The SkiBike Shop

For the last couple of years I have made a trip to one of the German indoor ski centres during the summer season. I love being a contrarian, whilst the normal people are heading for a day trip to the beach I am heading down the coast road armed for a trip to the fridge.

Many years ago a young work colleague, with wisdom beyond his years, told me "There's no point working this hard if it's not for something". Throughout the summer and autumn, during all those long afternoons doing boring jobs, I've been day dreaming about this moment of freedom.
The purpose of this trip was to test out a nice selection of new (to me) items and to get my stiff and flabby body into some resemblance of order before the season proper starts in a months time.

My first port of call was to be Bottrop, near Essen, home to the Alpincenter, claimed to be Europe's longest indoor snow slope. You can read more about the slope and its facilities from my earlier visit. The trip from London to Essen was nearly all plain sailing till the last 30 miles, Germany is clearly aiming to be more British when it comes to totally blocking up the infrastructure with road works, don't do it Germany, it's not worth it.

Alpincenter - Europe's longest indoor snow slope

Arriving just after the 10am opening, I set about with a warm up on skiboards. My tools were a pair of Line skiboards, picked up a month or so ago for the princely sum of £10 from eBay, they even came with the proper carry bag. These were complimented with a pair of Raichle Flexon boots that I picked up in the early summer for £20 also off eBay. In absolutely mint condition and by jingo they fitted a treat too, the only downside is that they are very, pink. In the early 90s, such acid colours were all the rage, no doubt a lime green and purple ski suit plus a Chris Waddle power mullet wig would fully complete the look. Let's just say that for a man to wear pink boots you have to be very confident about your sexuality, one way or the other, nuff said.

Pink boots - you have to be confident about your sexuality

These two thrift store bargains made a great combo and I had a couple of happy hours warming up my rusty body with them, I anticipate they will be a good upgrade for this season, in resorts that don't allow skibiking or where filming duties are required.

Feeling toasty I pulled out my skibike, I had just made another modification to the front ski mount and was keen to see if it would stand up to real world use. I slipped straight into the grove from the first run and just kept getting more confident and fluid as the day progressed.

Before dusk arrived, I nipped out to the car park and swapped over to the 90cm NISM skibike skiboards, what sheer bliss, I didn't change back. They are on special offer here on the blog at the moment, but if no-one gets them soon, I can see me taking the plunge. In the clinical environment of an indoor centre you can really focus on technique, they are remarkable devices once you work out how to really get them on an edge.

It was an amazing day, I started just after 10am in the morning and stayed till closing time at 10pm, almost 12 hours on the snow. How tired and stiff would I be for day two though?

One noticeable change on this visit was a radical change to the canned music played, gone are the garish 80s selection, to be replaced by modern pop music, the sort were the singer sounds like a malfunctioning robot. I believe it is a genre called EDM by the cognoscenti. Yo motherfudgers, get turned up to death.




It was a bit much to expect my body to cope with the onslaught of so much activity without some recoil; never the less, the following morning I still managed to drag myself out of the sack and get properly scrubbed up for the short drive to the nearby town of Neuss, just outside of Düsseldorf. It's an area of open flatlands, making the distinctive silhouette of Allrounder mountain resort easy to spot from miles away.

The distinctive silhouette of Allrounder mountain resort - easy to spot for miles

Allrounder mountain resort is very glitzy compared to Bottrop, all stainless steel and glass, shiny, shiny. Following protocol I scouted out the slope on skis incognito, on paper it is quite a short slope, just 300m long, which is half the length of Bottrop. In reality, the usable length is the same and the presence of a full scale chairlift system is an outstanding feature, making for hassle free and speedy uplift.

A full scale chairlift system - an outstanding feature

The snow on the slope at Allrounder mountain resort was in excellent condition, if I understood the German correctly, the marketing blurb refers to it a powder snow, which might be going a bit far, but it was definitely deep, crisp and even. The temperature was distinctly chilly, yesterday I was riding in just a polo shirt and fleece, today I had to add another layer to stay warm and should really have dug out thicker gloves from the suitcase too.

I had previously contacted the management at Allrounder mountain resort to see how they regarded skibikes and received a favourable response; this was confirmed when I spotted a well worn Brenter skibob next to the engineering station and a baby one on the juniors play slope getting a good work out.

At lunchtime I slipped into skibiker mode and made my way to the chairlift, an operator shot out pretty quickly, I showed him my leash as I had been instructed, he grinned and disappeared back inside and that was that. I spent a very pleasant afternoon going over jumps, making wide carves, following the fall line and generally wiggling around to my heart's content.

At lunchtime I slipped into skibiker mode

Around 6pm I had to quit, I was tired and had to be heading off to my overnight accommodation in Belgium. It was very much a case of mission accomplished; I had tested out my kit successfully, given myself a valuable pre season warm up refresher course and even learnt a couple of new tricks along the way.

