Table of contents for No. 87 in Spoke

Rider Dylan Crane Location: Whakarewarewa Forest, Rotorua, NZ. Shutter speed: 1/1000 Aperture: f1.8 ISO: 1600 Photographer Rachel Hadfield The climb to this special part of the forest is a hard task in the heat, but the trails never fail to deliver. This part of the trail is not overly technical but to me is quintessential mountain biking in New Zealand: beautiful native bush and rooty single track. Dylan managed to pop over the roots and sneak in a tree tap which I was not expecting. That boy can definitely make something of nothing.…

Supply Ride Concepts The riders in the lift line seem to be getting younger every year. The sea of bobble-heads might make it easier to see the end of the queue, but you don’t want one of those short-of-stature senders behind you on a jump line. The groms are riding harder than ever, and the demands they put on their gear have grown along with their skills. In 2015, Brandon Dodd and his family were on their annual road trip from Truckee, California, to Whistler, Canada. It’s an epic stretch and they made sure to stop at plenty of places to ride along the way. Brandon’s son Noah was the true ripper in the family. By age 7 he was jumping 20-foot gaps on his Lil Shredder full-suspension rig. He had…

Supply Ridewrap Mountain biking is a violent sport. If we’re not blowing up corners, we’re smashing through rock gardens or hucking our meat. It’s so violent that we wear body armour. All things going well, the bikes take most of the punishment, and they aren’t cheap. It was a conundrum faced by Callum Rostron, a Mancunian who followed a girl to Whistler on holiday and never left. With a thriving auto body business in the UK that he’d taken over at the tender age of 21, it was inevitable that he’d use his skills to customise his Specialized Demo. Typically, the painstaking paintjob lasted just one trip to the Whistler Bike Park. It was trashed and there was no other option but to strip it down and start again. What he…

People Ellie Chew Ellie Chew could be one of our best-kept secrets, at least within New Zealand. On a global scale she’s become something of an action sports icon, but most people in NZ wouldn’t recognise her in the street. Best known as a BMX rider, Ellie has had quite the journey from her local Kapiti Coast skatepark to performing internationally with the Nitro Circus. She’ll happily front-flip the notorious 40-foot moon-booter ramp with its 55ft tall roll-in, and throw double backflips in stadiums packed with 35,000 people. But between Nitro Circus shows she’s been mixing it up on her mountain bike and dirt jumper, dipping her toes in events such as Crankworx and the Red Bull District Ride in Germany. Ellie is the epitome of someone who makes the most…

Review Carbon rims have come a long way in the past ten years. While they’ve always been lightweight and stiff, they had a reputation for being teeth-rattlingly unforgiving and wallet-rattlingly fragile. As a result, their main benefactors were XC racers and distance enthusiasts. However, the improvements in carbon manufacturing and the advent of wider more robust rim designs have seen carbon wheels move to the fore of components that can transform your riding experience. Canadian-based, carbon aficionados We Are One Composites are a company who’ve taken these new principles to the next level and their latest offering the Convergence wheelset is a prime example. Utilising contemporary design principles combined with cutting-edge carbon lay-up techniques, We Are One has managed to significantly increase the strength and impact resistance of their new…

Review Fluid FS A1 A lot is expected of modern trail bikes. Long-travel bikes climb so well these days, and short-travel bikes have progressed to the point where, most of the time, the rider’s the limiting factor on all but the biggest features. It’s cutting a fine slice to create a bike that climbs better than a modern enduro bike and descends better than the latest crop of downcountry bikes. But Norco may have come close with its new Fluid. Yes, your 160mm gravity-bully will punch through the chunk better, and your taut 100mm-travel rig will eat vert until your face freezes into a gurning grin, but they’ll never live comfortably in each other's worlds. It's in the centre of this Ven diagram that the Norco Fluid excels; the Fluid feels…

Rider Laurie Greenland Location: Cardrona Bike Park, NZ. Shutter speed: 1/2500 Aperture: f3.5 ISO: 200 Photographer Cameron Mackenzie It’s been a minute since we saw some of the world’s best gracing our trails; three years give or take. To see the likes of Laurie back here for the summer was a welcome sight, and this time he brought with him the rest of his team—The Santa Cruz Syndicate, for those living under a rock. For the last two weeks of January, the team called Queenstown home while they trained, partied, and christened their new prototype V10s on some of the South Island’s finest trails.…

Rider Brett Rheeder Location: Carry On, Queenstown, NZ. Shutter speed: 1/1600 Aperture: f2.8 ISO: 1600 Photographer Neil Kerr Earlier in the summer, Brett and I were involved in a long but rewarding video project based around the hunt for a New Zealand venue capable of hosting one of the world’s biggest mountain bike contests. On this particular day, while we waited for the video team to make a plan, we decided to scope the top section of the recently completed Carry On trail. I quickly found a spot and Brett tore past with his signature style and we scored this image. Not a bad use of a little downtime before the video entourage returned.…

