MELs' Blog

At the moment my life is all about biking 🙂 Joined the Flowsisters last week to go biking at the Bikepark Livigno… How cool 🙂

Who are the Flowsisters?

Flow Sister is a network for downhill, freeride & dirtbike girls.  It’s a forum and a club enabling women and girls to get in contact with likeminded people.Within the group you can find biking friends, exchange experiences, improve your biking skills and have fun.

It was such a great weekend!!!!

Joined Karin, one of the Flow Sisters on Friday to drive all the way to Livigno… Such a beautiful drive 🙂 2,5 hours from Innsbruck, so actually not tooo far away… We left quite early on Friday, so we were able to already check out the Bikepark in the afternoon… So lucky because the weather was really good, the weather forecast said something different…

Flowy trails, from easy to difficult, everything there… In the evening we met the rest of the group. Alltogether we were 8 Flow Sisters and had so much fun 🙂

Saturday the forecast was right and it was raining all day… Although it was muddy and we all looked like “pigs” it was good to ride and not too slippery at all… When we returned to the hotel Link to Bikehotel Astoria it was such a pleasure to get all our dirty stuff washed and that all for free!!! The hotel we stayed is a Bikehotel, so it’s specialized on Biker’s needs but the washing service is awesome 🙂 Of course all the other services are awesome toooo!!!! Great rooms, huge breakfast buffet, Biker’s buffet in the afternoon, Wifi,… all you need 🙂 And a very helpful owner who is a bike himself… So if you need a place to stay in Livigno: Bikehotel Astoria is the place to be!!!!

We couldn’t believe our eyes on Sunday… Nobody of us would have thought that the weather would be so good again 🙂 Lucky us 🙂 The trails dried up very quickly, so another flowy bike day was ours 🙂 Maria, one of the founders of Flow Sister had her camera with her, so a bit further down there are some pics she made…

And here is a video edit of impressions from the weekend… Cut and edited by myself 🙂 It’s getting better 😉

 

Some pics…

Went with Pia to Hopfgarten to try out the new trail at the Bikepark Hopfgarten… We went with my car and thankfully we made it down there as it was making strange noises and I knew it wouldn’t last long anymore…

We went there in the morning to take the early morning pass until noon… 16 Euros for 3 hours (from 9 till 12 a.m.) is a fair price, although there is just one trail… Compared to the Bikeparks in Italy or Switzerland where I’ve been it’s a lot of money! But here in Tirol it will last a bit longer until the tourism will hopp on track…

Link to Bikepark Hopfgarten

A challenging, very muddy trail at the upper part with lots of flow in the lower part waited for us… The upper part was so muddy and challenging that we decided the second and third time to cut the trail and get on track a little later… I crashed at the first run but thankfully just hurt my thigh… So I had to take it a bit easier and it was a good decision to do so…

Second time we crossed farmland where we met the farmer. Of course he wasn’t happy that we were on his ground but a nice small talk was the result…

Well, stupid things happen, especially to me 😉 hahahha…. While crossing the little river I didn’t pay attention and fell into the water 😉 We laughed so hard that I couldn’t move out of the water without the help of Pia…

What a great day outdoors!!!! Thanks Pia!!!!

After a fun weekend at Lago di Garda I headed south to follow the invitation of my aunt – staying at their little mountain hut in the Nationalpark Hohe Tauern…

Friends were supposed to come and visit, together with them I wanted to hike and bike… But the weather forecast said rain for the whole week, so none of the came 😉 Instead, I had a week full of nature, quietness, lots of rain, lots of reading, no internet, no radio, no tv, no cell phone… Wonderful 🙂

Some nature impressions from the week…

Last week – long weekend and four motivated bikers… But it took some time until we finally got to Lago di Garda 😉

But from the beginning…

Actually it was planned that Sandy and me drive down to Lago di Garda but due to the bad weather forecast, Sandy cancelled but in the afternoon I got a call from Sabrina, what my plans were… We talked already about going down to the Lago, so new plans and the go for 6 p.m. 6.30 p.m. still noboby here… Around 7 p.m. Sabrina showed up with Philipp and Lulu and a full Mercedes bus – 4 people, 4 bikes and sooo much stuff – would we be able to get down there… It took us another hour to pack the van, Philipp fixed Lulu’s bike and somehow we decided it would be better to stay in Ibk for the night and get up early in the morning…

That’s what we did…

6 a.m. Taxi Sabrina arrives and we drive down to Lago di Garda… That was on Friday… We arrived at  Malcesine and wanted to take the cable-car up to Monte Baldo… Somehow we managed to take soooo much time that the crowd of bikers in line where quicker than us… So not going up to the mountain before 2 p.m… Waiting and chilling at the lake instead…

Finally 2 p.m. and we could take the cable car up to Monte Baldo… Inbetween the weather got increasingly worse and by the time we started biking it started raining… So very, very slippery trails where waiting for us…

Before biking all the way down another uphill was waiting for us – we arrived at a mountain hut and stopped there as the weather was, well, let’s say, not good 😉 Our plans hiking further up and riding down the famous trail “601” had to be postponed, the worse conditions were against us… At the hut we met some bikers who just wanted to ride down, so Lulu decided to follow them and wait for us at the car…

So we split up and Sabrina, Philipp and me took some german bikers with us to explore another trail down… Okay, we didn’t know where to go but the guys would have been lost without us 😉

A labyrinth of uphill and downhill and a bad trail map gave us a looooong journey back to where we started… In the dark we had to bike along the main road back to Malcesine and finally around 10 p.m. we arrived at the starting point where Lulu was waiting for us… Our car was parked in the garage of the telecabine so lucky us we were able to get inside the garage… The 4,50 € car parking was now over 20 € so we decided to stay inside the garage, leave the bikes outside and sleep in the van… Unlucky us, the security was informed and a security guy came to friendly show us the way outside ;-)… So no cosy night inside the garage, we had to stay outside… Also no problem because there was a parking place just near there… At 11 p.m. we finally were able to cook some noodles and eat in the van :-)…

We were all very tired so bedtime around midnight… And where did we sleep? All four of us in the Mercedes van 😉 Lulu, Sabrina and me at the back and Philipp in front at the driver’s seat… Needs to get used to 😉

Saturday 4th June 2011, Trail Nr 6 was our goal for today… We just had a short description from the trail out of the MTB-Freeride Magazine but managed to do well to find the way up… The sun was extraordinary hot and biking uphill with the heavy bikes – it’s a mission 😉 Hours later we finally got to the entrance of the trail where we met a Swiss and Canadian guy… Fun with them :-)… They took the “601” whereas we tried our “6”… They laughed at us as we were fully equipped but just a normal trail was greeting ;-)… But soon it changed and 1000 hm downhill with lots of flow and nice challenges waited for us… Here’s the short video edit…

Good times 🙂

Pizza time in the evening, meeting some fellows and another night, this time at a different parking lot 😉 I wasn’t able to stay another night in the van, so I set up the tent and slept outside… Not the best idea but who cares 😉

Sunday chilling day and while driving back to Ibk, ohhh, what a surprise, traffic jam 😉

But such a fun weekend – Thanks Philipp, Lulu and Sabrina 🙂 It has been great 🙂

Some more impressions…