The Salzkammergut Trophy was an important step for me on the way to off-road and ultra-distance races. The first participation on the B-distance was fun and motivated me to get on my mountain bike more and more, the first participation on the A-distance seemed impossible and yet I managed it and could never again stop racing "extreme distances".
210 kilometres and 7000 metres in altitude have become a sprint distance for me. Too short, not really within my strengths. And yet I kept returning to the "Trophy". 2 times even on a gravel bike on the A-course
There are many reasons for this: The Salzkammergut region and the route are spectacular and challenge you to the limit. The organisation? Perfect. In every respect. The feed stations are well stocked with everything a (hungry) cyclist's heart desires and probably most importantly, the volunteers are the real heroes of the Trophy. They are in a good mood and put their heart and soul into it!
The whole region is crazy about the Salzkammergut Trophy. On the Trophy weekend, it feels like there is no section of the route without fans cheering you on. You are handed water, being applauded and cheered. Even the amateur mountain biker feels like they're at the Tour de France (femmes)!
The Bosch E-MTB scavenger hunt
The Salzkammergut Trophy not only attracts extreme mountain bikers in flashy, skin-tight spandex suits, it also offers a distance and route for pretty much everyone. The Scott Junior Trophy also provides a challenge for youngsters, while the Gravel Marathon is one of the most challenging and scenic routes on the calendar for gravel bikers.
Yes, and the Bosch E-MTB Schnitzeljagd is all about cycling without any timekeeping. And you can also win cool prizes!
Thanks to komoot, the whole thing works really easily:
The checkpoints are entered as highlights on komoot in a collection and can therefore be easily combined into a route. For those who are not so sure about route planning, there were also a total of 4 route suggestions pre-planned, which should achieve sufficient points for gold, silver and bronze medals.
Fortunately, because a glance at the paper map caused me to panic slightly.
Points? Now it's getting complicated.
Yes, you have to collect points to get a medal. Either by simply travelling to a checkpoint or by completing small challenges on site.
There was everything from archery and crossbow shooting to “nailing" and the Deuter rucksack challenge. On closer inspection of the points map, I realised that there were 1000 points to be scored. 700 for just getting to all the checkpoints, 300 maximum for the mini-games at the checkpoints. So there was only one logical choice of route: route suggestion gold!
As a pure cyclist, however, I could see my chances of victory dwindling.
The e-bike thing
Yes... It was an e-mountainbike scavenger hunt. Well, I have the mountain bike. It's just missing the E. Luckily, the guys from Moustache Bikes stepped in and equipped me and my companion Lisa with a Samedi 29 Trail and a Samedi 29 Game Full Suspension mountain bike with a Bosch Performance Line CX motor.
"The motor has 85 Nm of torque and a battery with 750 Wh!" Flo from Bosch proudly calls out to me. I quickly calculate my torque at FTP power and 90 rpm cadence... 16 Nm make me look pretty old against the Bosch motor... But I would stand a chance in a sprint!
And of course I can ride much further than the battery allows on an e-bike. I just have to supply enough fuel. (I'm a carbohydrate junkie.) However, I'm extremely surprised at the 74 kilometres in turbo mode that the bike shows as its range on the Bosch Kiox 300 Smart Display when fully charged.
Here too, several generations of e-bikes have passed me by. Nowadays, e-bikes have quite large displays that show all kinds of data. Even my beloved watts. 😜
Flo quickly explains to me how to connect my smartphone to the bike via the "Flow App" and connect komoot so that I can synchronise the navigation directly on the e-bike display.
Suspiciously, I pack my Wahoo ROAM anyway.
A recovery ride?
Lisa rode the gravel marathon with almost 70km and 2000hm on Saturday and came 6th. Wow! Of course I had to step it up a notch and ride the A-course with 210km and 7000hm. "Everything in zone 2, I still have to be fit on Sunday."
Captain Obvious crashes the scene: Of course, just getting out of bed, even without riding at the limit, was hard on Sunday. Lisa looked a lot fitter than me, but we both needed a very relaxed recovery ride after the exertions.
Once we had collected our e-MTBs from Moustache, we headed to registration and collected our starter packs. We quickly put the numbers on the bikes, selected the right route from the komoot collection, saved and synchronised it and off we went to the first checkpoint!
Start on the technique parcours
The technique parcours was of course in my favour. A few tight bends, a plank to balance on, a few pallets to jump over, er, I mean roll over. That was it.
Not as easy as I thought, I have to admit. The motor pushes you forward and you have to take that into account, which I wasn't used to. In addition, the weight of the bike is of course more than double what I'm used to. And for a skinny climber type like me, it's a great workout for my non-existent muscles.
Lisa struggled with the same problems, her facial expression on the balance plank says it all. With a solid finish, Lisa hurtles over the pallets. We look at the photos and laugh our asses off, but now we continue along the Traun river. On the gravel path, you can feel the power of the Bosch motor: up to 25 km/h, it feels as if your legs are spinning by themselves. In eMTB mode, of course. In Eco you have to pedal a lot harder!
