The growing park in Carinthia, Austria, but not far from Slovenia, opens this month, and goes into daily operation mid-June. New “enduro” trail coming this summer.
We almost consider Petzen (Peca in Slovenian) a Slovenian mountain, risking an international incident. The peak is just on the Austrian side of the Slovenian-Austrian border with the ski slopes and bike trails descending to Austrian Carinthia. The trail building team is now predominantly Slovenian with German celebrity builder Diddie Schneider in charge of all major projects.
The 10km gravel covered snake, weaving from Petzen, descending 1062m, on the way, has gained worldwide fame. The Petzen FlowCountry Trail will start its third full season by the end of this month. And slowly they will need to change the name of their Facebook page because… they are adding Thriller trail and later the Freeride trail.
2017 operation
They will be holding the season opening on Thursday May 25th. They will keep running extended weekends (Thursday to Sunday) until mid-June. They will switch to daily operation from June 15th and back to extended weekends from September 10th (this time Friday to Sunday). They plan to run until October 26th but they might cut it short or extend it depending on weather.
Their schedule is simple: every day from 9am to 4:30pm. They are considering to add “extended play” in summer one day per week.
Flow, photo by Simon Pukl
Ticket prices
Daily pass, adults – 28 € (youth 21, children 14)
4 hrs pass, adults – 24 €
Season pass – 360 €
Complete price list (in German)
Building the Thriller
New trails
They are currently building the Thriller “enduro” trail, the opposite to the smoothed out Flow. They opened a section last year already and should reach the elevation drop of almost a 1000m this year – all the way from the top to the Emmi’s Mosthütte. It will be 6 to 7km long.
“We are using the knowledge from our home trails in Jamnica,” says builder Anej Štrucl.
The Thriller will be officially open during the Black Hole Bike Fest in late July. They will be opening it by sections before that.
Petzen should also start building a new “Freeride trail” this year and Diddie Schneider will be in charge of that.
The Brits, Deakinator and Olly Wilkins, last year on the first section of Thriller, photo by Miha Kolar
Equipment rental
Bikes and safety gear available for rent just like last year, they only need to add the 2017 models on the price list. Here
Events
Black Hole enduro, a race of the SloEnduro series as well as an EWS Qualifier event, will visit on July 29th.
www.petzen.net
www.facebook.com/flowcountrytrail
Also see
Cerkno park from May 1st holidays
Bike Park Krvavec opens on Easter weekend
Bike park Kranjska Gora opens on April 21st
In top photo is Hans the legend, photo by Petzen FlowCountry Trail
