By Ambassador Jakub Kocjan

There are several ways to experience mountain biking. The first, most common option is to precisely plan every detail of your holidays and limit changing locations to a minimum.

Unpacking and packing all of your stuff scattered around the hotel room only once during the whole stay – sounds convenient, doesn’t it? But as convenient as it may sound there is some risk involved in this kind of approach. What if the trails at chosen bikepark don’t meet your expectations? What in case of sudden weather break?

Well, hitting the road in RVs is becoming more and more popular alternative to “comfy” hotels these days. An alternative that might be a solution to problems mentioned above.

Just imagine invating your buddies to discuss things with. Firstly, decide what kind of riding you are most interested in. Flowy or techy, low-key trail center or overloaded bike park? As you wish Sir or Madame. Next, spot the weather window. It will certainly take some effort to be flexible, but trust me, if you get it right, you’ll remember it forever.

With freshly built jumplines in Austria, our idea was simple. Let’s have fun and hit classic Austrian bike parks such as the legendary Schladming, Leogang and some new ones (Petzen, Wexl and Slovaks Kalnica) on board in DIY camper van.

With the sunny weather forecast and no rain on horizon, we hit the road, Jack.

PETZEN

Arriving just around a golden hour at Petzen convinced us we made the right decision…

…still unaware of forthcoming back pain

Meet the guys behind the idea. From Left, Hubert the Srirarcha abuser and Jakub your average Joey.

10 km Petzen Flowtrail seems like a good idea to warm up before shredding more demanding Hot Shots or 99 Monster Jumpline. We’re still trying to figure out how the bikepark crew is able to maintain flowtrail without any braking bumpS. Top-notch work guys!
The amount of work put into that trail is ridiculous. Expect perfect berms and rollers. Just relax, put headphones on and try to ride as light as you can. Don’t push too hard unless you’re Bryn Atkinson.

Our home for the next two weeks. Good old Citron Jumper DIY converted by Hubert. Not bad view at all in the background.

LEOGANG

There were some rumors about reshaped Hot Shots trail in Leogang just a week prior. It was time to change direction and see if that was true. Four hours later we arrived in front of the Asitzbahn base station.
It was a bit of a surprise to see no free space at the whole parking lot. Two, Three years earlier you could have barely seen 1/3 parking space taken by RVs and Multivans. A sign of a good or bad thing?
Being Polish junior national downhill champ back in the days and Whistler local for 2 years makes no surprise Hubert quickly felt at home. Hubert’s easygoing personality connected with riding skills makes him a perfect riding and life buddy. Following him was a blessing to get the right speed for take offs.

It took us some time to get used to the overall speed of Hot Shots, but then it was a hell of a ride!

Late night in Leogang chuggin’ local lagers and contemplating how to take life easy.. Needles to say such nights under the stars stay in mind for a longtime. Damn, we miss that place so badly.

SCHlADMING

With so much hype about the new Schladming 2.0 bike park, there was no other way than putting Hubert’s Citroen intro hard times going from Leogang to Schladming through some steep Alpine climbs.

Meet our buddy Chajcu. He just drove all the way from Berlin to join us for the second part of our gypsy journey.

On 99 Jumpline you can ride slow and chill. Saying slow I mean… more hangtime. It is also more creative than Hotshots.

So which Hubert do you prefer?

Monster Jumpline trail builders made perfectly shaped take offs. Gracias Amigos!

It is the end of our story, but not of our journey. We decided not to take a camera bag on Wexl Trails and Kalnica Bikepark to focus 100% on the pure joy, which riding bikes brings. Trust us, you will not regret going there.

Thank you for your time. Hope you experienced at least a fraction of fun we had.
See you soon on trails.