Mountain biking is one of the fastest growing sports around the world, and it is not a mystery why this is happening.
It is accessible for pretty much everyone because the minimum requirements are very simple: a bicycle, the ability to ride it, and access to a trail through some off-road scenery. (Sure, this is just a starting point, and once you jump the wagon you can complicate things endlessly.)
It can be practised as a very intense workout, or as a fun, adrenaline inducing activity. Or both at the same time.
It combines the joy of ganging up with like-minded people, with the intensity and self-awareness of an individual exercise.
It has the magical ability to level up differences of age, gender, social status, income, nationality – it basically turns all of us into children, capable of finding joy in the simplest of things.
But this growing popularity comes at a price. More and more people doing mountain biking means quiet trails are harder and harder to find. Every ski resort is now offering – or planning to build – a bike-park, a quite obvious way of compensating for the ever shorter skiing seasons. And, as the ski slopes in winter time, these bike parks get really crowded throughout the warm season.
The traditional hiking trails of the Alps are a shared territory, and they were quite crowded even before the mountain bikers arrived on the premises. The current explosion in e-bike popularity makes things even more delicate.
Well, we have some good news. Here, in Romania, things are still quiet.
While the popularity of mountain biking is gaining momentum, it still is early stages. Mtb competitions rarely bring together more than a couple of hundreds of participants. The small number of ski resorts, all showcasing rather minuscule skiing areas – the largest of them offering a dismal total of about 25 km of prepared slopes – have an even smaller offer of specially designed bike trails.
The relatively rich network of hiking trails will seem to the unacclimatized eye almost deserted. With the exception of some walking paths close to cable cars or more populated areas, there is a strong air of off-season even during July and August.
It happens quite often in our mountain biking tours to ride all day long without crossing paths with other bikers. And just a handful of trekkers.
Doing laps on your home trails, finding new lines in the same old turns and rock gardens, getting that familiar flow, meeting your friends from the local mtb community, or the ones you invited over for a ride. These, and many others, are the reasons to go out for your daily, weekly, monthly mountain biking routine.
Mountain biking is also about exploring new places. Some will head for the busy, populated, trendy destinations in the Alps, Canada, US or New Zealand. Others will be looking for more quiet destinations, where the element of exploration and discovery is nicely mixed with pure trail mountain bike riding.
For these, and you are probably one of them if you got to read this article, mountain biking in Transylvania, Romania is definitely worth experiencing. We’d be happy to help you plan a truly unique mountain biking trip adventure.
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