Category Archives: 3. Ski
Fresh meat at Bârcaciu, and they lovin it

This year, Bârcaciu ski touring event hold place, a bit underground, among friends but it had happen. And it was a great weekend to spend on the mountain with beautiful snow, fresh lines and bluebird days. It was also the birthday of the man in charge, the one and only Sherpa from Carpati, Mihai Petre, and seems the gods favor him that we had this briliant conditions.
I feel that i’m repeating myself but this area has so much to offer in terms of mountain acces, lines, trails, tracks and anything in between (good food and good accommodation😊)
Don’t be shy, check it whenever you have the opportunity. I will not continue buzzing you with the same details, just check the pictures and movies bellow and if you want, the the past articles like Bârcaciu Skitouring VRR Edition or Făgăraș from peak to creek #barcaciu. Enjoy and ride safe!
































Sketchiest day so far at Balea Lake

Sketchiest day so far at Balea Lake. I know that from the cover it doesn’t look that way, but it was. Things can change very fast on the mountain, so expect anything. We had a beautiful start of the day, with a decent descent from the ridge of the mountain to Capra lake, but then, the fog came and it stayed for diner… and breakfast next day too :))).
After that, we tried to become friends but she wont open up to us…😆 hard to make a bond when there’s no communication, you feel like talking to the walls :))). Enough with the funny talk, here are some pictures and 2 movies to judge by yourselves. Also for more riding in Balea Lake, you can check BALEA LAKE POWDER DAYS. Enjoy and ride safe!

















Vanturis ski touring and jibbing day – Bucegi mountains
One easy to acces and ski point in Bucegi mountains. Leave a comment for more details. Enjoy and ride safe!
Ciucas mountains ski touring day

This is a classic tour for us, each year we do one or tow rides in Ciucas. Why? because its accesibile, usually holds good snow despite of the windy ridge, has good slope with moderate inclination and you can have 2 or 3 decent descent in one day. I recomand a tour in Ciucas for intermediar to advance skiers and the recommendation is to check the weather and in before you go there. You can also look for a guide to take you there, its 1 day job and for sure you will find some good ones here like our friends from Massif Experience. if its heavy snow after a long dry period, better stay bellow the tree line or on mellow slopes. If not, you can try even a descent from the peak. each way you do it, check the conditions on the spot ;).
To better get a feel of the terrain there, check out some of our old articles like CIUCAS MOUNTAINS BACKCOUNTRY SKIING DAY or Ciucas skitouring reloaded.
Enjoy and ride safe!
