Best of all was to have found another potential year round skibike training camp at Allrounder mountain resort.

Skibikes at Allrounder mountain resort - mission accomplished

There have been a number of fresh enquiries in the last few weeks, I usually get asked the same questions, but for once I got one from fellow RetroBike enthusiast Dylan that hasn't been asked before.

How does one go about going Ski-biking, please?
I presume you are doing most of this in France and there is nothing doing at an indoor slope?
How does one apply?

There isn't an indoor slope in the UK that has a skibike set-up, but you can try the very similar Snowscoot model, with instruction, at ChillFactore in Manchester. You can also skibike at the sister site SnowZone in Milton Keynes, but only as an experienced rider with your own skibike. There is also a wonderful indoor slope in Germany, not that far from Calais, that I have been using off season for both fun and training. I expect to be returning there on a number of occasions in 2014.

Off season fun - Bottrop, Germany June 2013

I usually go to France in winter and stick to the Western French/Swiss border, I do this mainly because I have the keys to a flat on the outskirts of Geneva to use as my base camp. There are some conveniently located hotels and B&B's in the Giffre and Arve valleys nearby and close to the most skibike friendly resorts. They are ideal for short break taster sessions and living costs at the base of the mountains are reasonable.

Learning to skibike is a quick process, you should be able to get round all but the expert runs on your first day. Mastering the skibike can take a bit longer, I've been riding for about 18 weeks and still wait for the Jedi skills to arrive.

There isn't a package holiday provider that covers skibike holidays, yet! So you really need to network with the established skibikers and arrange independent travel.
A couple of years ago I started a Facebook group, to facilitate arranging trips and meet ups during my riding season. It has blossomed recently and there are a number of group rides happening this year in both France and Austria. You will find it here it will only take a minute of your time to join and you can get access to information about forthcoming skibiking events before they hit this site.

Avoriaz - French group ride February 2013

I was hardly back from my recent London to Rome road trip, before it was time to head back out again. This time pleasure was on the agenda and Alpincenter Bottrop, near Essen in Germany was the destination.
For a change I was to company in the shape of Tim and Lesley Brooking, with Tim supplying the transport and driving, oh the luxury of it. Somehow his car managed to carry both of my DIY Skibikes and a Lenz Brawler, borrowed from Carl Day, plus a veritable ski shop full of miscellaneous winter gear.

AlpinCenter Bottrop - almost "another day at the office"

For me the trip was almost "another day at the office" but for Tim it held far great significance. In recent years problems with his joints had brought him close to become wheelchair bound. A shocking scenario for a person who previously taught Physical Education and had some 30 or so years of skiing experience behind them
In the last 12 months Tim has been through a series of operations to replace both knee joints, and other parts. I suggested he was truly the "6 Million Dollar Man", but sick humour aside, it is remarkable what modern technology can now do to turn someone's life around, in ways that would previously have been unimaginable.


At my suggestion, we started our day by putting in some runs on skis in order to become better acquainted with the layout and generally warm up. For Tim this was to be a unique challenge, for the first time he was having to ski with legs that weren't significantly off camber! It was amazing to see that, in just a handful of runs, how he "dialled in" and transformed from wobbly beginner to smooth expert.

Tim Brooking - photo opportunity

After taking some photos and videos it was time to make the switch over to the skibikes. But the morning session had been such a success that Tim was almost ready to quit at that point and not even bother with the skibikes. I did mention that the disciplines can be very complimentary, besides which we had come an awful long way not to get Carl's bike out. So we set about assembly in the car park in lovely sunny autumn weather, before we returned to the relative gloom to continue.

I knew that Tim had previously been on a skibike with Serge Mermillod from Firem and his friend and ESF instructor Jef Exertier. So rather than hover over Tim and put him off, I left him to try things at his own pace. Once again he gained control and confidence, then the speed began creeping up and he was soon spending much longer going up than coming down.

Whilst he took a break for refreshments, it was my opportunity to hop on the Lenz Brawler and find out what all the fuss is about. I had a first run, then took another to be sure the first wasn't a fluke, I stopped myself from making third, I can't afford to get used to this.
The Lenz Brawler is an impressive ride, the steering is so beautifully weighted, it has a rock solid and stable feeling with none of the twitchiness typical of a skibike. Oddly, it is just as easy to ride standing on the footpegs as it is sitting down. The skis fitted give great control and coped with some slick icy patches exceptionally well. On most skibikes you feel like it's a push bike, but the Lenz Brawler feels like a big motorcycle by comparison.
The only minus points I can find are; the size, weight and sheer momentum of the beast. I can turn my skibikes pretty quickly, sometimes when I don't even intend to, but riding the Lenz within narrow confines or having to make emergency stops on a crowded French piste would be an issue for me. It also gave me the impression that I could get into trouble so easily by going a lot faster than normal without even realising it.
But if I ever have the need to do some back country riding of say Mount Everest, the Lenz Brawler would now be my number 1 choice.

