"I'm off then." That was all Markus had to say. I can't believe it! He just ran off. Disappeared into a dark wall. "What a bastard!" I curse our photographer - and at the same time wish I hadn't said it. I recognise a nervous flicker in Katja's eyes. An hour ago, the sun was still shining and a few droll cumulus clouds had stumbled shyly over the main Alpine ridge. Now they have conspired to form a dark storm front. There is nothing left to see of the Brenner motorway, which takes holidaymakers south 1000 metres below us. Lightning flashes viciously through the black cloud cover. In front of us is the start of the trail: perhaps 300 metres in altitude to the forest boundary. Narrow and exposed, the path clings to the barren mountain flank, where after a few metres it is swallowed up by a wall of rain. We have to get in here. On our e-mountain bikes, with trailers on which Milla and Matti cling anxiously.
Rewind button. "Is there anything else we need to think about?" my wife asks. "No darling, everything's fine," I lie. Planning is half the battle. But only half. In my free time, I like to let myself drift, and sometimes after breakfast on a Sunday I don't know what mountain I'll be standing on at lunchtime. With this attitude, I also let our family bike tour drift towards me. As if it were a wellness weekend in the Black Forest. The car is packed, but now my guilty conscience is creeping up on me. What if the paths are too difficult, the children refuse to go, the weather turns bad? As a parent, you imagine the worst horror scenarios. Are the trails even rideable with a trailer? Suddenly, this two-day bike tour with the family through the high Alps seems riskier than a bus journey through Burkina Faso. "So, is everything okay?" asks Katja. "Sure, darling."
It's Friday afternoon when we arrive at the Brenner Pass in Vinaders with all our luggage. The Tout Terrain trailers are now attached to the Scott bikes for the first time. Imposing trailers, I think, scratching my head. "Is something wrong?" my wife asks. "No, no, everything's fine, darling." Three bikes, maybe two and a half metres wheelbase and weighing around 30 kilos. All good? I know the Tout Terrain. The bike is actually a real sedan. With its 160 millimetres of suspension travel, it smacks over roots and rocks like a Rolls Royce over a manhole cover. The only thing I hadn't considered was that the huge plus wheels on the Scott bikes mean there's hardly any space between the rear wheel and the drawbar - the trailer has the off-road capability of a lowered Golf GTI!
Vinaders - Brenner border ridge - Gossensaß - Vinaders. This is the tour we have planned for the next two days. The plan: in the late afternoon we want to have climbed the 500 metres to the Sattelbergalm and spend the night there. The next day, the steep climb up to the Brenner border ridge at 2100 metres. From there on the old military road to the Sandjoch at almost 2200 metres. Then the highlight of the tour: the singletrail descent almost to Gossensaß. And from here - hopefully with a bit of battery left - along the cycle path back to the starting point in Vinaders. 40 kilometres, 1343 metres in altitude - these route data don't exactly seem scary to experienced mountain bikers. But with a child trailer?
The four-kilometre gravel ascent from Vinaders to the Sattelbergalm is just the right thing to allow man and machine to get to grips with each other. There are four support levels on my drive: Eco, Tour, Sport and Turbo. With a trailer, child and luggage, every single watt hour I can save counts. Full of zest for action, I decide in favour of the most economical driving mode. "A bit of sport is a must," I shout exuberantly. Besides, I naturally trust my own legs a little more than those of my wife. Not much happens in Eco mode at first - I quickly realise this when Katja and Milla disappear after the first bend. All right, we'll make it to the Alm in Tour mode, I think. To my astonishment, I don't feel any change. My son scowls: "Dad, you said it goes up the mountain like a motorbike." "No, I said it's a bike with a motor, my rabbit. There's a difference!"
Nervously, I switch to sport mode and then to turbo mode. Where the gravel should be spraying out from under the rear tyre, we crawl along at a barely measurable speed. I once heard that pedelec motors have overload protection that puts the motor to sleep in emergency mode. But now? After about 500 metres and 50 metres in altitude? I start doing the maths: 22 kilos of bike, 80 kilos of rider, 10 kilos of rucksack, 8 kilos of trailer, 20 kilos of son. That makes 140 kilos. Should this be the problem? After a quarter of an hour, I'm bathing in my own sweat. I'm going crazy, zapping back and forth between the support levels. To no avail. It's 4 o'clock in the afternoon. The battery indicator still shows no signs of consumption. My thighs are. I feel like I'm on the final climb to Alpe d'Huez. Only there are no screaming crowds waiting for me. Instead, Katja and Milla are sitting bored on a bench. I can tell from the look on my daughter's face that she is thinking about her friends. The swimming pool, the ice cream parlour, her rabbits in our garden. "PAUSE!", I cough. A first break after 150 metres of ascent. That would be a third of the way to the Sattelbergalm. "No problem. I can make it there by pushing if necessary!"
