{"id":1315,"date":"2011-10-07T18:59:09","date_gmt":"2011-10-07T15:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marusca.ro\/dev\/mtbtours\/?p=1315"},"modified":"2020-04-23T14:00:40","modified_gmt":"2020-04-23T11:00:40","slug":"pe-cararile-ciucasului","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mtbtours.ro\/en\/recky-rides\/pe-cararile-ciucasului\/","title":{"rendered":"Ciuca\u015f mountain trails"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the best mountain biking tours we did this year was in the Ciuca\u015f Mountains. We tried cycling there about ten years ago, at the beginning of our mountain biking experiences, but we ended up disappointed: too much push\/carry bike for a little bit of pedaling. More recently, a friend of ours tried his luck up in the Ciuca\u015f mountains and he was equally unhappy with the results.<\/p>\n<p>But still&#8230; with Google Earth in one hand and and a printed map in the other I drew a trail around the Ciuca\u015f peak, around Z\u0103ganu peak, reaching the village\/mountain resort of Cheia only through mountain trails and paths. The elevation profile in Google Earth was looking good, so I exported the track to Garmin and I called up Mihai de Media\u015f to come with me for a &#8216;recky&#8217;. At the last minute we were joined by Andrei C\u00e2rciag, member of Pro Cycling Team &#8211; as a fresh university student in Bra\u015fov he was eager to taste the trails available in the area. So, how was it?<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"ngg-singlepic ngg-none alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mtbtours.ro\/wp-content\/gallery\/ciucas-5-10-2011\/img_06123.jpg\" alt=\"img_06123\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\">It was simply brilliant. Riding along a great, endless single trails, shouting and yelling with joy, then riding some more. On more single trails.<\/p>\n<p>We parked the car up in Bratocea Pass, as we were coming from Bra\u015fov. The uphill part to the TV relay below the Bratocea Rocks is a good warm up on a dirt road before the 20 minutes intense push bike that gets you up on the Bratocea ridge. This is where the fun really starts: technical trail till \u015eaua Tig\u0103ilor, some rough descents around Ciuca\u015f peak but nicely flowing all the way to Chiru\u015fca Pass and Poiana Valea St\u00e2nei. Mihai de Media\u015f was still taming his new bike, so he was grumbling a little bit &#8211; but Andrei was flying, with me on his tail, trying to keep up with him.<\/p>\n<p>We ended a long downhill section in Boncu\u0163a Pass, and started a steep ascent towards Tabla Bu\u0163ii that was shortly cut with a 90 degrees turn on a forest path, down to Poiana Valea St\u00e2nei. From here the trail leads across C\u0103z\u0103turii Ridge and Buz\u0103ianu Ridge down to Cheia. We enjoyed the riding &#8211; flying downhill or pressing uphill &#8211; but also the pauses. We took our time resting, enjoying the sun and the pleasant temperatures of a mild autumn. We hardly met any humans on our path &#8211; probably because it was on a Wednesday &#8211; but we really felt like the mountain was ours. We&#8217;ll defnitely be back to continue exploring the area, especially the part from Cheia up to Bratocea Pass, in order to have a nice round trip in the Ciuca\u015f Mountains. To be continued.<\/p>\n<p>Here is a 17 minutes video edit from our tour &#8211; kind of long, I know, but I couldn&#8217;t help it. Enjoy it:<\/p>\n<div class=\"video-responsive-container\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/youtube.com\/embed\/q4gN2X6uitw?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the best mountain biking tours we did this year was in the Ciuca\u015f Mountains. We tried cycling there about ten years ago, at the beginning of our mountain biking experiences, but we ended up disappointed: too much push\/carry bike for a little bit of pedaling. More recently, a friend of ours tried his&#8230;  <a class=\"excerpt-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mtbtours.ro\/en\/recky-rides\/pe-cararile-ciucasului\/\" title=\"Read Ciuca\u015f mountain trails\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4515,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,44],"tags":[49,50,116,19,115,114,113,74,85,38,28,27,75,53],"class_list":["post-1315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-recky-rides","category-filming","tag-5d-mark-ii","tag-5d-mkii","tag-andrei-carciag","tag-bike","tag-bratocea","tag-cheia","tag-ciucas","tag-cross-country","tag-mihai-de-media","tag-mountain-biking","tag-mountainbiking","tag-mtb","tag-mtbtours","tag-romania"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtbtours.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtbtours.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtbtours.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtbtours.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtbtours.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtbtours.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtbtours.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtbtours.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtbtours.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtbtours.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}