SEMENIC ENDURO 2020 AKA MUDFEST
SEMENIC ENDURO 2020 AKA MUDFEST
Sorry to say this, but it was a veritable mudfest this year. We made jokes about the forecast but the weather was way worse than the forecast so we ended up riding 3 days on soaking wet trails.
Too bad for this beautiful place that got to experience such weather in a contest weekend and the trails got to suffer quite a lot ….
This is a shame because here are some of the greatest trails in Ro and I wanted to ride them so bad, just as I remember them.
It was a bit harsh on the organizers too. They found the courage to hold the event, even though the times are not the nicest (Covid and all) and the weather kicked their moral as well.
It was fun the first day in training but being in contest on this kind of a weather, man, it’s too harsh I tell you.
I had to do it just to learn that next time when the forecast comes true and looks like this, I’ll turn myself in an action sports photographer for the time of the contest 😆, it’s safer for me and for my bike, and I still do something more useful than racing 😅🤷♂
Otherwise, the place is great for riding trails, just beautiful. Some nice trails with good dirt, all on a beautiful Mountain with a beautiful lake at the bottom just in the perfect place for you to cool down after a gnarly descent 🌬💪.
Hope next year we get rid of all the troubles and have a perfect enduro season, fingers crossed.
Until next time, cheers to the guys from Bike Attack Resita for holding the contest and check out the trails on trail forks. And don’t forget that the trails are there the whole year, so go visit them, you’ll have a blast riding there 🤗😉. Congratulations to the winners for pulling hard and hope their bikes are ok! Ride safe and enjoy!
Also, check out this great article on EWS web page with the race report! Things happen here too and it’s all due to the implication of some great people from Resita, cheers mates! 🍻
P.S. For accommodation in the area, if you don’t look for something fancy, you can check out Haus Hubertus place, it’s a very nice hut with a great garden where you can even camp 😉 Great food also!
Valea Jiului MTB trails
Don’t stay home, it’s a trap. After this pandemic period, the weather went crazy, lots of rain, If we were to listen to the forecast, we should have stayed in home for the last couple of weekends. But as I say, if you snooze, you lose so to avoid this, we headed to Straja for 3 days ride in the area. We heard some rumors that the trails are in perfect conditions and that we would have shuttle there so we seized the opportunity.
We were quite right and the guys from Straja Extrem Park hooked us up with a shuttle for 2 days. It’s a blast to ride the 2 long trails from Straja. Baloo trail is nice and flowy and Wolves trail it’s a bit more technical but with loads of natural flow. Both are very long and you can feel your whole body worked up by the end of the trail. You don’t need more than 5-6 descents to declare yourself pleased for the day.
But this ain’t all, there is more in the area for you to ride. Don’t miss Valcan trail, this one is without a doubt the funniest of them. Again a berm jem and longer than the other 2. You really feel you’re alive. We hit it like 8 times and didn’t get bored :D.
What we want to tell you is that the combinations of the 3 long trails are for sure the recipe for a terrific weekend ;).
For accommodation we went to Allma mountain hut as usual. Nice cosy place where you feel directly @ home. You can cook yourself anything in the kitchen and hang out in the living or on the great view balcony. We always stay here once in Straja, you can see the place in the picture bellow.
Ok, so this article is just a hint for how and where to spend a nice weekend riding with your buddies. All trails are on trailforks. More ideas are to follow so just stay tuned 😉 Enjoy and ride safe!
LESPEZI PEAK SPRING SKIING, FAGARAS MOUNTAINS
Probably the last ski day of this season, but we shell see. Not much options left, no lift access, not allowed to ride in larger groups, this kind of post apocaliptic atmosphere its nice but I don’t want to get used to it…
We put a nice patch to a rather bad season, with this last ski touring day. Looking bad, yes, we had bad snow, yes, we had less ski days and almost no powder but it was nice, I for one have good memories and got to ski some new places this year so i m pretty much satisfied. Now ill wait for the next one and hope that bike season will not be to much affected by these uncertain times… Thanks and ride safe y’all!
BALEA LAKE POWDER DAYS
An experience of some weekends ago, probably the only powdered days of the year.
Balea Lac and Fagaras mountains remain one of the coolest back country and freeride areas in RO and probably the only mountains with serious lines. Easy to admire but dangerous to approach 😆😅💪… I m glad we chose to go there. In the first day we skin our way up from Capra cottage to Balea Lac, then ski down to Doamnei valley, skin up again and made a final descent on Balea Valley, just under the cable car. We had fresh snow and was nice to remember how that feels. Then we took the cable car up and parked out skis at Balea Lac.
We sincerely liked to stay at Balea Lac or Balea Lac 2 cottage, clean rooms, clean bathrooms, hot water and good food, we clearly recommend it.
The second day spent at Balea we skin our way up vaiuga , near Vanatoarea lui Buteanu peak, made a descent to Capra lake, skin up again and then chose to go down the south part, in the sun and at a later hour, following a group of austrian skiers that had a guide. I would honestly recomand to avoid this area on clearer days and with temperatures over 5-6C degrees, especially when there is fresh snow accumulations. I found the snow quite heavy…
Ofcourse, we had to go down anyway because we had our car at Capra and we would either go down now or later…The transfer to the south part during the heating periods is very debatable.
Until next time, ride safe!
VALEA CERBULUI DRIFTING ON AN ICY DAY
SKITOURING TO VALEA CERBULUI ON AN ICY DAY
One of the latest ski touring days and this season gets closer to its end. Hope to get a couple of this days down until the end of this quite shitty winter. Maybe next one will be better and I manage to ski the fat animals next year 🙄.
It was so ice that my dental fillings almost fell down 😅.
But it was nice, a good mission a beautiful adventure in these uncertain times…
Until next time, enjoy and ride safe! 👊
Fagaras mountains on a blizzard weekend
FAGARAS MOUNTAINS BACKCOUNTRY SKIING ON A BLIZZARD WEEKEND 22.02.2020
This is from 2 weeks ago when we did some back country skiing in Fagaras mountains. It was not the perfect conditions but no regrets. Any day on the mountain its a good day, if nothing bad happens…. It was fun, riding in winter conditions on flat light and a blizzard, ingredients for a good adventure 🙂
We skied on the south side of Fagaras mountains, around Transfagarasan mountain road, just above Capra hut and bellow Transfagarasan tunnel. Enjoy!
Piatra Craiului backcountry ski day first attempt
Probably the worst ski day so far, ever.
20 km ride, 19km ski carry, 1km of effective “ski” …
However, the mountain goats and the ridge of the mountain have somehow repaired the mistake.
This valley is very nice to ski and we plan to return. Eventually we sleep in the Grind refuge and at the first glimpse of light we climb La Om peak and descend. I think that would be great.
I hope to return this year and ski it in a more elegant way, or at least ski it from the top of La Om peak, that would be super awesome!
Until then, ride safe!
CIUCAS MOUNTAINS BACKCOUNTRY SKIING DAY
Make Heaven from what you have … or as they say …
If you want to ski you can, quite a lot. Maybe from a quality point of view it is more sad, but we will certainly ski until April at least…
You just have to know where to go skiing, not to expect much out of it and to know how to avoid traffic 😀 these are some key factors for a satisfying ski day.
I predict that we will have a few more days like this and declare ourselves satisfied. This does not mean that we must remain blind to the things that change around us and we must be passive.
Probably the governments must take the problem of global warming and climate change more seriously, and probably technology will play a key role in solving this, but our ways of leaving must change and that is soon…
Until then, ride safe!
Ski touring and Romanian mountain hut, Bărcaciu, Făgăraș mountains
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 Făgăraș mountains.
This part of Făgăraș is the greatest, lots of trails, great amazing ridge, lot of snow in the winter and great people!
And don’t forget the food, they know how to cook a great meal! Mrs. Mariana, Mihai’s mom it’s 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.
We’ve 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 didn’t 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!
Ski touring on Lespezi peak, Făgăraș mountains, Romania
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. Don’t look too far, we ourselves are the cause. But how radical the situation must become in order for us to change this… I’m really curious if technology or something else will save this one…ok, let’s 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 Făgăraș mountains, and one that you can ski from the very top.
It’s 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 it’s one of those late winters that shows their strength in March :D, how wonderful would it be!
Until then ride safe!
WHITE VALLEY SPRING SKIING
WHITE VALLEY SPRING SKIING
Maybe this was the last run of the season, and what a season it has been. Great snow, great touring days, great slopes and great friends. One to remember with lots of new places discovered and new things learned. That’s most important, always to learn something, never to settle for less. Another one added to the pile of memories. Cheers mates! ⛷❄🍻