"Are you on your way to Lake Garda?", hut owner Luis Nagele asks us as he places the tray of wheat beers on our table. August is the peak season for Alpine crossers. I think for a moment about how many weeks it would take us under these circumstances. Tiredly, I point to our e-bikes with trailers and to my children, on whom pot-bellied pig Paula is rubbing her bristly back. "Ah, you're travelling with a motor." Nagele is the third generation of hut owners. The hut used to be just a mountain pasture with a few cows. In the 1980s, the area was developed as a ski resort, but today the lifts have been dismantled - the mountain bikers came just in time. When the Transalp boom started in the 90s, the Alm was right on the race route. An hour and a half uphill, then you're on the Brenner border ridge road from here, which leads across the green border to Italy. "I'm sure my grandad would have said, they're crazy, riding up the mountain on a bike," smiles Luis. The truth is: the bikers have saved the family's livelihood. Today, Nagele can accommodate 70 guests at his mountain hut. "The majority are mountain bikers," he says. "And this year more and more of them are motorised."
In the meantime, our photographer has also arrived at the Alm. With the whole entourage - including girlfriend Sabine and her teenage sons Flo and Thomas. Markus looks completely rested, despite his heavy backpack. "Mei, the few metres. We just flew up in turbo mode." I do my best to forget the last two hours of tough slogging. The main thing is that the children's mood is saved. Milla and Matti give the residents of the petting zoo a big hug. Later, they will happily snuggle down in their red and white chequered duvets and dream of Paula the pot-bellied pig and the five fluffy rabbits. My thoughts turn to tomorrow's stage. Markus checks the weather app: "It's supposed to break down in the late afternoon." "Yes, we have to leave early," I say conscientiously - and order the next round of wheat beer.
Wisps of mist hover over the damp meadows. The Sattelbergalm is still drowsy in the morning sun when we set off. Actually, we're in no hurry and can enjoy everything with the children. With the e-bikes, the route should be easily manageable in two to three hours, and we would have plenty of time for picnics, mushroom picking and lazing around on the way. But my motor problem from the day before still hasn't been solved. We checked the spoke magnet and even resetting the electronics didn't help. On a gentle incline, the bike pulls away without any problems. But as soon as it gets steeper, the engine switches to emergency mode. Then it only moves forward in creep mode. So it could be a tough ride today. After all, the ascent to the Sattelberg is supposed to be 20 per cent steep.
"When will we finally be there?" Not that Milla has never asked this question before. I know this nagging from the car journey on holiday. Then you pop "Bibi and Tina" or "Wicky and the Strong Men" into the CD player and the problem is solved for the time being. But that doesn't help me at the moment. "Look, little mouse, the great panorama!" "Dad! When will we finally be thereahaaa?!" I can't blame my daughter for being impatient. The fact that we are travelling in the wrong direction at the moment and that the Sattelbergalm even comes back into our field of vision through the sparse mountain forest is due to my pronounced visual impairment. To be able to read the direction from the GPS device, I would actually have had to put on my glasses. But as my e-drive had just decided to give me a full boost at the first fork in the road, I followed my instinct and pedalled with courage. Now we are about to turn the precious metres in altitude back to zero in order to head in the right direction at the fork in the road this time.
The rescue is waiting around a bend, has a brittle, brown coat and a funny shaggy mop of hair. "Papaaa, look maaal!", Milla whistles, already cuddling up to the pony standing at the side of the road with a dreamy expression. My daughter's mood is saved for the time being. Luckily, I spared no effort during the first years of my children's lives to ensure that they developed a certain enthusiasm for their father's passion for mountain biking. There is a BMX ramp in the garden and I never ask too much of my children on short tours. They have fun on their bikes, and I don't want this shyly budding interest to be shaken by the memories of our first bike tour together in the mountains. Collecting mushrooms, picking flowers, catching frogs, stroking grazing cattle and plenty of picnic breaks in between - that's what children want on a bike tour. The short minutes in between in the saddle should only serve to quickly bridge such highlights.
Our stop gives me the opportunity to take a look at the map. In front of us lies the green border - and a stage point that I'd better not tell my children about: a few years ago, a farmer is said to have been up to mischief here, who went down in the annals of Alpine crossings as "the evil farmer from the Brenner border ridge". Anyone who did not want to pay the toll for the few metres over his land was chased away with threats of a pitchfork. But hut landlord Luis Nagele had reassured us: the grumpy farmer has long since passed into the eternal biker hunting grounds and has been succeeded by his somewhat milder-minded son. Nevertheless, Nagele has now created a bypass himself. But the 40-minute push and carry passage is out of the question for us in view of the e-bikes and trailers. We take the direct route, but engage the turbo gear to be on the safe side.
