Do you Ride Rotorua?
Whakarewarewa Forest in Rotorua is an amazing place to ride, for sure, and is arguably the most popular park-like facility in New Zealand for mountain biking. It has a long back story as a mountain biking destination, and about the only constant besides the hero dirt and the trees (well, some of them) is the Rotorua Mountain Bike Club.
The forest trail system these days is ably developed and maintained by the Rotorua Trails Trust, and they do a great job. Various commercial trail building outfits share the workload with the Trust diggers, but it hasn’t always been that way. Before anybody thought of starting a trail building company, the club was organising working bees and events, and managing the burgeoning trail network. The club also built the relationships with the city and more importantly, the iwi land-owners and the forestry industry. A decent amount of the trails that form today’s monster selection were created by individuals and posses under the club’s eye. READ MORE
Three will do
Summer is still the flavour down here. We have been getting out on the bikes even more than usual, and I am really hoping that things do come in threes.
Two dumb crashes while I slowly adapted to dry and dusty conditions were followed yesterday by a really dumb one which hurt more than the first two combined but also made me laugh out loud.
Strava tells me I have ridden my favourite trail 84 times, but I reckon that is about half my total goes at it. So I should be getting the hang of it by now.
Near the end there is a short (two bike lengths) steep uphill, crowned by a snaggle of roots. One is not even really a root, if by root you mean a part of a tree that is mostly underground.
It sort of hovers along a handspan above the ground, and will compress and allow a wheel to clatter over it. READ MORE
No School like the Old School
The other day we went for an unorchestrated spin in the woods.
We had a plan, it went out the window. Our mate had actual written instructions, also rolled into a ball and binned.
We followed our noses, if the not the path of least resistance, and ended up doing a lap of some old-school trails.
After the ride we commented on how a mountain bike patch full of the trails we enjoy around here can lead to some being bypassed more often than not.
The list of trails we rode included some that are hugely popular, and some that many people may never have seen. READ MORE
