Recently we got to visit Macin mountains and their beautiful trails. Never expect less from this place. If you have a camera with you, even a phone camera, this place will turn you into an awesome photographer. Not a good rider, just an awesome photographer :))). But if you ride these trails a lot, you eventually will become a good rider to 😛
The trails are nit, beautiful and unique in their own way. You have some trails with loose over hard pack where you need to control your speed and brakes very good, you have rocky trails where you don’t want to get a flat or fall, and you have Tasmanian forest like trails … the scenery is very diverse for such a small region, but totally worth the effort. Its quite close to Bucharest (3h drive) and very close to the sea side so you can actually go for a swim after a day of riding ;). Check out Măcin hype, its true! enjoy and ride safe!
This year,Bârcaciu ski touringevent 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 onlySherpa 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 Editionor Făgăraș from peak to creek #barcaciu. Enjoy and ride safe!
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!
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 ;).
After this ride, we know where we will be each year for first of November, no doubt about it 🥰.
Valea Cernei is a delight for the sight in this period, and combined with the beautiful single tracks along the way it makes for an perfect day out. I strongly recomand to go visit this place and Mehedinti county in general, it’s a region in Romania like no other with a lot to offer. #shapingthesouth hashtag must be replaced with #gosuth because slowly it becomes a must ;). Thanks Pufi for the great ride and see you soon! Cheers!
This is another epic that you must check in Mehedint county. Is the second time we send this trail and the feedback is the same, awesome and gnarly trail with beautiful scenery, forest and technical parts. The start of the trail is epic, and you have a clear view over Baile Herculane valley but the end of it is hardcode. Some tight corners on rocky sections and loose ones makes you think twice before trying anything.
This year again I didn’t get to nail all the bits of the trail and as I grow older its hard to say if I’m ever gonna send it from top to bottom. But no worries, this is not all its about, the gang, the mountain and trail itself make it worth the effort, as always…
As usual, we never leave Mehedints county without checking Mehedinti enduro trails build and maintained by our local trail forks ambasador, Alexandru Pufan aka The_pufalot, cheers mate!
Cindrel bike packing adventure reloaded. I think this is the third year we
do this track and not only the trails keep us coming back, I think the refuge
is. The way it looks and where its located has something to it. And doing the
trip this late in the Autumn, when the probability of finding someone at the
refuge is low, makes this more desirable.
This time we did it in the same manner as third years ago, Cindrel
mountains bikepacking trip, but the weather was top. A bit
windy but only to make thing more adventurous. Not to many peoples on the
mountain this time of the year and that suits us well. We saw a guy with a 4×4
going down from Cindrel peak, only to find him turn over on the trail to the
refuge. What a crazy dude to try this track whit a 4×4 car 😲…
didn’t thought he was gone make it down but with a little help from us, he
managed… we pushed him to the refuge and a bit beyond but from there, via con
Dios my friend… 😆
The night at the refuge was top, all alone we started a fire under the 1k
stars hotel. We had lots of food and some Romanian quality beverage 🥃🤩
just enough to get us worm and quite cheerful… In the refuge was quite cozy
and we had a good sleep but wake up early in the morning.
Next day, breakfast with leftovers and then pushbike back to the ridge of
Cindrel mountains, if we could call it a ridge. We did a descent to Canaia
refuge on the other side and then straight back to Paltinis. On our way back we
climb Batrana peak and then made the fun and gnarly descent to Paltinis. This
trail is long very Enduro like and gets easier at the bottom.
All ended up with a beautiful descent to Curmatura, from Oncesti peak, after
meeting up with Alex, a good friend of ours from Sibiu. Check out his YT
channel right here: La vale!
This is the receipt for a terrific weekend ;). Also check out our electric
adventure from last year in this beautiful mountains: Cindrel
electric bikepacking trip, thanks to NevAcademy. Enjoy and
ride safe!
Best trail in Iezer mountains, this is it! no doubt about it!
You have to work a bit to reach it but when you start your descent, the view, the trail itself, the flow makes it perfect. We did this trail twice this year, first in the rain and next in a sunny late October day and we had the same amount of fun in both conditions 🤩. So, no matter the weather, this trail will be perfect. Just remember on the 3-4 h uphill that the best descent awaits you and you will not feel tired. Check out the other ride in the rain here, video included 🤙.
We leave you some nice footage below. Last pictures are from Ciocanu MTB trails where we took a ride the next day. Enjoy! 🚵♂⛰👊
Last week we took an late autumn ride in Leaota mountains. I promise Cromo that I will show him the mountains and that I did. Lucky us we catch a superb day, cold but very beautiful with clear sky and and billion dollars sunset 😍.
This was my first time in Leaota mountains, and we ware both lucky. Wild mountains with rough technical trails. Loving it!
We leave you some pics and an edit, and you can find the track here. Enjoy! 🤙
This year we visit 2 times this trails because they are just superb. Mellow trails with ups and downs in a beautiful forest near some old historical villages where you can find great accommodation and food. You could not ask for more believe me.
We strongly recommend you to stay at Agrotouristic Guesthouse Elena, in Crit village. Man, the food is fantastic and the hosts too. Friendly people with nothing to care but their guests. We eat so much and so good that we had to roll out of the beds to reach our bikes :))) Seriously!
