Table of contents for No. 83 in Spoke

Mountain bike races in New Zealand couldn’t run without a solid crew of volunteers. Whether it’s a small club race or a national event, it’s the people giving up their time to stand on the side of the track in high-vis, wrangle the timing computer or spin snags on the barbecue that mean it can happen. When the Dodzy Memorial Enduro rolls around, a small army of willing helpers descend on the Wairoa Gorge (near Nelson) to put in the mahi. They make sure rego runs smoothly, bikes are loaded onto shuttle trailers and riders are driven to the top, and marshals are dotted along race runs to keep the hundreds of eager competitors safe and happy. After years of racing the event (or rounding out the numbers while suffering…

Curiosity can be a dangerous thing; it’s equal parts frightening and laced with unknown excitement. Sometimes our riding lives can get stuck into a comfortable routine, doing the same laps, riding the same terrain on the same bikes, because it’s not only comfortable and fun, it’s easy and rewarding. But every now and again we might get a little curious. What happens if I rode a little further? How far could I ride? Would I enjoy longer rides? Along came the Whaka 100. Back in May 2020, a few of my friends entered the Whaka 100 as an outlet for some COVID lockdown fitness and to tick off almost the entirety of Rotorua’s magnificent Whakarewarewa forest in one hell-for-leather outing. To be honest, I didn’t jump at the opportunity. 100kms…

The rise of women’s mountain biking has been meteoric over the past year. While we celebrate that more women are riding than ever before, it is hard to ignore the elephant in the room. The lack of female riders at the top of freeride and freestyle disciplines globally is glaring. Other action sports are successfully bridging that gap between talented amateur to professional for women, so what was the missing ingredient for women’s progression in mountain biking? Is it opportunity or environment? Or both? If we drill down in how men have made that leap, self-coaching and peer support is integral in most riders journey to the top. But it takes a critical mass to do that and is that what is missing for women? Does progression happen when you…

They say if you choose something you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. If that’s the case, then Paul “Langers” Langlands has it made. Formerly a professional freestyle BMX rider with a penchant for big, gnarly, dirt jumps, the Cambridge-based Langers can now often be found shaping and maintaining the plethora of trails that comprise the Te Miro Mountain Bike Park. As far as parks go, Te Miro is arguably one of the most underrated in New Zealand. Situated a roughly 20 minutes from Cambridge, Matamata and Morrinsville (and 30 from Hamilton), the park boasts something for everyone – technical, root-infested native bush, fast and flowy pine trails, picturesque beginner’s loops around the central lake, burly downhills and a soon-to-be-refurbished Grade 5 jump trail. Since taking up…

Being asked to review a Juliana mountain bike is never a chore. It’s a chance to throw my leg over a different bike and to discover its true personality when I'm riding at my limit. But first a caveat: I’m a long-standing Juliana fan and I believe every bike they make is a good one. Therefore, this review is how the bike compares to other models I’ve previously ridden and what this model excels at. It is a well known fact that women are superior multitaskers ... Emma is a prime example of a chick that multitasks like a boss I roped in my long-time friend, Emma Bawtree, who has owned and ridden every generation of the bike I was reviewing. Emma and I were arch rivals on the Pro-elite…

The proliferation of pumptracks around New Zealand over the past couple of years has been dramatic, and, in my eyes, completely justified. They provide hours of fun for bikers and skaters of all ages, and these new-age playgrounds can now be found spattered across schools, subdivisions and towns across the country. As a dad to an energetic three-year-old, I’ve found myself spending more and more time at my local pumptrack, and to add to the excitement, I often bring my own bike. However, my interest usually wanes quickly as I struggle to navigate the mid-travel 29er through the tight curves and bumps with any speed, let alone style or grace. So, when I was chatting to the guys at Kona about review bikes (or the general lack of them), they…

An unexpected impact of COVD-19 has been the cold-turkey endured by members of the so-called “bike media”. Our inner magpie has been almost fatally starved of the shiny new bikes and components that constantly flow into the dragon’s-horde of bling that resides beneath Spoke Towers. With that stream of continuous materialism drying up, I’ve been left with a vacuous hole in my life to fill. But after the initial withdrawal symptoms subsided, I realised there might be more fulfilling ways to bond with my bike, explore new ideas and potentially improve my riding. So with those objectives front of mind, I decided to take a plunge to flat pedals. I’ve ridden with SPD pedals since shortly after Shimano released the PDM737 and clip-in pedals really were “clipless”. Ever since, my…

One hundred and fifty-odd years after the gold rush reached the north-western corner of the South Island, shovel-wielding mountain bikers have hit pay dirt of another kind. The Santa Cruz Bicycles Pay Dirt Fund has committed US$25,000 to help fund the planning and construction of new mountain bike trails in Nelson. It’s the first time the fund has been distributed to a trail project in the southern hemisphere, and will support a massive joint project between the Nelson Mountain Bike Club and the Nelson City Council, as part of the Council’s long term plan. Mountain biking has been highlighted as a priority in the 10-year plan, with $600,000 allocated to building trails ahead of the region’s debut on the Enduro World Series in 2022. The club’s success in securing both…

I’ve just recently recovered from another unfortunate injury that I sustained doing what I love—racing my bike. Being forced to take significant time off the bike to fully recuperate got me thinking—as every injury does—why do I keep doing this? Maybe I should just sell my bike and buy a jet boat…and a cheaper bike, as I couldn’t give up riding completely. I feel like this after every injury and I always ask the same question: “what are you doing, man? Is this really worth it?" Yet every time I get drawn back in. I still struggle to put my finger on what keeps drawing me back into a sport that’s put me through three surgeries, two torn ligaments and eight broken bones in the past five years. I grew…

