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 realize it first when you reach the peak, enjoying marvelous views and reveling in achieving something special.
You’ll realize it again while biking down the exposed high mountain trails, putting your skills to the test. And you’ll realize it even further at the end of the day, sharing a cold drink and a good lough with your biking friends, remembering the highlights of the day, with the prospect of doing it all again tomorrow, on a different peak but on equally spectacular surroundings.
Claus, Anja, Ulrich, Matthias, Frederic and Max shared a fair number of Trans Alps mtb adventures, traversing the German, Swiss, Austrian, and Italian high mountains. For 2024 they looked at different options, new landscapes and cultures, and less crowded trails. A short google search session led them here, on mtbtours.ro.
We started the discussion around the “Transylvanian Alps tour, as the similarity in naming would suggest. After better understanding the group’s preferences and abilities we opted for the Carpathian Peaks, focusing more on technical trails and rowdy riding, and less in endurance biking.
Our biking playground in the Carpathians around Brașov city comprises rather small massifs, compared to the High Alps. Most of the time, traversing one of our mountains is a day’s job: starting at the base, reaching the peak, and then coming down. It sounds easy, but it isn’t. The climbs are steeper than expected, on technical terrain, and the descents are tricky, with all the difficulties a rough natural hiking trail can throw at you.
There’s the added bonus of visiting each day a new mountain, with different views and different terrain to ride. There aren’t many places in the world where biking for a week takes you through a similar diversity of sceneries such as Brașov.
Reaching the valley each evening comes with the advantage of having a proper warm meal, sleeping in a comfortable bed, and biking through the day with a relatively light backpack. Letting you concentrate on the biking.
The group of six Germans came to Romania searching for a new adventure, and that is precisely what they’ve got: a mountain biking experience moving away from their traditional Trans Alps endeavors, with less transitions on local or forestry roads, and more high intensity single trail riding. We climbed on peaks, we reached high passes, we roamed trails in national and natural reserves, we met almost no other bikers, and the few hikers were friendly. We were spoiled by the weather. We had a damn good time.
What we wish for you as well. (hint: click the Contact link 🙂)