One of the best spots I have had the pleasure to visit. Smaller and larger tabletops on smoothed routes give the opportunity to fly both less and more experienced and provide great fun also on a hardtail.
Read introduction.
Słotwiny Arena is a bike park located a few kilometers from Krynica-Zdrój, in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship. There are 4 routes of varying difficulty: green, two blue and red.
I have visited the bike park twice. Two months ago on my hardtail and recently on full suspension bike – carbon Specialized Stumpjumper EVO Expert, borrowed from Bike Garden Service in Wrocław.
I had a lot of fun on the hardtail, except that when you fly 2-3 meters and land at the top of the table, it’s quite hard on the HT. It was much smoother on the full squish bike, which encouraged me to take longer and longer flights, and finally I started to send the biggest tabletops in this bike park.
Below are recordings from my recent rides.
Green trail – Dookoła Świata
The longest, 3 km, easy route. Possible to ride for a few-year-old child, with small tabletops, very good for learning to jump. It also has two interesting places with 3-4 berms one after the other. There, I had the challenge of trying to get past them without braking in the middle, and I saw how much I still had to work on my technique to be able to do it.
I just don’t like the connection to the blue Kometa route at the bottom of the trail. The routes connect in such a way that as soon as you ride by the tree you have to look almost backwards to make sure that no one is riding on the other route. It’s easy to collide there. You can see this place at 6:02 min.
Blue trail (nr 1) – Gałgan
Almost 2.5 km, a great flow trail, with plenty of opportunities to take the wheels off the ground. You can fly 3-4 meters in some places, but no jumps with gaps. All built so that you can ride slowly instead of jumping.
Blue trail (nr 4) – Kometa
Similar in length and character to Gałgan. In the first part of the trail, huge and steep berms followed by a huge step-up, which only in one of my last rides did I dare to jump without braking. Further, in the meadow, tabletops that also seemed huge to me at first, but then I started to jump over them :)
There are some washboards on the berms, but generally there aren’t many of them in the whole bike park. The situation in Słotwiny is much better in this respect than, for example, in Kasina or in Saalbach and Leogang in Austria.
The fun is only interrupted by a quite steep uphill in about 2/3 of the trail. There is also an uphill on Gałgan, but it is shorter and less steep. The best option is to start with Kometa and then at the crossroads go straight to Gałgan. Then there is no uphill :)
Red trail – Dzida
The shortest, only 1.5 km, and the most difficult route. Here a full squish definitely has an advantage, although I also descended on the hardtail, only slower. In the upper part of the trail there are large gap jumps that can be bypassed, and then a few steep sections, some roots and stones.
Krynica-Zdrój – Parkowa Mount
There is another quite cool, easy route not far from Słotwiny – on the Parkowa Mountain (Góra Parkowa). It’s not on mapy.cz or Trailforks, I found it by accident. On Strava it has a segment called “(DH) z Parkowej zbudowaną nową trasą rowerową”. You can see it on my route.
I was riding a bicycle to the top, but you can get there also by a cable car. The trail starts by the rope park at the back of the slide. It is almost 2 km long, with berms, rollers, tabletops and a small drop on the way. Difficulty comparable to the green trail in Słotwiny Arena.
Thank you :)
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