Being asked to review a Juliana mountain bike is never a chore. It’s a chance to throw my leg over a different bike and to discover its true personality when I'm riding at my limit. But first a caveat: I’m a long-standing Juliana fan and I believe every bike they make is a good one. Therefore, this review is how the bike compares to other models I’ve previously ridden and what this model excels at. I roped in my long-time friend, Emma Bawtree, who has owned and ridden every generation of the bike I was reviewing. Emma and I were arch rivals on the Pro-elite XC circuit back in the 90s, when XC bikes were highly strung, with ridiculously steep angles, 50mm of front suspension if you were lucky, handlebars…

In late May, Paul Angus, AKA Pang at Vertigo Bikes, Queenstown, forwarded an article about Olympus Mons - a volcano on the planet Mars that stands 21,287.4m (69,841ft) above datum, said to be the tallest planetary mountain in the solar system, roughly two and a half times the height of Mt.Everest. Partial to a good climbing challenge this got my type two fun senses tingling.Whilst recovering from a dislocated elbow over the southern hemisphere winter, too many hours on a turbo trainer and a reluctance to join Zwift got me thinking, could Olympus Mons be the next ultra climb? With a few simple guidelines, what epic stories could evolve from a simple mission statement? Spread evenly, it’d require three 7100m/vertical days of elevation in a row. If ridden conservatively and…

It seems like the ability to get rowdy on trails no longer hinges on owning a longer travel big rig. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing like a plush ride you can take to the bike park and plough down any trail feeling like the next EWS star. However, there’s style of riding that’s emerging in the techy pedal parks of Aotearoa that requires a bike with a lot more versatility – a bike that rides fast uphill as well as downhill. Whether you love or loath the term ‘down-country’, it’s quickly becoming a big deal, with many riders finding it offers the ideal sweet spot and provides plenty of big grins with a little less risk. So when Pivot sent us their new genre-bending Trail 429 I were curious…

It’s hard to read anything these days without a reminder that we’ve been Covid 19’d and I’m not about to disappoint you here either. It’s been one whole year since Jacinda divided the country and let everyone (except boaties and mountain bikers ) do what they want while getting paid to “work” from home. You may remember that I packed my bumbag and headed for my local jungle, breaking all the rules and preparing myself for a life of incarceration after infecting half the ageing population of the Kapiti Coast with the dreaded Covid I may have caught from a group of unruly Aussies I had just finished guiding through The Old Ghost Road a week before we all got told to stay home. So what happened? My Covid turned…

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned; I’ve not been consistently riding for 11 years. The do-it-all weapon I’d custom built 14 years ago is now as irrelevant as a Rheineck at a barbecue. The carefully specced bike, once the pride of the garage, is now covered in dust and cobwebs, occasionally reminding me of a time when my priorities were different. When I couldn’t imagine that I’d not be riding. It wasn’t always like this. Like many in their 40s, my first bike was a BMX. Growing up, I tooled around with my brothers on dirt jumps and did a lot of racing during the height of the BMX era in the 1980s. At one stage I was the Australian plate-holder for Under 7s. After owning a couple of…

Evolve is an upcoming bike movie based in Queenstown, captured by locals and featuring local riders shredding their backyard trails. It’s taken two summer seasons to film, covers eight different locations and features about 20 riders on a range of bikes. The whole concept started when Blake Pickup approached me to film an edit on Rude Rock. I know you’re probably thinking ‘not another one, but Blake wanted to do something unusual; his goal was to film as much of the entire three-kilometre Rude Rock trail on cable cam as possible. The idea was spawned when Blake discovered that flying drones above Rude Rock isn’t possible due to its proximity to Queenstown airport’s flight path. He also wanted to mix in low shots from between the tussocks with aerial footage…

When yout get a call from Jamie Nicoll to come on a 3-day backcountry adventure, you steady yourself for the unknown. With a reckless sense of adventure and the fitness to boot, you know Jamie is going to take you into some otherworldly terrain all the in the name of fun. The motive behind the trip is to tide and come to grips with the new nomad since 5 from 2005 Santa , where Cruz. The it set Nomad the early has benchmark been a staple for in trail the bikes Santa and Cruz conjured lineup the early beginnings of what we now know as the enduro bike category. The Nomad has always stuck true to it’s roots, growing and adapting with the times but always paying homage to it’s…

A while back I had a conversation with a mate about what our perfect bike would be. “I’d love a bike that climbs really well, is stable, can smash rowdy downhills and bike park laps, jumps well and doesn’t weigh a tonne,” I described. My mate laughed and retorted, “OK, Goldilocks!” While bikes have come a bloody long way over the past five years, the manufacturers’ quest for the perfect do-it-all bike remains elusive. Longer and slacker usually means a more sluggish pedaller. A lighter frame and more efficient geometry is often at the expense of stability and capability when things get steep and techy. So when German direct-to-consumer bike company Canyon announced the all-new Spectral 29 with a campaign that essentially spouted that this is the only bike you’ll…

I’ve spent some time staring at pictures and hearing stories of the summer’s endurance events, and I began wondering why people seek out hardship, and if type two fun is becoming trendy in our overly-comfortable, technology-obsessed world. Everyone’s likely to have heard the term ‘type two fun’ and a lot will have unknowingly experienced it, but what is it really? Well, I like to define type two fun as the conscious decision to venture beyond the traditional fun barrier into the hurt locker. It can be achieved over a day, or even a week, but at some point the ride becomes so hard you stop having the fun you set out to have (type one) and you start to suffer. It's not hitting the wall, it's not finding your limit,…