Tag: piatra craiului
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…
Mountain bikers from Germany, Italy and The Netherlands joined our Transylvanian Alps Open tour, August 2023. An eclectic group of people that shared the love for riding their bikes up on the mountain trails while exploring new places, new cultures, and their own comfort zones. Our menu is tried and tested: mountain trails up and down the mountain. Steep climbs, including the odd hike-a-bike and carry bike sections. Trail riding galore, with a few tech parts to spice up the ensemble. Ciucaș, Grohotișului, Neamțului, Baiului, Bucegi and Piatra Craiului Mountains…
We had a busy year in 2021 with Tom, biking on some jaw dropping Carpathian Peaks in the mountains surrounding Brasov city. For most of the 2022 Tom spent his biking days on easier cross-country rides on the flat lands, plus a good number of days abusing the cable cars while stacking bike-park runs under his belt in Sinaia, Azuga and Poiana Brașov. One of these days, while waiting for the uplift, he realized he missed a good pedaling day up in the mountains. So he gave me a call.…
Living and working abroad is something more and more usual for the EU citizens. When you can combine the advantages of a higher paycheck with smaller costs of living, and with a relatively high standard of living, then you can say you hit the jackpot. If you are into mountain biking, and more general into mountain sports, the city of Brașov, in central Romania, is one of these magical places. Jan works for a software company. His work routine requires regular visits to a local subcontractor. He is also a…
Udo brought his friends for a ski touring trip in the Romanian mountains back in 2018, and saw the potential for a mountain biking adventure. Fast forward to August 2022: Udo and his five Bavarian friends came to Romania for a five-mountains, six-days mountain biking tour: our one and only Transylvanian Alps program. The photo gallery below, as extensive as it is, will only tell a small part of an amazing experience. We explored five mountains in Central Romania (Ciucaș, Grohotișului, Baiului, Bucegi, Piatra Craiului). We've biked through forests, through…
Like most of our guests, Willi and Francesco started planning their mtb trip to Romania with many months in advance, in October 2021. They were hoping, like we all did, that things will come back to some sort of normality after a couple of years totally messed up by the COVID pandemic. Then the war in Ukraine started. Planning for weeks or months ahead became, again, pointless. Still, Willi and Francesco were decided to come to Romania for a mountain biking trip, even if that meant making a last minute…
