Riding in zermatt, any tips?

I'm off to Switzerland this weekend for 4 days and the plan is to head to zermatt for 2 days riding and one night sleeping/beering. Any tips on where to ride and where to stay? Looking for cheap accommodation with secure storage and tip top challenging downhills. We want to ride a mix of epic xc and lift access.

Thanks in advance.

There is a lot of really good woodland stuff underneath the Sunnega area including the Downhill course that will be used for the European Championships next year. This course will be used for the Swiss Downhill national championships this weekend though so access to the Sunnega, Blauherd and Rothorn areas might be restricted.

If you can get up to Rothorn take the fire road down the back of the mountain as as you come to a saddle turn left. The fireroad soon turns into a trail which brings you back down to a fireroad just near the Sunnega station.

The same applies for Blauherd, off the lift and stay left, there is a trail that will take you down to the same place as where the Rothorn trail finishes.

From Gornergrat take the hiking trail down towards Riffelsee. The top section is really nice rocky high alpine stuff. as you get lower down it becomes a little more flowy until you get to Riffelalp where you cross the railway lines and drop into the woods.

There is also some great riding to be had in the Schwarzsee area.

At the end of the holiday if you can get someone to take your bags down to Tasch for you there is a trail that starts a little bit up the hill behind the police station that will take you down to Tasch.

There really is silly amounts of riding in the area. There is some info and photos in the following site and blog post.

http://www.swissalpineadventure.com/mountain-biking/wallis/zermatt
http://swissalpineadventure.blogspot.com/2010/08/where-to-begin.html

Enjoy Zermatt, I was up there last week for a couple of days and the place put a huge grin on my face.

Hey thanks for the info, thats great stuff. I'll print off your directions and we'll devise a plan in the pub in Fribourg on friday night. Weather is not looking great but I'm well excited.

Can anyone else provide any tips?

tips for riding in Zermat,

stay off the brakes

Tim you need to keep it pinned, brrrrrrwwwwaaarrrp foot out flat out and bring me back a genius lt please! Have a good one dude.

Awesome place.

Ha look who it is! You missed a good ride on the Quantocks, flew down one of the triscombe runs on me trance, good times!

Thanks for the pic chunky. All adding to the excitement, but not sure we'll get clear skies like that.

We took the train to Gornergrat & managed to ride all the way to Tasch via Sunnega & passed under the road gap on the Downhill course – some great forest single track linked by fireroad sections, think it was about 16 miles.
We did loads from the Gornergrat side of the valley, just follow the trails from the top station.

Forgot to give an accommodation recommendation. The youth hostel costs about 71CHF per night Bed, Breakfast and evening meal which was really good the nights we stayed there.

As for the tips about staying off the brakes… please be considerate of hikers if you are doing this. At the moment we are tolerated on the trails in Zermatt. The trails there are really awesome and it would be a shame if they started banning bikes on all the singletrails like Grindelwald seems to do.

Hoon it by all means, but be in enough control to slow down to walking pace past hikers.

Hotel Banhoof right by the station (clue is in the name) offers good dorm/ and private rooms. Nice self catering kitchen and loungue etc. Not sure about bike storage as have only stayed there at the end of a ski touring trip.

Thanks for the help guys. Weather looks like rain sat and hopefully better on Sunday. Might be a daft question but is there anywhere around there that would be better to ride in rainy conditions? I.e. somewhere not so exposed, maybe in a forest?

These guys run trips in Zermatt and Verbier (they're based in Lourtier). I don't know where the trails are though, even approximately. Does anyone else? Looks amazing.

http://www.ridebig.com/trip_switzerland_alpenrock.php

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14156894@N03/sets/

To be honest I think you'll be ok with the weather. Some rain forecast on Saturday afternoon and good for Saturday morning and Sunday. Get up early on Saturday morning and go riding. Once the rain gets too heavy call it a day and head up for a big one on Sunday.

I rode there last week on a bad forecast. It rained in the morning and stopped at about 12:30pm, we headed out on the bikes at about 1pm and the trails were dry and dusty by about 2:30!!! The terrain is steep and drains really well so it dries very quickly. A lot of the trails are quite rideable in the wet too, just look out for a couple of slippy rock sections in the woods.

Once the rain settles in go and look at the guys racing in the Swiss championships crashing on the DH course.

Enjoy it the riding is great.

