Mountain Bike Guiding in Berlin & Potsdam
MTBTOPOS is now offering guiding services in the Potsdam and Berlin areas. If you’re in town for visit and want to do some off-road riding, I can show you the best of what the region has to offer. While certainly it’s far from a mountain biking paradise, things improve dramatically when you know your way around.
Tours are tailored to suit your individual needs, both in length and difficulty. If you only have an hour, or the whole day, I can come up with a route to fit in with your schedule. Don’t have bike? I should be able to organize you a rental.
Tours will be in the same places as you find on this site: Wildpark, Forst Potsdam, Berliner Forst and Grunewald. One tour in one of these places takes around 1-2 hours. For longer tours we can combine any number of these forests together. To combine all four, including riding between the forests, would probably be around 100km, and take most of the day.
Rates are as follows:
1-2 hour tour: 30 EUR
1/2 day tour: 50 EUR
Full day tour: 75 EUR
This does not include bike rental. If you happen to fit on one of my bikes, rental is free. Otherwise I will rent you a bike from a local shop, and you will pay the actual rental price. I will pick you up with my car at a train station which is local to the place where we will ride. If you’re interested in scheduling a ride, please use the “Contact Me” link at the bottom of this page.
Please also note that YOU are responsible for your OWN saftey. You ride at your own risk!
Welcome!!!
Thanks for visiting MTBTOPOS! What are MTBTOPOS? Each MTBTOPO is a guide to mountain biking in a particular forest of Germany. For each MTBTOPO you can download a ride description and trail map, in PDF format, and GPS data including a basemap, track of the route, and waypoints for each ride.
MTBTOPOS is launched with guides for three rides in and around Potsdam - Wildpark, Forst Potsdam, and Berliner Forst. The list will slowly continue to grow, as it takes quite a bit of time and effort to produce a new guide. In progress already is the Grunewald. Soon the area of coverage will expand beyond the Berlin area, and in fact I’ve already made some significant progress on a ride near Dresden. To check out and download what we have to offer, click on the Rides link to your right, or click right here.
Wednesday Night Potsdam MTB Rides
MTBTOPOS is running a weekly mtb ride in Potsdam. It’s a nice opportunity for those of us living in or near Potsdam to get together and meet each other. It will be a casual ride, no one will be dropped, all abilities are welcome. We meet at 19:00. Here is the schedule:
May 21 - Forst Potsdam - meet where Albert-Einstein Strasse turns into a dirt road (see the directions in the Forst-Potsdam mtbtopo guide)
May 28 - Berliner Forst - Meet on the Glienicker Bruecke.
June 4 - Wildpark *** Candelled - Sorry! See you next week. ***
June 11 - Grunewald
Hope to see you on Wednesday!
Brauhuasberg More…
Click here to download the pictures I took in Brauhausberg on Saturday, April 15, 2007.
Freeride Grunewald Part II More…
Click here to download the pictures I took in the Grunewald freeride course on Saturday, April 14, 2007. Thanks again to all the riders!
Freeride Grunewald More…
Click here to download the pictures I took in the Grunewald freeride course on Sunday, March 4, 2007. Thanks to Micha, Sven, Charlie and everyone else!
Want to help?
Want to help? The best way is to try a ride and tell me what you think. Could you follow the directions? Are there mistakes in the cue or parts that could use improvement? Did you enjoy the ride? How could I make the ride better? Please post your comments right here on the site, or send me an e-mail. With your input I can make improvements to the rides that are already posted, and I can take your suggestions into account for future rides as well. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Want to do more? You can contribute a ride from your favorite place! But, it’s quite a bit of work. What you need to give me are GPS tracks which cover all of the trails in the place that you’re making the ride for, and a track of the ride itself. It takes a lot of time to ride all of the trails in a forest. And, you need to ride them all at least twice to be sure you have covered everything. For the Berliner Forst ride, which is about 20 km long, it took more more than 300 km on the bike to finish the chapter. Once you have the tracks, the next step is to come up with the route. Then I should be able to take it from there and turn it into a ride for this site. Please let me know if you’re thinking working on a ride for MTBTOPOS.
Why Should I Calibrate My Bike computer?
Navigating these rides might be a bit challenging. There are simply a lot of turns. I originally hoped that I could reduce the amount of navigating involved in a ride, but this turned out to be difficult. I’ve tried to be as careful as possible in calibrating my bike computer to make the navigation as easy as possible. If our computers are calibrated within 1% of each other, then after 10 km they’ll be off by 100 m. That’s not too bad. But, if our computers are off by 10%, that works out to 1km after 10 km of riding, and this will make it difficult for you to follow the cue. So, I would encourage you to spend a little bit of time to get it right.
Sheldon Brown has some info about calibrating your computer. Don’t just fill in the number off a chart, though, check out the “Roll Out Test” towards the bottom of the page. Chris’Z has a nice page about calibration as well. You can also check the instructions that came with your computer if you still have them. Don’t forget to set and note your tire pressure to what you normally ride with when you calibrate, and make sure it’s the same before you try one of the MTBTOPOS. Tread wear can also make a difference, so it’s worth to write this down, too.
a few notes about the Rides…
Before you attempt any of the routes described below, please see the FAQ about why you should calibrate your bike computer!
Please also consider making a map holder for your bike before you head out. It will make your ride much more enjoyable.
Below is a brief description of each ride, and a link to the download area. Each guide is available individually in PDF format. Included is a trail map of the area, with the route clearly marked, and a cue describing the ride including the distance to each turn. A GPS track of the route (.gpx and .crs) and waypoints (.gpx) are available for each ride. The waypoints are marked on the map and the cue. Also available is a GPS basemap (.img) for each ride, which can be uploaded to your Garmin gps unit if it has mapping capability. Maps can be uploaded using the sendMap utility from cGPSmapper, which can be downloaded for free here. You can also try img2gps.