Austrian mountain biking?

Matt N

The parents want to go to Austria this summer, me and my brother will be free to go biking. Does anyone know of paricularly good areas for biking or specific resorts and routes that are good?

Thanks in advance,

Matt

Whytepeak

For bike parks, there are a number of choices - it really does depend on where your rents want to go, but a few worth mentioning are:

Leogang Saalbach, Semmering, Wagrain and Schladming.

Leogang Saalbach, has a developed dirt jump scene, so there are plenty big kicker runs, aswell as XC trails further down the hill.
There is the DH track at Leogang, along with a few freeride trails. All in all a good mix of Dirt Jumps, DH and XC.

Semmering, has many freeride trails, some with big tables and drops, others more suited to beginners. There is an easy trail for young riders and plenty of easy options on routes.

Wagrain, is a smaller bike park, with a few runs and trails, offering much the same as Semmering. The austrian mountains lend themselves to gravity fed riding, and that is what you get with this park.

Schladming has a Big DH track - just search for some videos to see for yourself, though not for the faint hearted, if you're into long DH runs, this is the one worthy of consideration.

Besides the bike parks, there is plenty of natural riding in Austria too, most of it being in the Alps, or the Salzburg Mountains. Areas worthy of consideration are Westendorf and Wagrain (plenty of natural stuff here too).

Hope that helps, as a genreal rule, if there are hills, there will be good riding.

Matt N

The parents like the idea of Westendorf, are the trails relatively easy to find? As my Austrian isn't too good! Can you reccomend any good hotels or places to hire bikes?

Thanks a lot and sorry for all the questions, you could open a travel agents

Thanks again,

Matt

Whytepeak

Hmmm, not tooo sure of the area myself :roll:

But check out -

http://www.bikeacademy.at/ for guided bike rides in the area (they may also be able to point you in the direction of good trails and bike hire if you go with cake and ask nicely.

http://www.pensionchristoph.at/ for accomodation, though there are many more options.

Hope that helps.

compo

Whytepeak wrote:

Hmmm, not tooo sure of the area myself :roll:

But check out -

http://www.bikeacademy.at/ for guided bike rides in the area (they may also be able to point you in the direction of good trails and bike hire if you go with cake and ask nicely.

http://www.pensionchristoph.at/ for accomodation, though there are many more options.

Hope that helps.

Hey Whytepeak I am going there in the summer to them exact places - funny eh

trek*fuel

Not sure whereabouts u r goin to be but last year i had a whale of a time based in Mayrhofen. Bike hire in the village, mainly Cube 125's then take them up to the top of the Penken (2095m) by lift and then loads of different routes to make ur arms ache back down.
pm if u want more detail.

Airienteer

Matt N wrote:

As my Austrian isn't too good!

Deary me your Austrian really can't be good if you don't even know they speak German!

Now to the advice! I went out to Austria last summer for 2 weeks biking and stayed in Kaprun. It's an awesome base. Leogang was only a few mintues drive away and was an awesome bike park. Also round that area is somehting called the Big 5. This is basically 5 lifts followed by big descents. I think the stats are something like it's 72km long with only 3km of that being uphill. Leogang itself is pretty tech higher up but lots of nice trails lower down if you're not too confident. There's loadsa natural trails in and around Kaprun itself aswell. There's an english guy who owns a bike shop there which is really useful and he rents out bikes as well. Check out http://gravitibikehire.com/. Then you can also go down the valley to Wildkogel which has two of the top ten trails in the Alps according to a European MTB mag, the Rob J Super Trail and the Wildkogel Trail. We were there two weeks and still had stuff we wanted to do! Hope this helps PS all the trails I mentioned have lift access!

Matt N

Airienteer wrote:

Matt N wrote:

As my Austrian isn't too good!

i know they speak german, but there's a slight dialect difference! Austrian is spoken much more softly, anyway thanks for the advice

strudelpus

I spent a week this autumn with Mountain Edge (.co.uk) in Kitzbuhel, to see if mtb'ing was for me (after a few false starts). It certainly worked... it's becoming a real interest - cheers Guys and Gals. Fantastic area and nice kit at affordable rates. Recommended.