Lenz Brawler - perfect for back country riding at Mount Everest

In the late afternoon Tim and Lesley where tiring and I have to confess I was too, my runs were getting lazier and I even had a couple of falls. There was no point in riding for longer, it had been a great day and I intend to be back again for another pre-season session.

Whether Tim with his new bionic powers will continue as a skier or become a skibiker remains to be seen. Perhaps like myself and Wayne Richards the answer is that; like apples and oranges, you simply don't have to choose between one or the other, you can enjoy both. I feel that for early morning iced over runs there is no substitute for a pair of skis under each foot, but for late afternoon slush or off-piste exploration the skibike is truly the weapon of choice.

If you have closely followed this website you will know that in the ski off season I like to maintain what paltry balance skills I have by fitting in a few crafty trips to indoor ski domes and even the occasional session on a dry ski slope.
The AlpinCenter Bottrop is the World's longest indoor ski slope, yet few seem to have heard of it. The feature that got my attention though was that uplift is by conveyor belt or "magic carpet" as those smooth marketing types would prefer to call it. If you know me well, you will know that I don't interface well with a skibike and a drag lift. So you would appreciate that this is a massive selling point for me.

For these reasons, I had been planning an off season visit since I first discovered the AlpinCenter Bottrop last Autumn. So when a few days work in Amsterdam at the RAI exhibition centre came along, it seemed too good an opportunity to miss as Bottrop is just under 2 hours from Amsterdam. Furthermore the company I was working for very equitably offered to pay my fuel costs up to the equivalent cost of an air fare.

Once my work in Amsterdam was complete it was time to jump in the car and head South post haste.

Hotel Böll - simple, clean and basic

The accommodation at the Hotel Böll was simple, clean and basic, exactly what I needed. The free parking was an added bonus, I had a lot of stuff with me in the car and fortunately it was well sheltered from view.
There are plenty of late night eateries just around the corner in the centre of town, which appears to have quite a large Turkish community, Kebab lovers are well catered for here. In spite of the suburban location, the room was quiet and peaceful, giving me a much needed good night's rest.

The following morning it was time to locate the AlpinCenter Bottrop which is just 15 minutes from the Hotel Böll. Bottrop is a suburb of Essen, an industrial town in Germany's inustrial heart land known to English speakers as The Ruhr. The AlpinCenter Bottrop itself overlooks an industrial valley, which looks hauntingly similar to the outskirts of  Birmingham, oh except that here they still make stuff! The hill that the AlpinCenter Bottrop stands on is the result of centuries of coke making (the fuel not the drink!) and continues to this day at the ArcelorMittal plant. The hill itself is formed from an accumulation of stony bi-products, I would call it a slag heap, but that is probably not the term the marketing department would prefer.
However, in spite of all the chimney stacks, storage yards and fuel tanks that abound, the area is lush, verdant and sylvan, making it a pleasant spot in mid summer with a unique vista.

Bottrop - chimney stacks, storage yards and fuel tanks abound

I wanted to limber up and recce the layout using SnowBlades first and had hardly got the boot open before a chatty ski instructor parked alongside me spotted my vintage Raichle ski boots, passed comment and was curious to know whether I was with the military, I imagine this area would have been full of military personnel in the days before the fall of the Berlin Wall. As we chatted he was able to confirm that there would be no problem using my "skibob", I didn't mention the lack of footskis, but waited to see what would happen later.

Immediately behind the Alpine style chalet entrance there is a reception area where you are provided with a paper bracelet type ticket and a card for 3 alcoholic beverages. Further inside the building is a bar and buffet to one side and the locker/changing/equipment rooms to the other. Skis, poles, snowboards, boots and helmets are all available in the price of admission should you need them. It appeared to be the typical mid range stock you would expect in this sort of facility.

AlpinCenter Bottrop - Alpine style chalet entrance

Once past these areas you go through an air lock to find yourself almost at the top of the slope. This is quite an unusual arrangement that not once have I encountered anywhere else. Immediately in front of you are the nursery slopes, to your right and slightly higher is the end of the travellator and to your left the "dangerous" slope with a gradient of 25% reserved for intermediate skiers/riders and above. A warning sign alerts you of the start of this section. In reality the grade would be considered an easy blue by any standard, towards the end there is a dog leg to the left. Irritatingly, no matter how fast you go, the last 80 metres, alongside the snow park, require an uphill climb.

