T4: Mountain biking to the limit
| Route | Damiş – Peşteruţa – Huţii Stream – Culmei Hill – Mişidului Valley – La Mori – Poiana Damiş – Damiş |
| Distance | 16 kilometers |
| Cumulative positive level difference | 290 meters |
| Travel time | 3 hours |
| Degree of difficulty | difficult |
| Surface | asphalt, paved road, dirt road |
| Discover also | Damiș karst plateau with traditional landscape with high natural value, Mișidului Valley |
| Warning | Difficult to navigate due to the many roads that intersect with the route, the road is heavily grassed on some parts of the route and there is a possibility that it may disappear, steep descents and ascents. |
Route description
A short but challenging cycling route. In just a few hours you will pedal through meadows, grasslands, forests and valleys. The successive change of the landscape will not let you think about the quite demanding ascents and descents.
From the center of Damiș village we start towards the exit to Roșia and right after the last houses of the village we turn right on a paved road that crosses the field dominated by the steep rock above the cave from Toaia, in easy ascent. At the first junction, close to the forest, we follow the most obvious road, to the left, and enter the forest. We immediately exit into a meadow where we go down hardly.
The road turns sharply to the right and enters the forest again. In this segment, we must ignore the roads on the left and those that go up. We follow the road that goes more on the level curve. This road immediately begins to descend again, through the forest, which leads into some open fields full of ferns. Immediately an intersection appears and we keep left and then continue on the road that starts to climb slightly.
Careful! If somehow, at the first junction after leaving the forest we go forward deviating from the route, we do not have to turn back. We keep left at all intersections (usually the roads come from the right), until we reach a more obvious road that makes an intersection with our route. We turn left and start to climb, and after about 300 meters we will meet our route again.
Not long after, we come to an abandoned household on the right. We continue, and after a few hundred meters another household comes our way. This time, the road passes right through the huts. From here, our route descends through patches of forest and leads to another meadow, where we meet a road on the left, which we ignore. After a few hundred meters, we take another road, much more visible. Here we turn left and go up, not too far, until we meet another road on the right. We leave it behind, enter the forest and immediately begin to descend steeply into a meadow where there is a farm. Here, if we are not careful, we end up directly in the backyard. But we have to look for a grassy road on the left, next to the farm fence. We follow this road and descend quite steeply, until we reach the Mișid valley.
Once in the valley, we turn left and go up to the area called “La Mori”, where we turn left again. We continue to climb the valley until we find a wider area, with a junction: on the left a tractor road, in front the road that follows the valley, more and more grassy, and on the right a road that seems to follow the valley. This is our route. Immediately the road begins to climb steeply on the slope, in serpentines. Finally, we exit into a meadow.
We continue the climb, not very demanding, next to a house, and we reach a gentle hilltop. It is not long before we begin to descend until we meet, on the right, another ascending road wich is impracticable. Just before this place, there is a dirt road, barely visible, which at first runs parallel to the impracticable one, then descends slightly towards west, crosses a small valley changing its direction to the north, only to later reach a junction in the shape of a cross, where we will take the road on the left, which goes up near the edge of the forest.
Once up, we will take a high road and we will turn right, it will take us on another forest road, much more obvious, which we will take towards left. From here we start to descend among the scattered houses in Poiana Damiș until we meet the paved road. There we will turn left, towards Damiș.
