Throwback Saturday, Harghita Enduro. Hope this one will be revived in the future, the trails are just great. I know for sure my rims will miss PS3 š šš». Enjoy!
Throwback Saturday, Harghita Enduro. Hope this one will be revived in the future, the trails are just great. I know for sure my rims will miss PS3 š šš». Enjoy!
Ok, this country has some faults, nothing is perfect, but if you come to live with them and you love nature, you will find happiness here. We have traveled some and we liked what we saw over our borders, but somehow, I for one am always drawn back here, to Romanian mountains. Not the tallest, not the steepest, not the most beautiful, but they resemble us⦠complex, complicated :))
One thing I like about romanian mountains are the mountain huts. Basic, old, rugged but in a cozy kind of way. One place in particular that I’ve always come back to with pleasure is Barcaciu hut in Fagaras mountains.
Here I found knowledge, friendship, beauty, and will. The will to do something in the area, to develop and to offer free know how and that pleased me a lot.
This place is nice, Mihai, the guy in charge of the hut, along with his parents are making a great job on keeping the old hut alive.
This place is just great and if I had lived closer to the area, I would have visited it more often, alongside with the other huts in the north west part of the FÄgÄraČ mountains.
This part of FÄgÄraČ is the greatest, lots of trails, great amazing ridge, lot of snow in the winter and great people!
And donāt forget the food, they know how to cook a great meal! Mrs. Mariana, Mihaiās mom itās a great cook and half of the reason I go to Barcaciu is for the meals I get :))), no lie here :D. The other half would be the trails and the snow in the winter. There are some spots there where you can have some great ski touring days if the weather and the mountain allow it.
Weāve been there already this winter and we got half lucky. Great day, not too cold and not too windy, and with decent snow conditions. We had some bad visibility, flat light on Puha descent but we had to deal with it. You cannot have it all, and you have to learn how to be grateful for what you received.
If on Saturday we had a bit of luck and we had a full ski touring day, on Sunday the snow came and we had to stay near the hut because of the bad visibility and unstable snow. But Mihai didnāt let us rest, he made sure we remembered how to use our avalanche safety and rescue equipment and had some avalanche rescue drills near the hut. We tried also to ski some of the fresh pow but the visibility was just too bad, so we called it a day. Not bad for the first ski touring weekend of the season.
If you want to discover the area in terms of ski touring, the event held by Mihai each spring is a good start, just check out Schi de tura la Barcaciu in the first weekend of spring :D. And here, another beautyful weekend spend here!
Thanks Barcaciu for all the good times! Cheers mate!
Ok, judging from the first pic of this post, this is a proper winter for shredding… but take a look at the other pictures… and this happens in January 12, 2020… this is critical…
Not even in spring did we catch these conditions here. Donāt look too far, we ourselves are the cause. But how radical the situation must become in order for us to change this⦠Iām really curious if technology or something else will save this oneā¦ok, letās leave this aside, for now.
This weekend we did the Lespezi descent, a bit too early because of the poor snow and spring conditions.
Lespezi peak is one of the easiest to access 2500m peak in FÄgÄraČ mountains, and one that you can ski from the very top.
Itās a nice tour, the pictures from the last part of the climb, and from the peak are just awesome, as well as the descent. This one calmed my appetite for ski, but not for long. I really hope itās one of those late winters that shows their strength in March :D, how wonderful would it be!
Until then ride safe!
Last year in August, CiucaČ Enduro was revived in a new, not so competitive but pretty awesome form.
It was a friendly enduro contest, something more like a gathering, in which riders treated the so called contest as they wished. Some of them really battled but most of the riders present were only there to ride the trails with their friends and to somehow have a taste of how an enduro contest is held.
Itās a good thing because people get to see how an enduro mtb contest is like but have way more fun. Not everybody is prepared for racing enduro and this way you get a casual intro into riding enduro.
Besides this, you get some cleaned trails, music, food, great beer and lots of fun with your mates or get to know new people from the community.
Hope the contest will be held next year too, because we really enjoyed it and had a great time riding and having fun.
Thanks to all volunteers and organizers for making it possible. Cheers mates! šµāāšš»
Ok, so the season had to end with some quality bikepacking trip and all had gone down thanks to NevAcademy and their great bikes.
We wanted to go back to Cindrel mountains because last time we came here we had 48h of rain which made us cut short the track we wanted to do. This time, thanks to Adrian and his electric bikes, we managed to do the track in a record time and we had some great fun going uphill, not only downhill.
Let me tell you, itās something else with the electric bike, a totally different kind of ride, you have loads of fun going uphill, you cover a lot more ground, and you workout quite the same. As I see it so far, if you live next to a mountain, donāt hesitate to buy an electric bike, itās exactly what you need. The electric bike will not replace your old trusty non-electric bike but it will complete āthe rideā, trust me.
As we live in Bucharest, and have to go 2h minimum by car to reach any mountain, the electric bike is not yet an option but we shall talk in a few yearsā¦
Ok, so our trip was already planned from last year, we knew the track we wanted to do and where we wanted to sleep.
We wanted to reach Cindrel peak, then Frumoasa peak, descent on the rocky road down to the road that takes you to Gura RĆ¢ului and then go up to Cindrel mountain refuge. Only that, on the way up we stumbled upon a nice hut belonging to the forester in the area, and it had a room opened. It looked too good to be true and we decided to spend the night there. It was so warm and cozy that we didnāt even inflate our mattresses⦠It was the best sleep I had in a while āŗ
Next day we did some inventory on our equipment (watch the movie below), and then up on the bikes and up the mountain, back to the ridge of Cindrel mountains. We passed Cindrel refuge and then did some electric push bike until we reached the ridge. From there we descended to Canaia refuge on the other side of the ridge and then back to PÄltiniČ on an awesome trail that goes from BÄtrĆ¢na Cole. Man it was fun, so fun that we were howling like wolves on the descend š¤š¤.
This weekend made me reconsider the possibility of owning an electric bike in the future and opened up some new ideas of rides in the future, some hybrid ones, just you wait š.
Thanks Adrian and NevAcademy for the ride, we had a great time and can’t wait to ride together again.
Until then, we leave you with the material below to take your own conclusions. Ride safe!