And what goes well after a good meal? We tell you, a good single track thru the forest that ends up in an orchard of pears and nuts! Perfect combination! After this we stopped at the local pub (birt) to have a beer with the locals. Always an animated experience.
No more words just pictures now. Hope we given you a good idea on how to spend an weekend there. The tracks you could do are these: Track 1 , Track 2. Enjoy and ride safe! 🚵♂🍻👊
So we took a last trip to Veliko Tarnovo to attend to the Halloween ride, curtsy of Old Mountain Epic. It was all Nedko’s idea and this I think is the third edition of the event.
The ride itself it’s a night ride on one of the tracks, which is a very fun thing to do, especially if you have some powerful lights to scare off the creatures of the night that Nedko summons up for the event 😂😂.
But for us was just a pretext to go ride Veliko Tarnovo’s trails and to see the crew from Veliko again, always a pleasure to go shred with these guys. I think next year we will plan some more trips to better discover Bulgaria. Not that we have ridden all the trails we could in Romania, but they are similar and we just want to ride more and more and more 😅.
The event was fun and as I said, the night ride it’s something that each of us must do at least once. I’m starting to like it more and more.
The trails were harder because of the leaves and the loose terrain but we had fun anyway, just check out the clip :D.
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!
This year was new bike year. After riding a pump track on a hard tail of a friend of mine, in my head the idea of owning a hard tail was implemented. So this is how the conceiving of Cromo starts.
This bike is made half with second hand parts, half with new parts. After some time and lots of lets say planning, the bike took shape and its a beautiful one. And rides like no other… its just perfect.
I can say one thing, if there exists the one bike, the most beautiful one of them all, it must be a hard tail 😍.
DT swiss CSW AM wheels second hand with Magic Mary tires new;
BX components dropper post new;
Guide R brakes second hand;
Race face Turbine crank second hand but in perfect conditions;
GS shifter and rear derailleur second hand but in good condition;
Revers components saddle new;
Fox 34 140mm fork 2016 model new;
Truvativ descendant and steam new;
Even if I went a bit over the budget it is still a good deal and came up way to good for how it looks and handles :D. I’ll be using this bike to have fun in the city, for trail riding where I have more mellow terrain (like Viscri or even Ciocanu rides) and for longer bike packing trips where I know I have bigger climbs that I can do on the bike (if it’s pushbike I rather push my enduro bike). I’ll just leave you some pictures and a movie to see just how good it is :D. Enjoy! 🚵♂🤘👊
This year was the first edition of Straja Enduro, the last stage of the Romanian National Enduro Cup, #CNE, just 1 week after Metal Enduro Resita!
Man, 2 contest in 2 consecutive weekends, mad schedule, must to become an habit!
Straja is beautiful, we know it from the winter. Awesome slopes and offpiste skiing here. And close to some awesome mountains just perfect for back country, skiing or biking.
But, the contest was something else. The landscapes ware just perfect, with the fall and the golden trees! It was a photographic orgasm as you can see from the pics bellow!
And the trails are awesome, one in particular, Wolfe’s trail catch our site. It’s an natural long trail full of natural futures, roots, rocks, single track, off camber and anything in between.
The contest has 6 special probes and its quite a long day! Enduro!
Thanks again to Bike Attack Resita for making this second and last contest possible and to all the people involved in developing the bike scene in this area! Keep it up guys!
We leave you bellow some edits and the pictures that we ware talking about!
Some years back we’ve been to Isverna, an remote village in Mehedinti county. Going there was like a time travel. 2 years back we sow people still wearing “opinci” traditional shoes made from pig skin, and they ware not wearing them because of any touristic purposes.
This year we decided to go back but to explore more of the place.
Wee look up trail forks only to find out that our trail forks ambassador in Romania has his headquarters in Mehedint county. Good!
Our trip took 3 days and we ridden 3 different places.
First day we ride near Isverna, where we also stayed. We go to Beletina meadow and traverse Mehedinti mountains. We followed 3 trails that you can find on trail forks, Starway to Beletina, Beletina – Pigs neck and Springs Face, all tied up and all beautiful trails. We climb on fire road up to Beletina then you follow Pigs neck on animal trails and then descent back to Isverna on an wild raw trail!
We sleep well the first day, dreaming about the awesome track that we did.
Next day we meet up with Pufalot, the trail forks ambassador and did another awesome track in Cerna Valley. We visit the remote villages in Cerna Valley, and the awesome single tracks that unites them. On the descent we did 2 trails that you can find on trail forks, Prislop – Dobraia and Dobraia – Dumbrava.The whole second day track can be found here.
The descent was just awesome, long, over 10k and combines technical terrain with speed and flow. The ground is loose in this period and you must be careful of the offcamber corners :)).
We ware so tired after the second day that we did not dream about anything, just a long deep sleep…
Last day we made it short. We meet Pufalot on his home ground, Sindrilei hill, near Izvorul Barzii just to Blame Canada :)))).
Man, this guy is a crazy trail builder! 🤘 Cant wait for him to finish all the trails. Blame Canada trail its awesome. starting from the top it has 8 jumps one bigger then the other. The last 2 are a gap and a droop with an insane landing !
Next year he will have 3 trails and if the others will be as sick as Blame Canada, then we will spend double the time in Mehedinti county! Maybe a new enduro contest is in sight 😍.
Until next year we leave you some photos and an edit to better understand the beauty of Mehedint county, form our point of view ;).