I know a few of those trails… and yes they are rather good. You might find some of them on my site, there will be a few more on it when I get time to update it.

http://www.swissalpineadventure.com

jhw – Member

These guys run trips in Zermatt and Verbier (they're based in Lourtier). I don't know where the trails are though, even approximately. Does anyone else? Looks amazing.

http://www.ridebig.com/trip_switzerland_alpenrock.php

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14156894@N03/sets/

Thanks – that's a really helpful website. I like that it has lots of information about the lesser known areas. Nothing on the Portes du Soleil or other areas where there is already stuff published.

I wonder why there isn't anything on the site for Verbier though?

I know the Verbier stuff through riding there with Bike Verbier. Went for the day last week from Chamonix and alot of signs now up saying stay on the bike trails (ie DH tracks) All the best stuff is footpath, ie Vertigo, Jackass etc. and the cheeky trails under the lift are now blocked off. interesting to know if BikeVerbier still ride much in the main Verbier bowl as seems to be alot of conflict between walkers/bikers…

Zermatt….wow

It is a bit good isn’t it?

What trails did you ride?

is it pronounced ZERmatt or zerMATT?

Also…anyone got an idea of roughly where to look around Verbier for the best riding? (the ultimate, etc…).

It’s pretty special.

From our trip in 2007 (pics by Leon)

What a weekend! Ridiculously expensive for 2 days riding but well worth it. Arrived in Zermatt late saturday morning with some light rain and lots of cloud. We rode up the valley past the dam and up the top of the Schwarzsee lift. Biggest climb I’ve ever done, nearly died! Rode a nice bit of singletrack on the open top section before continuing up. We then rode a route back down described on the trail map we bought from a swiss bike magazine website. It was mainly loose rocky ski piste with a singletrack route winding down it. Fun in places but for me not worth the pain of the climb!

Saturday was a different kettle of fish. After not much sleep in a cramped hostel full of snoring people, we headed to the funicular station to enquire about an all day pass. With our wallets 78CHF lighter (!) we headed up into the clouds thinking the weather was not much different from the day before. Fortunately, it was an inversion so we popped out into crystal clear skies and bright sunshine. Eye poppingly breathtaking views of the matterhorn and the glaciers from Gornergrat.

First run down was immediate right under the railway before snaking down steep rocky hair pins eventually coming out at a restaurant. We then took the left of the two wooded single track options which brought us out at one of the stations. Dropped into the woods again for some nice singletrack with hair raising steep drops to the side.

We also rode to the left of the railway, great trail but with lots of hikers. Took a trail round to the left, steep switch backs, then traverse all the way to the right again. Last run took us down a steep black near the railway, then lots of uphill right up into the valley on the Sunnega side. Quick descent back down to make the car park cut off time.

Monday was spent recovering and riding the dirt jumps and pump track at Scott HQ 🙂 Got to test out the new Scott Genius LT, perks of being friends with the designer! For the record, an incredibly capable and versatile bike which took on the rough stuff almost as fast as I could on my glory.

ir12daveor, thanks for the tips. Something I would like to ask…we found that many of the trails marked on our map as biking trails were not signposted as such. Bike signs were a bit few and far between and although most hikers were nice and responded well to us slowing right down and thanking them, we did get a couple moaning at us in german (something along the lines of “not for bikes”). We put it down to a few militant hikers who don’t like bikers, regardless of what trail they are on.

The trails are not “officially” bike trails (except for the DH course) but if there is no specific biking forbidden sign then we are allowed to ride them. It means almost the whole hiking trail network throughout Switzerland is open to mountainbikers (it varies slightly from Canton to Canton). In Zermatt there are only one or two trails I know of that are specifically forbidden to bikers, everything else is fair game. The majority of hikers are quite ok if you slow down and give way, there are always a few cranky ones. I find if you sense that you’ve got a cranky one a friendly hello (Gruezi) and “have a nice day” (Schone Tag) go along way to alleviating the situation, and you are usually gone by the time they get around to complaining! 😉

Most of the trails that are marked as bike trails with the red bike signs are actually fireroad, you are better off following the yellow hiking sings, but be aware that these could lead you to some seriously technical sections too.

Just in case anyone else is thinking of going, here are a few more pics.

and some other nearby areas:

Switzerland is rubbish really.

That explains a lot. Agree about the bike trails mainly being fireroads and the hiking trails getting very tech and just plain dangerous in places! It was awesome, we were loving it. Only walked a few small sections that were just not worth the risk of over shooting off a massive cliff. Would have liked more technical natural trails in the woods rather than some of the smooth ish man made hiking trails. All good though.

Arghh some amazing pics in this thread making me insanely jealous!!

Switzerland is rubbish really.

Yeah it is isn’t it. I’ve had enough so I’m off for a relaxing week holiday in Provence on Saturday.

Yeah nice pics, I got a few crackers myself, going to sort them out tonight.