This came as a pleasant surprise. I knew that Cindrel mountains hold a bunch of great trails but this one was fantastic. Is the type of trail that you could ride a whole week around and not get bored.
And is not the only trail. For those of you loving the all mountain sections and wanting to explore a bit, the ride to Cindrel peak it’s a must. The trail runs right on the ridge of the mountain offering a pleasant view over the surroundings. From Cindrel peak you can take a ride down to Canaia refuge and then head back to Paltinis and link the return with the descent from Batrana col. Last year we did a cool ride with electric bikes around Cindrel mountains that you can check out here: Cindrel electric bikepacking trip, thanks to NevAcademy.
You also get a nice small bike park at Arena Platos where you can practice a bit and get dilled with your bike and skills. The bike park has 3 lines with perfectly built elements.
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 rainwhich 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, it’s 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, don’t hesitate to buy an electric bike, it’s exactly what you need. The electric bike will not replace your old trusty non-electric bike but it will complete “the ride”, 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 years…
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 Râului 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 didn’t even inflate our mattresses… It was the best sleep I had in a while ☺
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 Păltiniș on an awesome trail that goes from Bătrâna Cole. Man it was fun, so fun that we were howling like wolves on the descend 🤭🤙.
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 😜.
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!
This is an old one, but quite a beautiful one, one of the best bike packing adventure we had this year. Yeah, we could had some less rain, but who are we to complain?! we had an good night sleep in dry cloths… heck we even found slippers in the hut, and we had some good drink to ease our sorrow! This is how trail riding, hunting and enjoying looks like!
These are Cindrel mountains, some beautiful, mellow and sometimes unwelcoming mountains in Romania. For sure we will redo this one just as we planed it, hut included because its just superb right there in the middle of the forest! With some good luck, we will skip the raining days.
The plan was to do a bigger ride and explore the west part of the mountain. But, because of the rain that started sooner then expected, we had to cut short the first day and reach the hut earlier. We ware soaking wet when we reached it. The only luck in that day was the fireplace that we found in the hut where we could dry our clothes… aaaa and the slippers. We had a good night sleep and in the morning a beautiful day awaited… or better said half a day.
We did some serious pushbike back on to the ridge of the mountain and straight on to Cindrel peak. After this we hold the ridge to Frumoasa peak, and then take the rocky road to Canaia Refuge. The single track down to the refuge was beautiful! Just when we reached the refuge, the rain started again. And what a rain, it was poring like crazy. After a while we just didn’t care anymore and started riding in the rain. It was a cold rain, our hands and feet ware freezing. I think I almost prayed for the rain to stop :D. But it didn’t matter we didn’t had an inch of dry clothes on us anymore… the rain didn’t stop until we reached the car, but after a while we blend in. It was raining so much that all the mud was whipped. The stones ware grippy then before and I for one could ride with full thrust and ease. Until we reached our car, we had some good segments of beautiful single track. There was a portion of the trail that looked more like a pool then a trail. It was a flat surface of water on top of some gnarly rooks hidden underneath :))).
Beautiful, brilliant but we didn’t deserve so much rain. Hope next year we will have quite some contrast here, but we shell see.
We leave you some pics and and some movies to better understand our complains. Second movie is all about the rain :))). Beautiful memories, here’s the tracks: DAY 1, DAY 2. Cheers!
Vertical Riding Romania 