A few words about the site…

This little project was conceived shortly after I moved to Potsdam in October 2005. I’ve been mountain biking for a long time, and so I started to explore the off-road riding oportunites in the area. There seemed to be plenty of forrested area and trails for riding, but navigating through these places proved to be pretty difficult. I was always lost, and never knew where to go. As far as I could tell, there was no mountain biking specific guidebook for the Berlin area. So, I decided to start working on one.

How are the maps made? Basically, I spend alot of time riding in each area, with a GPS. I record all the tracks, and try to ride every trail at least twice. It will typically take something like 300 km of riding to make a map for a 20 km ride! Once I’m done with the mapping, I know the place well enough to come up with a nice loop. I mark my favorite sections of trail with waypoints, so I can try to incorporate them into the ride. Since this is mountain biking, and Berlin is flat, I try to incorporate as much climbing as possible into each ride. I also attempt to keep the navigation simple, but this has so far turned out to be impossible. If you want a ride that is easy to navigate, you’ll be on the main paths/roads, which is fine, but tends to be a bit boring. If you have a GPS you’ll hopefully be able to upload my data, which should make navigating a ride pretty straightforward.