mushroom picking
Mushrooms are probably THE REASON why we are in the forest so often in summer. There is no other way of getting lost and losing track of time in a more magical way than by wandering the woods with no precise destination, looking for them. This year has been the best I have seen in all of my career as a mushroom enthusiast - everybody around here feels the same way - and, in the Eastern Carpathians, people are serious about fungi. Porcini, chanterelles, morels, russulas, amanitas, all were introduced to us by our grandfathers, as well as other skills, like napping in the middle of a day-long quest for mushrooms, in the forest, under a fir tree.
What we did, for the first time this year, was to go mushroom picking on electric mountain bikes. Already the forested slopes of Vanatori Natural Park are a challenge for the regular mountain biker, so adding 10 kilos of porcine in the back didn’t seem like the best idea. So, we opted for electric power to take us from Agapia Convent to Secu, then to Sihastria Monastery, then climb to Sihla Hermitage and back to Agapia. Almost 1000 metres elevation gain and the subsequent descent, twenty kilometres, some of them on kind of technical terrain and 15 kilograms of porcini per capita show where the value of an electric full suspension bike truly lies.
