Winterberg

So as shown in my last post I went biking last weekend. A Dutch rider, Tanja, left me a comment on this blog after I posted about Megavalanche and I emailed her asking where to go ride anything other than flat cycle paths here in the Netherlands. The short answer was to join her in a trip to the nearest bike park with a chair lift in Germany called Winterberg - just 3.5hrs drive away.

It was cracking weather and I had an awesome time. Tanja showed me around and generally proved a fun challenge to keep up with. She's sponsored by a local shop in the Netherlands so had all the gear including a brand spanking new Switch. It was great to follow her line and get a few tips about better cornering. I avoided some of the gnarlier lines she took but wasn't too far behind in the long run. I think she was holding back though, recovering from a dislocated shoulder last October!

There's one 2 man chairlift and basically 4 defined tracks down. 1 dedicated downhill track, 1 north shore run, a fun run and a 6X track. The 6X ended with a freeride park and joined either the fun run or the north shore run to the bottom. There was also a separate dirt jump section but I never made it over there.

The 6X was nuts but ridable. Full credit to anyone who completely clears the tabletops, let alone amongst 5 other people. I was tanking it and still only made it over halfway! Below is a little helmet cam footage of the 6X:



The downhill was what I rode the most, there were some tough drops on it, a harsh rock garden section and a steep slippy tree section. I rode this track a good few times and kept adding a new drop to each run but there were still 3 or 4 drops and 2 doubles where I took the chicken run instead. Something to improve on next time :-)

The north shore was tough, I only rode this a couple of times because I had to walk a fair bit! Although I did take on some drops larger than my comfort zone and I also rode a seesaw. At first I thought the seesaw was a drop so hit it too fast and pulled up on the bars to take off but as my back wheel dropped with the seesaw I manualled off the plank. Probably looked quite cool but scared the hell out of me and I nearly binned it.

The fun run was exactly that - fun. Just like one track I rode with the lads in Morzine, nearer the Les Gets side. Berm after berm after berm with the odd jump thrown in - fantastic. Here is some more helmet cam footage and I'm the guy in red right in front of the camera:



Later, I stopped to take a few shots in the freeride park. I've created animated GIFs of the best sequences shown below but Blogger is not showing them animated so click on the photos to show them animated on their own. Here's a sweet line one guy took:


Here's one wall ride:


Then Tanja showed me how to style it:


I had a go at that wall and that's how I got the photo on the previous post. But there was a bigger wall:


And a HUGE fun box:


The drops at the top of the run were pretty crazy too:



Here's a little helmet cam action of the whole freeride park including the comedy wonky bridge thing at the end:



In browsing You Tube I also found this video from someone that gives a good overview of the whole place:



So thanks to Tanja and friends for a great session. I'll be back for sure and here's all the photos:

Flash Slideshow