Turning off the off-season!

This is our first video, in which we wanted to show how we all had our own ways of spending the season off the bike. Of course it's always good to have time for activities other than bike riding, but at the same time we are all glad that the winter is coming to an end now! Equipped with new shiny bikes, we are now ready for the "good" season to begin and happy to be reunited on the bike. LET'S TURN OFF THE OFF-SEASON!!



Endless Gap is made up of 4 friends, Rudy Biedermann, Joel Ducrot, Patrick Corpataux and Alex Baechler. We are from Switzerland and share a love for mountain biking. Since many years we ride together, but only at the end of last season the idea came up to form an official freeride team and to look for sponsors. Luckily enough, we received fantastic support from Scott bikes, Suspension-Center, Expert-SenSat and our local bike shop Mahu.
Because we always have an awesome time riding together, we like to capture these moments with the camera, giving you a taste of the bike riding here as well as our lifestyle.

A real “fun-bike”: The Scott Voltage FR. We are all riding the same bike but with different suspension set-ups and self-made graphics.

During the wintertime we’ve put a lot of effort and time into the preparations for the 2012 season. Besides exercising (as you can see in the video, we were doing all kinds of activities), building trails, and watching countless bike movies, a fair bit of time went into building rigs for filming and getting used to handling the new camera. We don’t have too much experience with filming yet, but I think there is a lot of potential.

Living in a small village, not far from the city of Fribourg, in the Swiss pre-Alps, we have the perfect playground as mountain bikers. The terrain surrounding the village is ideal and has lots of good trails, ranging from steep technical parts to flowy sections on soft forest ground, surrounded by evergreen moss. One could compare the local trails a little bit with the ones in Squamish.

Because we live just below 1000m above sea level, the winters can be rather long here. Luckily, this year spring came early and the biking season already kicked in. There’s still quite a lot of snow up in the mountains, but all the lower trails are completely dry, at least for now. Let’s hope there’s won’t be any dramatic weather changes anymore.

The biking scene in this small town with less than 2000 inhabitants is pretty vibrant. There are a lot of enthusiastic riders and it’s no surprise that we have one of the biggest mountain bike clubs of Switzerland, in which the four of us are volunteering as guides. On a weekly basis we give trainings to the kids in technical riding skills and dirt jumping. It’s always a lot of fun!

Originally a 4-cross track, it received a bit of a retrofit in 2010 and with the help of Ben Walker we turned it into a dirt jump park with a pump track. The park is located in the centre of the village and it belongs to the biking club, but is open anytime for anyone. Here it's under "spring-maintenance", soon it's gonna look much better.

While we mostly ride the local trails and dirt jumps during the week, on the weekends we often put the bikes on the car and drive to the “real” Alps. Most of the time we would go to the southwestern part of Switzerland or across the border to France. This is a beautiful region and is home to many good bike parks like Chatel, Champery or Verbier, which are developing a lot. It’s not quite Whistler yet, but it’s going in the right direction. There are as well some proper alpine trails in that area, which are accessible with gondolas or trains. Endless tracks, starting from above the tree line, descend all the way down to the valley.

So look out for fresh Swiss biking videos throughout the season. You will also find us at a few freeride events like the Chatel Mountain Style, the Megavalanche, DaKine TrailFox and more…
And of course you can always find us on Facebook.

In case you are planning on coming over to the land of chocolate and cheese for some riding, let us know and we can point you in the right direction, or if our schedule allows, show you around ourselves.

All photos by Endless Gap

Filming: Endless Gap Crew
Editing: Joel Ducrot
Additional Editing: Patrick Corpataux
Riders: Rudy Biedermann, Alex Baechler, Patrick Corpataux, Joel Ducrot
Spots Off Season: Verbier, Bloczone Givisiez, Naturpark Gantrisch, Hapferen, Centre de Tennis AGY, Fire Bikepark Avenches, MAHU Bikeshop
Spots Riding: Gurten and others
Music: Digitalism - Miami Showdown
The Naked and Famous - Jilted Lover