Places to Ride Old Ghost Road “There are known knowns—there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns—that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” That was the response of Donald Rumsfeld, United States Secretary of Defence, to a reporter asking for evidence that Saddam Hussein tried to supply weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups 20 years ago. I often think of that epistemological puzzle (dubbed the Rumsfeld matrix) when heading out on an adventure into the “unknown unknowns”. No matter how much you read, or how many topographical maps you pore over, you never truly know what lurks between those elevation lines. But imagine…

Supply Zerode It seems fitting that Zerode’s legendary downhill bike was the result of two restless minds meeting while working on an iconic trail that bears the name of a great New Zealander. It was the summer of late 2005 in Whakarewarewa Forest and Rob Metz and James (Dodzy) Dodds were working on Billy T. Often on those long midsummer days, the best way to beat the heat is to sling as much banter as dirt. Inevitably the chat turned to bikes. And Rob and Dodzy had plenty to talk about. They’d been tinkering away on their own contraptions, Burt Munro-style, in relative isolation: Rob had built a series of high-pivot trail bikes optimised for the steep, jank of New Zealand’s backcountry, while Dodzy had been trying to build the fastest…

People Sam Shaw I’ve known of Sam Shaw for years, even though, as I remarked to him, we have never properly met. In 2013, Geoffrey Notman and I were trackside watching the Elite/U23 XC National Champs race in Rotorua. It was as hot as hell and we drank beer while G plucked his nylon-stringed guitar. We’d both terrorised our respective age group categories on single speeds and we watched as Anton Cooper and Dirk Peters drilled each other around the dusty Whakarewarewa course in the big boys’ category. A couple minutes back, Sam was hunting potatoes in fourth place, wedged between Carl Jones and Mikey Northcott. Those were the classic names back then. XC was still the most popular code, and when Sam did it, he was fast. Sam grew up…

DISCOVERING ALASKAS ENDLESS POTENTIAL Alaska has a storied history as one of the world’s most revered destinations for backcountry skiers and snowboarders. The expanses of ridable terrain during the long Alaskan winters are seemingly endless. It has long been a rite of passage for winter athletes who seek to push the boundaries of what’s possible on snow. It’s rare for big, backcountry snow lines to translate into ridable mountain biking, though. Slopes with the right mix of slope, elevation, terrain, and accessibility are more of a fantasy than a reality, and there aren’t many places in the world that have the right recipe. Perhaps that’s why big-mountain freeride is such a niche part of mountain biking. Finding terrain to not only ride, but also push the boundaries of what’s possible,…

Review Radio Brakes The 1990s were an exciting time for mountain bike parts. It was a decade when cottage industry manufacturers were pushing the boundaries of CNC machining with riotous exuberance. It was the era that spawned Kooka’s splatter-annodised cranks and Ringle’s 3DV parts (a colour so vivid you could detach a retina by staring at it too hard). It was an era of peacocking in milled billet. In those days, you could pick up a magazine and see any number of new companies sporting bizarre, hollowed-out pieces of aluminium built more by feel rather than FEA analyses. It was a special time to be a bike nerd. These days, when a small player jumps into the market it’s usually with a small but useful widget that makes your bike work…

Review EXT e-Storia Mountain bikers may not be as familiar with EXT Racing Shox as they are with the big two suspension manufacturers, but in terms of pedigree, this Italian suspension specialist has been working across almost all aspects of motorsport, including F1 with Lotus, rallying with both Citroen and Hyundai (including New Zealand’s Haydon Paddon) and touring cars with Honda. They also produce dampers for off-road racing, Moto GP, ATV/ Quad and more—so they know plenty about making suspension that works. EXT Racing Shox’s suspension is available in New Zealand through the good folk at ProFlow Suspension, who provide each EXT customer with a custom-built damper tuned to their weight, riding style, and bike’s kinematics. We’ve been through the purchase and customisation process with ProFlow and have been running the…

Last Roll “Progression” is a concept that lurks at the core of mountain biking culture. The idea is that, as mountain bikers, we should continuously improve our skills and abilities on our bikes. But what if it's bollocks? I originally wrote “what if it's all bollocks?" But that's not true: not all progression is bollocks, just most of it. First, let me unruffle some feathers. There are some talented mountain bikers achieving absolutely incredible things, be it jaw-dropping stunts, technical riding wizardry, or inspiring feats of endurance. To pull off a triple backflip or ride 5000km in two weeks requires years of dedicated progression; these sorts of achievements don't happen overnight. But how relevant is “progression" for the average mountain biker? Initially, a big part of taking up mountain biking…

