Looking at an Alps trip this year, but somewhere a bit different and liked the look of Mayrhofen for general lift assisted trail riding type stuff. It also has the bonus of a glacier for a bit of summer skiing / boarding! Thinking of going in September sometime. First question in a STW style, will we die? 😉 Seriously though, anyone been / have any experiences? Planning on camping and probably trying to find a guide for at least a couple of days to make sure we find the good stuff.

Steve

Saw a few trails/maps when I was there boarding but I don’t know how extensive it is. I take it you’ve seen this:

http://www.mayrhofen.at/en/101006/101013/bike.html

I love that area in Winter and have often thought about a bike trip there in the Summer. Zillertal has been promoting itself as a bike destination over the last few years but I can’t help but think the promotional stuff I’ve seen seemed heavily biased towards XC trails and pedalling up.
Biking aside, give me Austria over France anyday, so I’d be really interested to know if you do find enough interested lift-assisted stuff.

I had, their grading system seems a bit strange, mainly graded on the climbing compaired to the descending!

Anyone been there in the summer?

Yeah they only mention 2 freeride trails I think – I imagine the XC stuff could be very hit and miss, but I bet a decent guide could show you loads of nice stuff.

Biking aside, give me Austria over France anyday, so I’d be really interested to know if you do find enough interested lift-assisted stuff.

+1

I seem to remember seeing that Leogang and Saalbach have some bike park type stuff, but I don’t know how much.

Most MTB stuff in Austria does seem to be in other resorts, but we’re both keen to get some summer skiing or boarding in as well so Mayrhofen came up. I’m sure there are trails there, but there doesn’t seem to be much information about

I went a couple of years back on a walking holiday with the Mrs – Ah brings back memorys – chuckle.

The deal is that if Im a good boy Im allowed 1 day to hire I bike and go riding. There is a downhill run that goes from the top to the bottom (a long way). I had my eye on nice Cube 140mm trail bike in the local shop and pestered the owner all week about having it. On the morning of my “day off” I got to the shop first thing to discover he had hired the whole fleet to a gang of Dutch tourists. Dutch for Gods sake – what do they know about hills! the only bike he had left was this skinny 100mm full suss carbon thing that looked like it would fall apart if you so much as sneezed. He also told me that under no circumstances were any of his bikes to be used on the downhill run (I think my knee pads had given the game away). I nodded, walked out thinking “yeah right”.

anyhow the next problem turned out to be that they dont do unlimited lift passes- you pay on a “per go” basis! Basically the whole place is geared up for walking holidays and not for bikes. It was going to cost a fortune to get a reasonable number of runs in and it didnt look like my bike was going to last more than 1 run anyhow so I decided to make the best of it and do a once up and down pedalling. Wow – 3 hours of constant pedalling in blazing July sunshine will never be forgotten. Good challenge though. Right where is the DH run. Clouds start to roll in – bloody hell full on Alpine storm is setting in! Right found the top – identified by a small group of power ranger lookalikes with full on DH bikes huddling under a tree in the heavy rain.

The start of the run was horrible looking steep gnarly rock garden which due to the storm now had a small stream flowing down it. Hmm maybe this wasnt such a great idea after all. Never mind best foot forward – Lets ride straight at it – after all a bike is a bike -right! Wrong – Got about 10 yards in then starting tumbling uncontrollably end over end before finally coming to rest on top of the first berm. In full view of the gobsmacked power rangers. Goddamnit!

Anyhow picked my way down to the bottom of what is definitely one of the most difficult DH runs Iv ever been down – then found the Dutch party at the bottom on their way back to the bike shop. I decided it might be a good idea to mingle with them as it was obvious they had just been pootling about where as my bike was about to fall to bits. Somehow managed to sneak the bike back to the shop and retrieve passport before running away.

Moral of the story – go to Morzine 🙂

Ah… maybe not then… 😯

Moral of the story – go to Morzine Garda

😀

On the plus side it was definately the most exciting thing ever to happen on an Inghams Summer holiday! If your partner ever asks you to go on one – never, ever, ever say yes.

Queing up at check in is like quing up at the pearly gates (not a single traveller under 70). And then for ever more you get bombarded with emails advertising great trips to take your grand kids on – Arghhhhhh

I was in mayrhofen for honeymoon last year and had a day pass to go biking. Only bike shop hiring bikes had some nice looking Cube full sussers available , but all had ridiculously long 120mm stems. I asked if they had anything shorter to fit , as this looked and felt awful, but no way were they considering it. I declined as felt I would kill myself on this set up. Certainly looked like a few purpose-built decent trails up on the western side of Mayrhofen once you get a bike up on the cable car, and saw a few DH and full-faced helmets heading up this way. However, by far the most MTB – type “action” seemed to be lycra -clad riders sweating up long, long fire-road climbs , only to turn around and come back down them again!!! I couldnt get my head around this, and woudn’t recommend it for a place to base yourself for fun riding. The volume of walkers on the trails woudl make it like walkeer pinball if you tried anyway.

I’m going just up the road to kirchberg in early oct. My 40th so lots of friends joining me on a long weekend oktoberfesting. The mtb is thrown in on the friday. The hotel owner says its lift assisted and we get dh bikes. I’m sure itll be good for a short stay.