gabriel who left Romania as a teenager, but always wanting to come back to experience the Carpathians on the bike. He lured his mtb buddies from Germany into a leap in the unknown, and here they were. End of July, six…
In the realm of cool mountain biking, lycra is an obvious faux-pas. The plasticky, skin tight garments are the unmistakable sign of a road biker, someone more interested in endless asphalt pedaling, cautiously avoiding anything mildly approaching gnar, and flabbergasted by stuff that would only raise a bored yawn from a proper mountain biker. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to realize these are blatant stereotypes. The thirteen Dutch mountain bikers that came here in September 2024 for a Bucegi Circuit tour proved exactly that. Yes, they wore…
Carpathian Peaks is the latest addition to the list of programs here on mtbtours.ro and it is proving quite popular. All my tours are perfectly defined by the UP. DOWN. REPEAT headline, but it is the Carpathian Peaks where the UP part is the most consistent, with many a steep, intensive climbs, including bike pushing and bike carrying. I had expected for this tour to attract more hard-core mountain bikers, like this gang from Scotland (see reports here and here). To my surprise, the concept of working your way up…
Wherever he shows up with his wild, white beard, Orbach is making an appearance. He was called ZZ Top, or a direct descendent of Durin, king of Dwarves. More often than not, he is called Santa. Pretty much like Santa, Orbach travels a lot, albeit for very different reasons. His long standing passion is mountain biking on nice trails around the world. The list is rather impressive. Turkey, Croatia, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, to name a few. He just returned home from a bike trip in Japan when his friend David…
Claus's smile and his three words sentence say it all. "This was epic." He is looking back to the winding trail coming down from Ciucaș Peak, along steep, grassy slopes flanked by some weirdly shaped rock formations. There is a hint of hot metal in the air, and his eyes are gleaming with delight. It was hard work getting up there. Serious pedaling on technical terrain, followed by push and carry biking. The kind of uphill that makes you wonder if this is really worth it. It definitely does, and…
"You don't get many returning customers, do you?!", Muzza asked me while hike-a-biking up a steep, rocky couloir on the way to Ciucaș peak, during our 2023 tour, It was, obviously, more of a rhetorical question, in more ways than one. My regular guests won't return, even if they thoroughly enjoyed their time spent in Romania. A good part of their motivation into coming to places like our Carpathian Mountains is to discover new places. The next adventure, by definition, should be somewhere new. But Muzza, and Iain, and Robert,…
Sometimes we forget about just enjoying the mountains. Which is what brought me (you?) to mountain biking in the first place. Now it is a lot about the flow, the grit, the ride, the shredding. About the width of the tires, the number of clicks in the rebound or the number of teeth on the granny gear. The six days of biking with Alda and Ronan put back the accent on the mountains, and less on the biking. We were blessed with great weather, so we properly enjoyed the great…
Traveling all the way from New Zealand, Tom, Peter and Adam spent the first part of their mountain biking adventure in the Swiss and Italian Alps. It was Andrew's idea, the fourth member of the party, to try something off the beaten track in the last part of their European holiday. Hence the quite unusual sight of four kiwis riding their bikes on the Romanian mountain trails. Adding to the unusual element of the trip, it was the first time we combined regular, "unplugged" mountain bikes with an e-bike. We…
The Transylvanian Alps tour is the oldest, and most popular tour format in our portfolio. Seven nights of stay, six days of mountain biking across several mountain ranges in South Transylvania, Central Romania, nicely covering a full week of holiday. Sometimes people have a flexible schedule, with more time on their hands. Like it was the case with Günther and René this summer. They wanted a longer tour, so we added a few more days to the total, ending with nine days out on the mountain trails and a few…
