Has anyone here planned their own trip to either Serfaus/Fiss/Ladis or the Saalbach Hinterglem region ?

I really could do with an mtb holiday and my last trip to Austria was 10yrs ago! (with Crystal holidays)

If anyone has any tips for accommodation / guides / riding etc that would be great .

Many thanks

Also think about Sölden/Ötztal, Ischgl. Both mainly natural with a few shaped lines and lots of lifts to get you up high….

or Vinschgau (more pedally, few lifts, but great trails), Bozen (lots of lifts from centre of town, lots of heavy going trails), or Kronplatz (lots of lifts and shaped lines). All over in South Tyrol.

Stayed once in a self-catering place in Saalbach. You get a Joker Card which gets you access to all the lifts, plus one uplift from Leogang per day.

Otherwise I can’t help much with accommodation. I tend to wild camp somewhere up a valley and ride from there.

Have a look at AirB’n’B… 40€/ night in Kronplatz, w/roof terrace, for example….

We went to Saalbach 2 years ago. Stayed in Hotel Gamshag. It cost minus 6 Euro a night per person Dinner B&B once you subtracted what the lift pass would have cost us if we’d camped. No really. Absolute bargain.
Dinner B&B for 4 of us was 96 euros a night, with free lift pass.
We had a great holiday but I would strongly NOT recommend it unless you like endless fire roads or very steep lift served downhill. (I like neither).
There are around 8 downhil tracks of varying difficulty, and endless shit boring fireroads from hell. They even have the cheek to produce a trail map with something like 400km of red, blue and black cross country trails on it. Don’t be fooled, they’re ALL tedious dull fireroads, the only reason they get red/blue/black is the length of them.

Anyway, the good bits… Think this was the Milka line, or the other easy one.

Decent down to Leogang. This bit was great, Leogang sucked fully (for what we wanted) YMMV
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This one’s the Milka Line:
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Leogang/Saalbach/Hinterglemm is best on an enduro or DH bike. A couple of the tracks are moderately steep but nothing like some Whistler tracks. There aren’t really many long pedally routes, it is mainly courses, but there’s only really X-line, Pro-line and the Leogang WC track that I’d class as DH, all the others are more red to black XC descents.
There’s plenty there for a week if you are a bike park type rider. If you like jumps then Hot Shots into Flying Gangtaer at Leogang is mega, more jumps than A-line in Whistler I reckon.
I spend 3 months a year there so know it pretty well if you need any help.
Check out my friends at Biking Austria

Thanks Alpin .

Thegeneralist , I’ve done the park stuff around hinterglem etc and also leogang on two occasions . I thought there may have been some progress with trail work since i went but maybe not by the sound of it! I like natural trails and bike park . I will rethink my options .

Thanks colp , I’ll take a look 🙂

Our group have been going here for the last 3 years.

50e per person per night half board.

http://www.thurnerhof-saalbach.at/en/

There’s one new track in Leogang that went in last year (hot shots) and they’ve reworked the finish area a lot.
There’s a nice new boner jump.

Nothing new over in S/H that I know of.

Hackelberg trail in Saalbach is good fun, but not proper DH.

Certainly a lack of DH bike parks like Leogang around. Although there is Brandnertal in Vorarlberg. A friend helped build it and now runs it.

I’m not a DH’er but i do like descents / steep techy or flowy stuff etc . Got an enduro so it’s more than capable of doing a bit of everything .
The Hackelberg trail does look good and the X line

They are. Hackelberg goes from the West Gipfel right back to Hinterglemm town, I think it’s about 8 miles long, better on an Enduro bike but take spare tubes.
X Line has some pretty techy rock sections and some drops (optional). There’s a massive road gap at the bottom if you are feeling brave.
The main issue with lack of good XC stuff is land owners and access rights. In Leogang from the top of the mountain to the bottom I believe there are around 28 different land owners who all have to agree to new tracks etc, then you have to deal with people who have hunting rights and think bikers will scare away the animals, Also, in Austria in general, MTBs are banned from national forests.
But the beer is fantastic and still less than 4€ a pint in most places.

Another thumbs up for BikingAustria- we holidayed with them last year and they were ace. Apartment is in the centre of Maria Alm, about 20mins away from Leogang so they have a trailer to do transfers which works well. The Big Five is a BIG day out but the Hackleburg (sp!) trail was so awesome we made the trek to ride it 3 more times! They have a cultural evening in Maria Alm which is good fun- food stalls and traditional dancing, singing, whip cracking and alp horn. I thought it would be too bike park to be interesting, but finished the week itching for more! Hot shots was the sweetest ever end to a big dusty day out.

Agreed, the Halckleberg is the other good trail if you’re not into gnarl. This picture doesn’t really do it justice, it’s generally steeper than this, but mellow enough to be loads of fun on 20″ wheels.

I think this is why Colp said to take an enduro bike rather than the DH bike on the Hackleberg trail. (It is a very good trail)

I usually have to push my bike and my lad’s up there!
I think it’s 1:1.

Hey Lapierrelady, I think we met?

Yup…. Steeeep!

But have a think about South Tyrol… Better weather; if it’s raining in Innsbruck it’ll likely be sunny just 40 miles further south.

Kronplatz, Bozen or Vinschgau…. Worth a look. There is an article about Kronplatz on enduro-mtb.

Thanks for the info . I’ve just watched a few videos and can now recall the long descent i did back in 2007. It appears to be the x line into hackelberg ! I definitely remember that top section and dropping down that long singletrack . Where is that big push up in the photo?

You get the lift up to the top of Xline (East Gipfel) drop down the first 200m of so of Xline, then pull off left onto the fire road on the photo and begin the climb of hell up to the West Gipfel where the Hackelberg starts at the top.

If you are more into natural trail riding you should seriously think about solden in the otztal. One or two main lines have been made but you can also ride most of the walking trails there as they are all recognised shared trails. Its really good. Even with a season card i was still enjoying riding it at the end of the season.

Can always do a day out to serfaus as well for some more bikepark style stuff, its only an hour away.

Lots of stuff on youtube on the trails in solden as well.

We went to Kaprun and were guided. We had some great riding but you wouldn’t find it yourselves…we would spend the morning either fireroad climbing or use a lift, and then drop back down on singletrack.

However, we we warned that if we chose the wrong trail, you’d get three quarters of the way down and get to a locked gate with an unhappy landowner!

I think the company was called Over the Edge but they are long gone. They had a crazy guide called Matius, a Slovakian mtb racer, who would race the chair lifts to the top, he must have big ringed it half the time as we never had to wait long. He thought we were crazy dragging him out on the last day in torrential rain, and coached him back down the mountainside as he was averse to mud or tyre pressures below 80PSI 🙂

Colp-quite possibly. I was riding a canyon in a sea of santa cruzes. I would have been the one with the shit eating grin on my face. Learnt how to do wall rides that week- dusty trails were such a blast