There are few places I can say I don’t want to go back to, but I can say that about the bike park in Kitzbühel. The bike park is so big that one day is barely enough to ride everything, but unfortunately the trails are mostly just boring.
KitzSki Bike Trails (also called KitzBike Trails) is a bike park on two peaks near Kitzbühel and Kirchberg in Tirol. On the higher of them – Ehrenbachhöhe, there are two long trails (6-9 km), two short and a skill park, while on the smaller one (Gaisberg) there are two trails less than 2 km long. Both peaks are not connected, i.e. from one lift to the other you have to get by an asphalt road (approx. 1.5 km).
The longest line is the blue Hahnenkamm Trail – a 9 km descent, after which we find ourselves about 1000 m lower. There are few places with trails that long, unfortunately its length is one of its few advantages. The second advantage is the beautiful views in the upper part of the trail. This trail initially resembles a narrow hiking path, full of loose stones and cow patties. Only lower in the forest (15:29 on the recording below) does the trail begin to resemble a bike trail, but it is still nothing interesting. Just berms. At the end there is a small skill park with drops and tables.
Another inconvenience is that the lift that takes you up after the Hahnenkamm trail does not reach the top. To get to the start of other trails, you have to ride about 1.5 km, overcoming about 130 m of elevation. However, I saw some bus tickets for 5 euros in the ticket machines. I didn’t figure out how it works, but I guess there is a bus that takes you from the lower station of the Hahnenkammbahn to the lower station of the Fleckalmbahn. On the road, it is about 5 km.
The red Fleckalm Trail is a bit more interesting than the Hahnenkamm Trail. The trail is 7 km long from the starting gate, but the first few hundred meters are a regular gravel road. The descent along the trail is diversified by sections with roots, a few small tables on one section and a wallride at the very end, but most of the trail is just a narrow path.
The Fleckalmbahn lift also allows you to reach the start of the Sonnenrast trail. The line is less than 2 km long, but here you can see that effort has been put into its construction. Almost the entire trail is led on wide wooden footbridges. Riding on them, at some point you reach a fork, where the Streiteck trail begins, which also at some point forks into two variants. This is a flow trail with large berms and many jumps. This is exactly what a trail in a bike park should look like! It’s a pity it’s so short.
At the end of the Streiteck and Sonnenrast trails there is a skill park, which I didn’t have time to visit, but it didn’t look inviting from a distance. It looked like a place for very beginners. Turns, small footbridges, drops, etc.
Let’s move on to the second mountain – Gaisberg. There are two lines there, both almost 2 km long and both with a difficulty of red.
On the first one, Gaisberg Trail, there is a wooden drop, which is the most interesting, or rather the only feature on this trail. You can see it from 0:48 in the video below.
I liked Lisi Osl Trail more and in my opinion it’s the best trail in this bike park. That doesn’t mean it’s great though. It’s the best of the bad trails.
If I hadn’t been to any other bike park before, I would probably have liked KitzBike. However, I have a comparison, for example with the Polish Szczyrk or the Czech Dolni Morava, where several-kilometer trails are full of jumps and other features and the ticket costs half as much. For 54 euros I expected something more… The bike ticket in nearby Saalbach and Leogang costs a few euros more, but there you can see how much work has been put into building the trails. In Sölden the price is the same as in Kitzbühel and the trails are also better and there are more of them. The owners of KitzSki still have a lot of work to do on their spot to catch up with other bike parks.
Thank you :)
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