The Alpen Tour ended with the mother of all rainstorms, flooding and ultimately the cancelation of the 4th and final stage. With the stage cancelled I opted to bundle up in all my North Face rain gear and head out for a little tour of the countryside to see just what sort of flooding was going on. Riding up the bike path in the same canyon stage 2 started, I came upon a bunch of mud over the trail and then a bunch of rocks came tumbling down on top of it. At that moment it became 100% blatant why the organizers had cancelled the last stage as if I came within 15 ft of getting hit by a rock, the chance of one of the 400 riders getting smoked was pretty real.
Once out of the canyon it was awet, but sweet ride up a tight valley to Riechesfalls, the end of the pavement and a cool set of waterfalls. The scenery was amazing, very steep mountains sides, skinny valleys, glaciers and alpine. I would’ve sworn I was in the Canadian Rockies; the only difference is there are a lot more wild animals in Canada, and less people around. Riding back to town I found they had closed the river trail I had biked up on, apparently due to a larger mud slide. Taking the long way back I got a bit better ride then I had initially planned.
Kris and I had another stellar ride yesterday up another skinny side valley. It is really awesome around here, even though the temperature has yet to hit double digits since the 2nd day we got here. Other than the rides, we have been eating lots of good Austrian food, resting and the highlight was a nice tour around Schladming by our local Austrian Masseuse Katharine.
For a while it looked as though the 4-Peaks race in Germany was going to be cancelled due to all the flooding and fresh snow up high but the organizers have been hard at work finding alternate routes and are going forward with the race!
We are stoked to be heading to Rudholfing Germany today but first we must figure a way to get 4 bikes, 5 guys, and a crap pile of luggage in our mini van. A big boys version of tetras.. Goodbye Austria, Hello Bavaria.