Elliot Smith Location: Airplane Mode, Squamish, Canada. Shutter speed: 1/800 Aperture: f2.8 ISO: 6400 Caleb Smith Back in 2017, after one of their famous lunchtime trail rides, the crew at OneUp Components in Squamish, BC, decided that the town needed a flowy jump trail. Various people had built illegal jump trails in Squamish before, but the riding area was sorely missing a progressive, inviting, rollable jump line. Last June, 2500 volunteer hours came to a head and the 20-strong crew at OneUp officially opened Airplane Mode. Elliot was lucky enough to be in town for the free barbecue, beers and shuttles, and made himself right at home.…

Places to Ride Mt Herbert If you’ve ever ridden in Christchurch’s Port Hills, you would’ve looked across the azure waters of Lyttelton Harbour and seen the hulking mass of Te Ahu Patiki/Mt Herbert. At 909m, it’s the highest peak on Banks Peninsula, but unless you’ve got a penchant for law-breaking, and pissing off local farmers and trampers, it’s always been off-limits to mountain bikers…until now. Christchurch trail-building company, Graded Earth, has just completed a shared-use trail that climbs from the picturesque Orton Bradley Park in Charteris Bay to the track that leads to Te Ahu Patiki, opening up legal mountain bike access to iconic peak for the first time ever. It's been a bit of a journey to get to this point. In October 2020 the Rod Donald Trust—an organisation that…

Places to Ride Moerangi Trail How could we not be lost in the moment as we wound under the Mesozoic canopy of the Whirinaki forest? The thick fern ceiling was dwarfed by giant tōtara, rimu, and mataī trees, a forest David Bellamy had described as a “living cathedral”. This spectacular remnant of prehistoric New Zealand had uppercut us into silent revelry, broken only by the gentle hum of our tyres biting into the trail and the rhythmic sway of our bike-packing bags. “Poo, bum, stink hole, fart!” A giggled war cry punctuated the stillness, snapping us back to the present. Oh yes, we’d brought our toddler along for the ride, too. We love bike-packing as a couple; simple and inexpensive, it has put us at the coalface of many adventures, from…

Supply Brazn Bikes Prototype. The word sends shivers of excitement down any mountain biker’s spine. Often shrouded in secrecy, word of a new bike in development passes through the community in whispers or in the dark corners of internet forums, while we wait for details to drop via the inevitable, hyped-up press release. Brazn bikes has taken a different approach —no surprises for a company built around being bold and doing things differently. Their eye-catching white-and-blue pre-production trail bike has been out on the trails for all to see, eliciting longing stares. The Christchurch-based company may be a new name in the mountain-biking world, but it calls on more than 25 years of experience and expertise in high-end design and carbon fibre manufacturing from its sister company, Dynamic Composites. Both outfits…

Despite being physically shattered, Annie Ford’s unbridled, infectious enthusiasm and zeal for life somehow still radiated from her. Not only had she completed an epic threemonth solo journey cycling and surfing the length of New Zealand aboard a Santa Cruz Nomad, the bubbly Tasmanian had just destroyed the 8848m Everest Challenge by punching out 10,000 vertical metres non-stop on Coronet Peak's access road and Rude Rock trail. Ticking off one of those achievements in a lifetime would be memorable, but the 32-yearold has completed both in just four months. “It's wild, hey!” Annie laughs. “If you'd told me in June what I would've completed by the end of the year, there's no way I would've believed you. Man, talk about a life-changing time in my life; 2022 really has been…

Review Microshift Advent X These days it’s rare to go on a ride without having a conversation about broken derailleurs, snapped chains, or for someone to wax nostalgic about the indefatigable drivetrains of yesteryear. It sometimes seems like there’s an arms race to cram more and more cogs into cassettes, to winnow chains down to harakeke strands, and engorge the derailleur into some grotesque appendage. And why are we making the thing that has to get out of the way of bumps heavier? It’s like some sort of Spy vs Spy self-sabotage spiral. On the flipside, remembering you have that 50-tooth gear while spelunking through the pain cave feels pretty good…right up until the point you’re weeping trailside over the mangled wreckage of your $900 derailleur, wondering if your significant other’s…

Review Pivot Shuttle SL Late last year Arizona-based brand Pivot launched the newest member of their Shuttle family—the SL. A short-travel, lightweight, pedal-assist rocket ship for the ages, the SL is Pivot’s first foray into lightweight eMTBs, the hottest category in biking right now. The momentum for this style of bike has been building for a couple of years with bikes like the Specialized Levo SL and Orbea Rise, but things hit a fever pitch last winter when Trek dropped their Fuel EXe. The TQ motor that is the heartbeat of the Fuel EXe was a big step forward in small motor performance and catapulted the lightweight e-bike category firmly into the spotlight. The lingering question that has remained was how other brands and motor companies would respond. Step in Pivot…