Winterberg!

I often wonder what it would be like living in Vancouver or somewhere in the Alps. Well, to be a bit more precise, I often wonder how rad it would be living in one of those areas when it comes to riding proper downhill trails. But the thing is that I'm stuck in the middle of Germany and there aren't any big mountains anywhere around here. It's not all that bad though. As a matter of fact, there are some very nice trails around here so I guess I shouldn't complain.

Winterberg is a remote little town in the middle of Germany, surrounded by nothing but even smaller towns and some mountains (or should I say hills?). There isn't much elevation at all, especially when compared to places such as Whistler or Porte du Soleil, yet Winterberg is very well-known for its rad bike park.



First and foremost, Winterberg features what has to be the biggest and best slopestyle course of Europe, but as a matter of fact, there also are some very neat and fun downhill tracks. In all fairness, they aren't exactly what you would call really steep or extremely technical and it takes you less than two minutes to get from top to bottom - but riding those trails is a ton of fun. And this is what counts, right?



Last weekend, my brother Joz and I travelled to Winterberg to check out the new Downhill tracks. The trail crew has been quite busy during the past few months with building some new trails. The new trails are great actually. One of the new trails - which will also be the race course for the upcoming iXS German DH Cup - is very fast with some technical bits and several big jumps. In addition to that, there's another new trail, simply called the "single trail". This trail is as natural as it can get, with lots of off camber-sections, some tight switchbacks and some very steep bits every now and then.





To cut a long story short, Winterberg proves that you actually don't need that much elevation in order to build trails that are extremely fun to ride. Of course I'd prefer to have some epic, 30-minute-descents instead but for now, I'm really glad that places such as Winterberg offer some of the best riding around.

Check out www.zimbros.de for a couple more pictures!

Cheers from Germany,
-Moritz Zimmermann