Text: Tina Gerber / Photos: Samantha Saskia Dugon
It is the beginning of September and in the Engadin the first snow falls down to the valley. This may not be the best starting point for the International Women’s Bike Summit, but all of us are not made of sugar – we are women who enjoy mountain biking and want to share this passion with like-minded power women from all over the world.
In addition to the biking and fun on the trails together, there are various workshops this week. Workshops for women held trough women, who don’t want to improve their mtb skills and yoga, instead they want to learn how to plan a tour from A to Z, how to work as a mechanic on bikes, how to prepare mentally for a big event or how to present themselves or their company on social media. All topics from which we as active female bikers can benefit enormously.
Due to my work on the outsideisfree.ch project, I was also invited as a participant and held a workshop about social media and influencer marketing in tourism. My goal was to show how great the potential of social media and online marketing is in the bike and tourism sector and how to use the different channels for oneself or one’s own business.
We were a great troop of strong women. Laura Breitenmoser and Daniela Michel were our guides this week and showed the best trails around Engadin St. Moritz. If we had the first few days with some more wintry conditions, the weather improved from day to day. My personal trail highlight was the tour from Bever to Poschiavo. Up to now I have always taken the Rhaetian Railway up to the Bernina Pass, but I have to say, the descent via Sassal Mason was worth every drop of sweat of this 23km ascent!
It was an intensive week – a lot of trail-km in the legs, lots of new inputs for the head and great new friendships have arisen. The hosts of the Bever Lodge did everything for us, so we didn’t have to worry about anything except biking and networking. One of the best Bike Hotels in the Engadin in which I will be happy to return at any time.
The same goes for this week. I was able to take home so many good memories, that I am already looking forward to the next International Women’s Bike Week in September and hope I’ll see a lot of other new girls there.