TR: Saalbach, AU

[biggins]

My first "adult" trip to Europe. I have toured Ger/Aus/Cze and Italy as a student and as a teacher/chaperon, but this was my first foray across the Atlantic to do whatever I wanted. Heat wave aside (100f in Vienna!), the weather cooperated wonderfully. We only ever saw rain in the late evenings when the valley needed a cool down. Saalbach, while not as quaint, I imagine, as many Alpin towns, is a great town none-the-less. 4 lifts all going to the top of 2 ridges, a million Alms (high mountain lodges/restaurants/inns/etc- one even had a pump track!?), a handful of great shops with great bikes and some really nice folks made it a fantastic break back into trail riding.

Broke my tibial plateau and jacked my knee back in Jan and pretty well missed one of the best storm cycles VT has seen in years. My wife both threatened to murder me/took serious pity on me in alternating waves, and the result was a trip to Austria to visit some sites to do with her family and then get up in the mountains, hike, ride bikes, drink radlers, eat meat in tubes and have fun. I managed to ride almost zero single track in advance of this trip, but I had gotten myself back to 100% strength and stability-wise and felt good about the idea of riding big (4000m/day), though easy alpine descents.

I'll spare you the touron stuff from Vienna and Salzburg, but both were beautiful and we saw some cool family sites in Vienna and the alpine spa town Bad Hofgastein. But this is Sprockets, so here's a few pics from Saalbach and around:

30 minutes after checking into our hotel in the valley we were up at 2100m for a quick afternoon hike.


View from our hotel room in the valley. (Note the murky, foreboding ridge over the end of the valley- it was pretty humid all week. Still, much nicer than in the cities)


Hacklberg trail is single track most of the way down to the valley (1200m descent!) from up here...

...switchbacking with some delicious steep berms to an alm about 800m down and then, for us, down service road the last 3-400m. The views:


From up top of every lift there are options a plenty from natural dh trails to feature laden flow and bike park lines (the 'X line' is a full 1000m bike park style descent from ridge to valley!) to technical xc trails back and forth across the ridges (the ridge trail over towards Leogang kicked the crap out of me. Endless roots with some steep, though soft forest floored, consequences off to one side. My wife took a good sideways tomahawk at one point) to wide and packed dirt/doubletrack roads. Our favorite run was the Kohlmaisgipfelbahn ridge trail-->Schonleiten Hutte for frankfurters and radlers-->service road back across the piste-->lower 'Panorama' park trail-->'Milka Line' flow trail. Good afternoon fun.


In addition to the stormtroopers ripping park and DH all over the valley, the Bavarian uber-hikers and the ultra active family units galore, there are plenty of folks just lazing around.


About 50 mins south is one of the bad, or bath towns, Bad Hofgastein. My wife's family used to spend their summers there. Until about 1938 that is... The pools are radon spring fed. Hmm. All I can say is they were an outstanding way to end an active week. (Check out the funicular going up the opposite side of the valley underneath the aqueduct. I stared at the two cars going up and down that thing for a good hour mixed with dips in the pools. Good times)


A quick drive up and over the Grossglockner High Alpine road proved totally worth it:


Our ride for the 24 switchbacks of the Grossglockner :


Anyhow, cool trip. Thanks all for the help. Good to be back on the bike and I'm really grateful I got to ride in the alps.

Rock- biggins.

[geomorph]

Sweet pics man.

[BigDaddy]

Looks amazing Biggins... nice trip and pics. Must feel great to be at it again after your injury!

[Incompetent Boob]

Nice work, glad to see you enjoyed your trip. Great skiing up the road at Sport Gastein if you're ever back in the winter.

[Vt-Freeheel]

Pumpkin orange Lambo rental, lame, get the red one next time. Glad to see you had a good time.

[biggins]

Yeah, canary yellow was already taken. Actually, our inexpensive rental was a Golf TDi, which was plenty fun to drive around those turns.

Boob- thanks again for all the suggestions.

BD- thanks. It feels very good to be back at it. No more injuries for this guy- I am officially a meadow skipper and pedal spinner and plenty happy 'bout it.

Prost!

[Anospa]

Looks great man! Even better to see you getting out on dirt!

[grskier]

Looks like a great trip.

[biggins]

Thanks. Its no LeeLau epic, but hopefully this demonstrates that the alps are super accessible for riding. I'm a just post gimp and I had 3 phenomenal days. Also, did I mention Radlers?

http://www.germanbeerinstitute.com/Radler.html