I did not go looking for mountain biking. It was already here, ten minutes from my front door, waiting for me to notice it. I had been living in Cluj-Napoca, riding my Orbea on the road, treating the bike as a way to get fit rather than a way to get somewhere. Then one afternoon I followed a friend off the tarmac and into the trees, and the whole thing rearranged itself.
This is the story of the season I stopped being a road cyclist who occasionally went off-road and became someone who plans her week around the dirt. It starts in a beech forest on the edge of the city and ends, months later, on a mountain I never thought I'd reach by bike.
Pădurea Făget — the forest at the edge of town
Pădurea Făget, on the southern edge of Cluj. Ten minutes from the tram stop and already another world.
Pădurea Făget is a beech forest on the southern edge of Cluj — close enough that you can ride to it from the city, deep enough that twenty minutes in you forget the city is there. It is where everyone in Cluj seems to learn. Runners, families, and a whole quiet population of people on knobbly tyres weaving through a web of forest roads and narrow singletrack that nobody ever fully maps.
The first few times, I was terrible at it. Roots I didn't trust, descents I rode with the brakes locked, corners I walked. Road riding had taught my legs to push but it hadn't taught my hands to let go. The forest is a patient teacher. It gives you the same root over and over until one day you roll over it without thinking.
The afternoon something clicked
The "easy" Făget loop. The moment I realised I could actually do this. A whole new world unlocked.
There is a route in Făget that the locals call easy. For a long time it was not easy for me. And then one afternoon, on a loop I had ridden a dozen times, I noticed I wasn't fighting anymore. I was flowing. The roots came and went. The corners held. My body was making decisions before my mind could panic about them.
I stopped in a clearing and laughed out loud, alone, like something had been handed to me. I didn't know I was capable of this. That's the only way I can describe it — a door I hadn't known was there swung open, and behind it was a whole new world I was suddenly allowed into.
Valea Ierii — following the water out of the city
Valea Ierii. Once the forest stopped scaring me, the valleys opened up.
Once Făget stopped frightening me, I started looking at the map differently. The Apuseni Mountains begin almost immediately west of Cluj, and the valleys that cut into them are made for a bike. Valea Ierii was the first of the bigger days — a long valley following the Iara river, gravel and forest road winding between wooded hills, the kind of place where you ride for an hour and see more sheep than people.
This is the riding I had been missing without knowing it. Not a loop you repeat for fitness, but a line that actually goes somewhere — out of the city, up a river, into terrain that changes under your wheels. I came home that day tired in a completely different way than the road had ever made me tired. Happier, too.
Autumn, which changes all the rules
Autumn in the Apuseni. The trails get slower, the light gets better, and everything turns gold.
And then autumn arrived and made everything more beautiful and more difficult at the same time. The beech forests around Cluj turn a deep, lit-from-inside gold, and the trails fill with fallen leaves that hide every root and every wet rock underneath. You ride slower. You read the ground more carefully. You also stop more often, because the light coming sideways through the trees is too good to ride past.
I learned more in those autumn weeks than in the whole dry summer. Slippery ground teaches you to be smooth — there is no other way to stay upright. By the time the leaves were down, I was a noticeably better rider than the woman who had clicked over that root in Făget a couple of months earlier.
Vlădeasa — the day the forest became a mountain
The climb toward Vlădeasa. Above the trees, where the forest finally runs out and the mountain begins.
Everything had been building toward this without my realising it. Vlădeasa is the high point of its massif in the Apuseni, around 1,835 metres, and reaching it by bike is a long day of climbing that starts in forest and ends well above the tree line. A few months earlier I would have laughed at the idea. By the time I actually pointed the bike at it, it felt less like a leap and more like the next sentence in a paragraph I'd been writing all season.
The climb is honest. There are sections you ride and sections you push, and near the top the forest simply runs out and hands you over to the mountain — open grass, wind, rock, and a view that keeps widening the higher you go. I thought about Făget on the way up. The same person, the same bike, a completely different relationship with the ground under the wheels.
The top. Bike in hand, the whole Apuseni opening out behind. I did not stop smiling for a long time.
At the top I did the thing I always do when a place is too big for words — I put my arms up and let the wind have me for a while. I had ridden from a forest at the edge of my city all the way to the roof of these mountains, and the line connecting the two was made entirely of ordinary afternoons in Făget where I learned, slowly, that I could.
If you want the full story of the climb itself — the route, the effort, the numbers — I wrote that one separately. But this post isn't really about Vlădeasa. It's about the forest that made Vlădeasa possible.
I keep coming back to that clearing in Făget. A whole new world unlocked, and I'm still riding deeper into it.
Practical notes
- Base: Cluj-Napoca. Pădurea Făget is rideable from the city — no car needed to start. The bigger valleys and the Apuseni are 30–90 minutes west by road or bike.
- Where to learn: Pădurea Făget is the perfect beginner-to-intermediate playground — a dense web of forest road and singletrack with easy bail-out options. Start on the wide forest roads, add singletrack as your confidence grows.
- Build-up rides: Valea Ierii for a long, scenic valley day on gravel and forest road; the Apuseni foothills generally reward exploring with a downloaded map.
- The big one: Vlădeasa (~1,835m) is a full-day objective with real climbing and hike-a-bike sections near the top — go when you've got the fitness and the weather window, and carry layers for the exposed summit.
- Season: Late spring to autumn. Autumn is the most beautiful and the most technical — leaves hide roots and rocks, so ride smooth and slow. Avoid the high ground after early snow.
- Bike & gear: A hardtail or trail bike is plenty for everything here. Bring more water than a road ride needs, a basic repair kit, and a windproof layer for anything above the trees — weather in the Apuseni changes fast.
- Routes: I log everything on Strava if you want to follow the exact lines.