The conveyor belt uplift

This brings you to the start of the conveyor belt back to return you to the top. There are two belts running in parallel, for the duration of my visit only one of which was working, I imagine the other is fired up during busier periods. Traffic lights guide you to enter at periodic intervals in order to keep "traffic" seperated. There are no lift operators present, but the area is monitored by CCTV, the management don't like people shuffling closer to chat and will tell you over the P.A.!
Unless you are the World's slowest snow user, the sad fact is that the travellator is where you will spend most of your time at the AlpinCenter Bottrop heading back uphill. It is somewhat gloomy and industrial and would benefit from a bit of a makeover. Music is piped through, offering an ecclectic selection of bouncy tunes ranging from Trad Jazz through Euro Dance/Pop to Bavarian Oompa. Whether this brings delight or torture will be a matter of taste, but it was nice to hear the jaunty 80's pop hit "Take on Me" by a-ha which I haven't heard in a long while.

At the end of the travellator, snowboarders hop off to the side whilst skiers or skibikers! are tipped straight onto an icy incline with a testing right angle bend that leads back to the top of the nursery slopes.

Having played on my blades for a couple of hours, I stopped for some late breakfast at the buffet bar.
On offer was a typical selection of Germanic food, with many combinations of pork and potatoes, plus a well stocked salad bar, no shortage of fresh rolls, cold meats and cheeses, fresh coffee, soft drinks and even ice creams for desert.
Refreshed, I headed back to the car to switch boots and prep the skibike. Once assembled I headed back inside expecting to be accosted by the management, but no-one so much as batted an eyelid over the use of a skibike. Some younger Germans pointed and commented "keine fuß skis" - no foot skis, I can but assume that freestyle skibikes aren't all that common around here and they have only seen the ubiquitous Brenter SnowBike before.

AlpinCenter Bottrop - Start of the main slope

The snow was good, if a little icy in places, the worst section was at the top of the conveyor belt, at the end of the day it was a block of ice surrounded by a pool of melt water. Oddly some sections of snow felt slower than others, if you got some speed up, you could really feel the deceleration when you hit them. Predictably I found the best snow was to be found at the edge of the piste where there had been the least traffic. Upon inspection I found that my skis had acquired some odd black sticky contamination trapped in the wax layer, perhaps I needed special artificial snow wax?

AlpinCenter Bottrop - The nursery slope

I have read comments that some find the lighting at gloomy, it lacks the clinical level of floodlighting that some other indoor ski centres employ, but you certainly don't need a headlight!

I lost all track of time and just enjoyed putting in run after run, there was virtually no-one else there and I could head straight down the fall line or practice moves as the whim took me. I managed a neat 180° spin, but still haven't got the hang of riding backwards yet! Stopping for a coffee at what I thought was tea time actually turned out to be nearer 8 pm. I put in a few final runs and a "swift half" at the bar before loading up for the drive back to Calais, some 4 hours plus away.

AlpinCenter Bottrop offers unbeatable value, you can spend all day and evening on the snow, eat and drink heartily for a price that equates to a single hour on one of London's indoor ski centres. The conveyor belt uplift works superbly with a skibike, even the most inexperienced rider would get it within a couple of rides.

It is worth noting that the run may be 640m long, but the total length it is a little bit missleading. The first half is on a very shallow gradient to suit novices, an intermedite rider will head as directly as possible through it. I had to scoot a fair bit of the way to keep above walking pace and really only found the next section useful. With the final section running uphill you can iether hit it at full tilt or face a fair old uphill walk, this is even worse if you are on skis or a snowboard. This means that the total length you can use to practice your turns, stopping, etc. is only about 200m long. But this is still about twice the length of anything similar here in the UK.

For non skiers, there is a summer "Cresta run" and a "Via Ferrata" high level walkway too.

• Value: 10/10
• Efficiency: 10/10
• Snow Quality: 8/10
• Slope Design: 7/10
• SkiBike Firendliness: 10/10

In an instant, not only is the AlpinCenter Bottrop a fun place to visit, but I am certain that it is the best venue in Europe for a novice to experience skibiking for the first time and build confidence before going on holiday.

As if to prove the old adage that there is nothing new under the sun I recently came across this lovely clip in the Pathe News archive.

"Berchtesgaden, Germany. MS Various pans with ski-bobbers as they race downhill on the first artificially frozen track in the world during the German Ski-Bob Championships. (Two crash on hillside). The Swiss silver medal winner at Grenoble, Christa Schmuck, wins the championships. CU New German champion, Leonhard Nagenrauft being congratulated.
Note: Date on original record: 27/01/1969.."

There are even some riding pegger style!...

I also found an even older clip at Videosurf

"New ski thrill, the ski-bob makes its debut during a skiing competition on snowy mountains of Bavarian Zugspitze in Germany. Skiers ride ski-bobs and start a race. Few skiers crumble in between the race. Spectators watch the race with excitement. A woman skier laughs during the event. The winner of Ski-Bob race crosses the finish line and crumbles on snow."

 Embedding isn't allowed, but you can watch it here