Mountain bikers hurried on a summer day to catch the last gondola up the mountain at one of Austria’s top Alpine resorts, loading their bikes onto racks usually reserved for skis.
Leogang-Saalbach is among numerous Alpine resorts banking on warm-weather activities, responding to rising temperatures and decreasing snowfall by investing in alternatives to winter sports.
Bikers from across Europe are converging on the Salzburg region in western Austria to race down steep slopes.
“It’s just fantastic. Such kind of mountains and slopes, we just don’t have them in Estonia,” 51-year-old mountain biker Jonas Ritson said of his home nation before tackling a downhill trail.
According to Oliver Fritz, senior economist at the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO), since the pandemic, the economic significance of summer seasons has slightly surpassed that of winter seasons in the country.
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