With their tuned suspension, grippy rubber and lithe handling, mountain bikes are perfectly honed for riding on woodland trails. In fact, we reckon that ripping through berms and over booters is one of the sweetest sensations known to man.

These guys all have different ideas though and have decided to take their bikes to all kinds of crazy places. Which do you think is the most ridiculous?

The most ridiculous places mountain bikes have been ridden

A bobsleigh track

What do you do with a Bobsleigh track when it’s too warm for ice? Well, apparently you just leave it abandoned for people to do what they want with.

In what would be a health and safety nightmare on our shores, these two riders from Bosnia and Herzegovina take to the Sarajevo bobsleigh track and speed down its eight vertical turns.

They claim they reached a top speed of 62km/h which seems impressive until you realise that a bobsleigh would be going closer to 150… yikes!

The Skygate

Earlier this year Red Bull organised the Skygate downhill race down China’s Tianmen mountain. The race seems simple in theory, just ride down 999 steps but with the ridiculous gradient this was no laughing matter.

The event attracted many top riders such as Bernard Kerr and Garett Buehler but was unfortunately marred by a horror-crash from Kelly McGarry. If you want to see something even more crazy watch Jeb Corliss glide through the same Skygate using a wingsuit here.

Down a glacier

The bike film of 2015 was undoubtedly UnReal and this glacier was definitely the most ridiculous location.

The amount of bike handling skills these guys must have to even keep the bikes in a straight line on this terrain is incredible, never mind throwing in jumps and tricks as well. You’ll have to pay for the full glacier segment but this ‘making of’ should be more than enough to whet your appetite or now.

Through a shopping mall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wwkurZcn6Q

With Christmas behind us and the bulk of the January sales out of the way, we think it’s time our shopping centres were used for something a bit different… like mountain biking.

The Downmall event has become a regular fixture Warsaw and attracts a packed crowd to watch riders sprint, drop and jump their way past the shops of the Velocity mall.

Down a volcano

This video counts not only as a ridiculous location but a ridiculous idea too. Markus Stöckl wanted to break the descending speed record on a production mountain bike on gravel and decided the best way to do that was to launch himself down the side of a volcano in Nicaragua.

He hit a top speed of 164,95 km/h (102 mph) and clinched the record but he has now claimed he wants to go even faster on a prototype bike.

A palace in Bulgaria

Ok, so it’s not an actual palace, but the Bulgarian National Palace of Culture in Sofia that was apparently “made by communism” in 1981. It’s more of an exhibition centre now and has played host to everything from Uriah Heap concerts to the 2012 WHO conference.

The Palace was taken over by Red Bull (are you noticing a theme here?) in 2012 for an urban downhill race and in contrast to the normal shanty-town settings you get serenity and chandeliers. The peace is soon broken by shredding mountain bikers but it’s definitely a cool location to see some top class riding.

Namibian sand dunes

As much as this video makes us cringe for health of the bikes, we do think it’s pretty cool.

The Namibian coastline plays host to some dunes that make Blackpool’s look like sandcastles and these guys decided to ride them. Some of them are too soft to ride properly but when they find the right conditions they look perfect for carving the whole way down.

Lost Argentinain villages

Who would have thought a plucky trials rider from the Isle of Skye would ever have found himself exploring abandoned Argentinian villages?

In Danny MacAskill’s most adventurous video he headed to Epecuén, a village that has been submerged for the past 25 years, and christened it with his usual combination of tricks and stunts.

The Himalayas

While this may not be the most ‘gnarly’ clip here it still deserves recognition for the brutality of the venue. The Yak Attack is known as the hardest mountain bike race on Earth, and probably with good reason.

The nine-day stage race takes place in the foothills of Nepal’s Himilayas and tops out at the Thorong La, the world’s highest mountain pass, at 5,146 metres (17,769 feet) above sea level.

The riders have to cope with altitude sickness as well as temperatures as low as minus 15 degrees Celsius.