Day Two – Salzburg to Leogang Austria – it was my responsibility to find the good riding in the Austrian Alps near Salzburg. I had searched the web and asked my europe contacts and even tried to get some info out of Hans, but in the end I still wasn’t sure where to go. It seems that there’s a lot of classic euro road/mountain biking, these wide cinder paths that are called ”trails”. So I filtered all the info I had found down into the sure bet and at least a hope of some skinny rocky tracks and it pointed us to Leogang… now I point you to the same…
There’s not much info and even when you drive off the main highway and into the town some 45 minutes south of Salzburg. As you drive in through a small sleepy community, you are still wondering; what the heck did we get ourselves into? There’s not much info still, no pictures no hype and little local knowledge of what lies just up the mountain from them. It seems easy to find info on the one DH track or Freeride trail at each mountain but the truth of what lies here is something entirely different. as in…
So they can have the FreeRide â€trail†– I’ll take the endless singletrack that starts from the top of the Leogang gondola and spreads across the Alps to yet another Alp-ine resort and there you can ride up the next gondola and even connect to the next… you can liiterally circum-singletrack-navigate the entire Alps area around Leogang and it is filled with super rad singletrack potential! Like I said; the rooty and constructed FR track is fine and definitly challenging and worthy of bragging about, but the singletrack is beautiful and epic and goes for way further than we could reach in our half day. Put it on your list, I’ll quit talking about it… look at the photo’s… I’m in Love with LEOGANG Singletrack! (note the trail marker on the big rock… yes thats the trail…. note the 3000 feet to the valley below… note that it is utterly spectacular)
So we rode west along the ridge from the top of the lift. Narrow singletrack hung on the side of the mountains with views all around. (as you can clearly see) We went out to ‘Panorama Alm’ and back via a different ridgetop trail and finished with a descent of the FR / DH Trail back to the base and the sleepy town and the best Pizza in all of Austria. The freeride trail; it was very ego boosting or crushing; thus cool… but roots are very foreign to us from Fruita and with my broken foot it was less inspiring than what you see from the ridgleine singletrack…
Freeride…
Roots; it is a pretty good DH/FR track with easy lift service. But the other options are… well..Singletrack.. and it made a great day to ride the high level tracks off the top of the gondola and then return to the base with some 3000 feet of escent at the end of the day. It’s pretty good here and I hope to return soon. There is much more Alp-ine track to explore…
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After our wonderful day we returned to Salzburg and prepared for our venture south. We had wanted to visit Slovenia and the Julian Alps for a few years and were excited to finally see what was in store. Tomorrow, we would find out for ourselves.Slovenian bound – are you ready for Bovec and Day 3…