Above 25 km/h, you immediately realise how difficult it can actually be to move such a heavy MTB forwards. On bends and short ramps with steep inclines I have to laugh, it feels surreal how easily the bike accelerates out of the bends and flies over hills while lying on the gravel like the bicycle equivalent of an SUV.
In no time at all, we reach the Anzenaumühle and thus the "Nageln" challenge.
My nemesis “nailing"
Anyone who has ever been to a party in Austria will be familiar with the unofficial national sport of Nageln. The concept is quite simple: a nail is nailed into a wooden block, the winner is the one with the fewest attempts. Professionals do this with the narrow side of the hammer, here the target was to sink the nail in only 3 attempts.
Not really my strong point, fail.
Lisa wasn't able to get any extra points here either, but luckily we were both aware beforehand that no professional career awaited us here.
To (e-bike) hell please
Without at least one legendary section of the official Trophy route in our route, we really couldn't let the E-MTB scavenger hunt come to an end. That's why we included the "Ewige Wand" in our route. However, our route goes up the newly integrated stairs and then on towards the Rossmoosalm hut.
Bosch promotes their e-bikes with the term “Feel the uphill flow". But it wasn't that easy:
I tried to ride up the stairs, but failed. You also have to learn to ride an e-bike and you have to learn to deal with the higher weight and the fact that a motor actively pushes you forwards. I didn't get all the way up, but it was still fun!
The "Ewige Wand" trail is of course always a highlight. And the climb afterwards is surprisingly easy thanks to the Bosch CX motor.
Deuter Backpack Challenge at the Rossmoosalm
The Rossmoosalm is one of my favourite places in the Salzkammergut. A small, tranquil alpine pasture with a magnificent panorama. It is also easy to reach from Bad Goisern, with lots of options to make the cyclist's heart happy.
For the scavenger hunt, Deuter lured us here for a "backpack challenge".
I thought it was a joke, but we were handed a life-size rucksack to carry up and down a course marked out with flags.
Nobody mentioned that it wasn't about time, but I would certainly have got the fastest time. 😜
Miscalculated, too tired, damage limitation
A glance at the clock made me wince in shock. The photos and videos, nice conversations with volunteers at the checkpoints and with other participants... Suddenly it was already after 12. We had to hand the bikes back to Moustache. We wouldn't make it through all the checkpoints.
Damage limitation was now in order. We still wanted to do the crossbow and archery, so we cancelled the Leisling and Herndl checkpoints.
Fortunately, we only had to roll downhill to the Halleralm and the archery centre.
Archery and crossbow shooting for (e-) bikers
Archery was really something I'd never done before in my life. Surprisingly, Lisa reports that she has done it before at school.
Oh well, now it's all about me not making a complete fool of myself next to her. But I managed that. Our scores weren't that far apart and I surprised myself with some pretty consistent shots. Lisa looked much more elegant though 😉
The helpers were also very patient with us and explained everything in an idiot-proof way. I don't think I'll become an archer, but it was fun and something different.
We quickly entered the points and after leaving Leisling, we simply took the road down to St. Agatha for the crossbow shooting.
Lisa and I agreed: as pacifists, weapons would not become our new hobby. But I still wouldn't want to mess with Lisa:
Not one shot with the crossbow missed the target. The worst shot: 9 out of a possible 10 points. Even the assistant was wide-eyed.
With a big grin, Lisa hands in her scorecard and gets to keep the target card as a souvenir. Now a few more kilometres back along the Traun, then it's time to collect the finisher's T-shirt and medal and eagerly await the award ceremony.
The women dominate the rankings!
To be honest, unsurprisingly for me, a woman scored the most points! Anastasia Riesterer from Germany won with an incredible 993 points.
Crossbow shooting was her "weak point", she will probably want to make up for the 5 points she lost there next year. 😂
Many prizes were presented and the raffle brought many smiling faces. The podium showed a wide range of different types of riders.
This is also my biggest takeaway from the event:
The days when e-bikes were only ridden by older people with heavily laden touring bikes are long gone. From classic touring riders, to e-gravel riders in aerodynamic bike clothing, to e-enduro bikes with riders wearing downhill full-face helmets, we met and rode with everyone!
Converted e-biker? The bottom line.
In case you're wondering whether I'm now only to be found on e-bikes:
Definitely not. I love my fast and light carbon bikes far too much. 😜
But I can well imagine integrating an e-cargobike into my everyday life, for example. And an e-MTB scavenger hunt for fun or as a recovery ride after a race will certainly be on my agenda again.
Of course, e-bikes present us with problems (hello tourism management, road safety and more), but above all they are a huge opportunity:
To get people off their cars and onto bikes, to show them nature and teach them to appreciate it. Companies like Bosch don't build e-bikes out of pure altruism, of course, but they are one of the driving forces (pun intended) behind this infrastructure revolution that we are currently witnessing live!
Thanks for the invitation to the Salzkammergut Trophy team and the Bosch team, as well as the perfect organisation and thanks for the rental bikes from Moustache. It was definitely a cool experience that I would like to repeat!