The final ascent to the Sattelberg is a tough one. The old military road on the Italian side is so steep that non-motorised mountain bikers repeatedly dismount here. On some sections, the rough gravel ramps rise up at over 20 per cent. Markus and the others purr up the climb without any trouble. Katja and Milla manage quite well in the lowest gear and highest driving position, even with a trailer. I'm the only one choking and panting through the gravel. My engine has once again switched to emergency power mode. Theoretically, Matti could pedal along - but on a 20 per cent incline, hanging on to an underpowered e-bike? So I let him nibble on his salami sandwich, count squirrels and propel me along like a rickshaw driver.
After 300 metres of tough climbing, the gravel ramp spits us out just below the Sattelberg summit on the Brenner border ridge road. We take a break at one of the many Italian bunkers. I let my gaze wander: Stubai Alps, Zillertal Alps, and in the south-east the striking limestone peaks of the Dolomites stretch into the sky. We are right in the heart of the Alps. "Isn't it fantastic, kids?" I want to know. But Milla and Matti have long been clambering over the old walls, mocking through loopholes and curiously inspecting an old latrine.
This path has been resisting the forces of nature for a century now. Here and there, the masonry fortifications have crumbled away. Mussolini had this route cut into the barren mountain flanks after the First World War. He feared that the Austrians were after their beloved South Tyrol, which they had to cede to Italy after the First World War. The border ridge road is part of a dense network of military roads linking bunkers, embrasures and other fortifications. Today, the work of the megalomaniac dictator is one of the most popular transit routes for mountain bikers on their way south.
I take a look at the map and Katja looks at her battery indicator, pondering: "Only two bars left. Is that enough?" "Sure, darling." Of course it's going to be close. For another ten kilometres or so, the grass-covered gravel road winds gently up and down via Flachjoch and Kreuzjoch to Sandjoch, where our trail awaits. My e-drive willingly does its job on the gentle inclines. Again and again, the mountains open up the view over the Adige Valley. Matti squeals with delight, crouching low over his handlebars on the descents, pointing out small ramps and fragments of singletrail along the way. We glide along effortlessly. But I can't help noticing that dark storm clouds are now rushing in from the east.
The inferno has begun. We are in the middle of the trail, which climbs in tight bends from the Sandjoch down into the Adige Valley. Heavy rain is pelting down on us, the wetness has long since crept under our jackets. Katja slides over slippery roots, angrily heaving the trailer over rocks. Milla and Matti stumble after her. A narrow trail, technically not very difficult, but interspersed with steps and hairpin bends - with the trailers it's hard to think about driving. Then the trail finally becomes easier. We mount up and soon enter a sparse pine forest where the tyres grip the soft ground silently. Bend after bend, we escape the rain into the increasingly dense forest until we meet Markus and the others.
As the trail spits us out above Giggelberg, the sun breaks through the clouds. The rich alpine meadows are now steaming in the warm rays of the sun. It smells of flowers and herbs. Milla and Matti pick flowers, they have already forgotten the thunderstorm. Katja takes a deep breath: "That's probably it then." There are still ten kilometres to our starting point, always along the old railway line to the north. The batteries will last that far. "Yes, darling," I say. "Everything's going according to plan."
...
The tour starts in Vinaders am Brenner
Length: 39.5 km, 1350 altitude metres
Generally suitable as a family tour with a trailer. After the Sattelbergalm, a section of the trail leads over private land. If you dismount and push, you shouldn't have any problems. There is also a bypass, but it involves carrying and pushing - so it is less suitable for e-bikes, especially not with a trailer. The ascent to Sattelberg is steep, but rideable with an e-MTB. Continue gently up and down along the Brenner border ridge road with marvellous views of the Central Alps to the Sandjoch. The 800-metre trail to Giggelberg is not too technically difficult, but is not recommended in the upper section with a trailer. Alternative: Shortly before the trail, the gravel road turns left. It crosses trail no. 1 a few times - so you can also start further down. You then return to Brenner along the railway line on the cycle path, from Brenner via the main road back to Vinaders.
Overnight stay
With children, the tour is ideal as a two-day tour, even with an e-MTB. Four kilometres after the start in Vinaders, you will see the Sattelbergalm on your left, beautifully situated between the Tux and Stubai Alps, with a sun terrace, petting zoo, swing and hot spot. Bed and breakfast costs 35 euros, for children 12-17 euros. Info: www.sattelbergalm.at
GPS data for the MTB tour on the Brenner border ridge
Under this link you will find the GPS data of the tour described in EMTB #2: click here
Josh Welz
Editor-in-Chief
