We’re off to malaga for a long weekend of mountain biking in a few weeks time, so I thought I’d see if anyone here had any recomendations of good routes.

We like flowly,swoopy,fast stuff. So what can the STW massive suggest?

Probably should add that we are not ‘downhillers’ by any means, so no trails with huge gaps/drops please.

Here you go – not the most amazing photos as most of the rides were solo, but will give you an idea. There are some much better trails than are shown on these pics, which are mainly from the Bikefax Spain book.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonralli/sets/72157609067194407/

And the first 20 pics from here, El Chorro:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonralli/sets/72157603404977200/

We’ve got the bike fax book , so were going to use that as a starting point.

Any suggestions as to where details on the better trails can be found?

Alan at sierracycling….might have a guide available. Without a guide and some sort of uplift to take you up thr mountains you are probably not going to find much and waste a lot of time on Tarmac and tracks. The singletrack stuff is not obvious to the untrained eye. Some good stuff up around Alora which is a short train ride from Malaga but the guy who operated out of there has moved on. Again van assist was a must.

The bikefax rides round there are good fun. Easy to follow, just get yourself a map.

i stayed with switchbacks in malaga. primarily a DH guiding company but Mike the boss was very helpful and if anyone can help you find fast, flowy tracks i would imagine he can. i believe you can pay for uplifts and guiding as you go which will help you get out into the sticks.

vital to have someone show you around really. everything we rode involved longish van journeys and well hidden trails.

Thanks for all the feedback, we’re hiring cars so we can do our own uplift if we know where the trails are, but I take your points about the guides.

I think I’ll contact the people you mentioned and see if they can do us a couple of days guiding.

Bubion and Capelliera have some great trails, There is a fantastic flowy singletrack route down from the top of Mulhacen (although at 3000m it does take a while to get up!)

Have you checked Strava out (you will be able to see some of the trails we did last year, look for Keith Jackson for rides around Capileira or Bubion)

Hope this helps

Alastair

Wikiloc is usually good for Spanish trails, although as user-submitted routes one person’s idea of technical could be quite different to another’s…

That wikiloc site is great, cheers

I agree with Trekster. Get a guide if you can else you’ll be missing loads of good stuff.

Here’s a video of what to expect. I’d say it’s generally more “rocky and technical” than “flowly,swoopy,fast stuff”

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN6l0h3JOXA&feature=share&list=UUp8ZtPHWLjNi44elbZTGPDQ[/video]

More here: http://mountainbikerides.co.uk/video/19-spain.html

Here at http://www.bikingandalucia.com we provide mountain bike guiding etc and we know the best routes.
We are based to the east of Malaga, and cover the Sierra Nevada and Las Alpujarras to the sea.