Spoke Issue 62 preview

SPOKE I SS U E 62 J U LY 2015

ISSN 1177-018X ISSUE 62 JULY 2015 NZ $10.90 AUS $11.90

CONOR MACFARLANE, BANNOCKBURN

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COULD ANYTHING BE MORE HARDCORE THAN BIKING GREENLAND IN WINTER?

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BY MARTIN BISSIG

“Are you sure you’re on the right flight?” a nice woman asks us at the Air Greenland check-in at Copenhagen as she processes our bike bags as excess baggage. We’re heading for Greenland in the middle of winter. This much is sure. The next few weeks will prove whether or not it was a good idea. We have about as much knowledge of the world’s largest island as a winter biking spot as the airport employee does about our fat bikes.

emails, I realised the trail would be less than ideal for mountain bikes in the warmer temperatures of the summer months. Depending on weather, the ground can be boggy between June and September, the mosquitoes aggressive, and the poorly-marked paths sometimes difficult to find. And while numerous people have already tortured themselves with this ordeal, I decided to drop the summer option.

I learned from a friend that Greenland has a 160km-long hiking trail called the Arctic Circle Trail. Far away from civilization, it begins in the perpetual ice of the glaciers found in Kangerlussuaq and ends at the coastal town of Sisimiut. During summer it takes approximately ten days to go from town to town––by foot. After some initial internet research and a couple of

Together with Claude Balsiger (with whom I’ve already shared several crazy expeditions in the Himalayas) and Valais mountain guide Fabian Mooser, we brainstormed a new plan. The hype around fat bikes fitted quite well into our planning.

Finally, the perfect piece of equipment to make our expedition possible: to be the first to traverse the Arctic Circle Trail by mountain bike in winter!

A LITTLE R AY OF SUNSHINE WHERE IRON AND WATER MEET DIRT AND MOUNTAINS T E X T A N D P H OTO S BY M AT T I A S F R E D R I K S S O N

Narvik is located on the shores of the emeraldcoloured Ofotfjorden, surrounded by rugged mountain peaks and forested hills. On a sunny day, it’s as close as you’ll ever come to paradise.

That’s exactly how it was when I visited Narvik in early August: three magic days of blue skies, 23 degrees and perfect biking conditions.

Much of Narvik’s history is owed to the large iron mine in Kiruna in Sweden’s Lapland.

In the early 1900s, Narvik was just a cluster of farms and held its first municipal election in 1902.

That same year, Ofotbanen Railway Line opened to transport iron ore from the mine in Kiruna to the port in Narvik. This was a huge turning point for the city and is still the dominant industry in the area.

Every day twelve freight trains traverse the mountain

railway loaded with thousands of tonnes of iron ore to be exported all over the world. The railway is the northernmost electric railway in the world and one of the oldest used to transport iron ore.

I’m in town to reconnect with Micke af Eken­stam and check out the trails. We’ve skied a lot together over the years, but this was the first time we’d ride bikes together. I knew he’d been working on a new trail for a few years and figured it was time for a visit. It’s a beautiful morning with clear skies when we drop into the downhill track on Fagernesfjellet right above town. The ship­ping port is located straight down the mountain at the mouth of the Ofotfjorden, which is right in front of us as we ride the upper part of the steep, burly track. Even with the big port and tankers in the fjord, it’s incredibly beautiful and impossible to just ride by without stopping to take in the view.

It’s almost 11 pm and 16yo Norwegian super talent Brage Vestavik whips it out one last time before the sun dips behind the mountains.

Not in it for the Money COMMERCIAL BUILDERS AND THE TRAILS WE LOVE

Text by Jono Baddiley Photos by Caleb Smith

In the infancy of New Zealand mountain biking, there wasn’t much in the way of MTB-specific trailbuilding. We rode farm tracks, 4WD tracks, or walking tracks that got us into the great beyond. But there weren’t any trails that were built by, or specifically for, mountain bikers.

This started changing in the 90s as the sport began to gain steam. The likes of Fred Christensen led a growing number of trailbuilders in Rotorua, and across the country riders put down their bikes, picked up grubbers, shovels, rakes and saws, and started building the trails they wanted to ride. This didn’t always go smoothly. Often, people’s ability to build didn’t match their aspirations, and the time it took to complete a trail meant their attention would wander onto more exciting ideas, or the landowner would find out about their (unauthorised) building activities and bring a halt to the whole shebang.

But in many cases, trails were completed. We could ride them, maintain them, and they were beautiful (or if not beautiful, sufficiently full of character that we forgave them for occasionally breaking us). Most importantly, they were ours. And each time a new trail was built, it extended the collective knowledge and skill of the local community. Trails took on a distinctly regional flavour; a trail in Rotorua, with a more open and flowy feel, wouldn’t be mistaken for a Wellington ‘Wellytrack’ route, where steep hillsides, rocks and regenerating bush brought a tighter, slower, more-likely-to-trip-you-with-a-root experience.

Over time, volunteer-led efforts have built many hundreds of kilometres of singletrack all over the country. Much of it has been handbuilt, with months (or years) of effort being

sunk into creating the perfect five minutes of descent, or twenty-five minutes of climbing back up for another run. The sweat and blisters donated towards the creation of the trails created a protective sense of ownership; some trailbuilders get grumpy when changes are made to “their” trail without consultation.

If anything, the pace of change and the growth in the number of trails has accelerated in the past five years. As councils and regions through the country started seeing mountain biking as an economic resource, or as a catalyst to get their sofa-bound residents out into the countryside, investment into trail networks increased. The nitrous was added to the scene with the establishment of Nga Haerenga, the New Zealand Cycle Trail project.

The government provided $50M, and with significant co-funding the project brought a huge focus on the impact that trails can have, and the sorts of benefits that commerciallybuilt trails can provide. While many of the cycleway projects aren’t what we would consider ‘mountain biking’––catering for riders looking for easy (grade 1–2) multi-day rides––some (such as the Old Ghost Road) are true backcountry adventures. And they could only be built with professional assistance.

As the volume of trail work has increased, a critical mass has been attained that supports the operation of commercial trailbuilders, contractors who specialise in building new and maintaining existing trails for a fee. More activities that used to be undertaken by volunteers are now handled by contractors, and to me this raised some questions: does commercial trailbuilding damage the sense of ownership and engagement that the mountain biking community has with their

Bryn Atkinson, Rainbow Moutain, Rotorua

local trails? Will commercial trailbuilding lead to a homogenisation of trails throughout the country, i.e. flow trails that are essentially identical in Auckland, Rotorua, Nelson and Queenstown? And what does all this mean for those of us who’ve built the basis of our trail networks around the country?

To answer these questions and more, I needed to go and talk with land managers, clubs and commercial trailbuilders.

I wondered what it was that commercial trailbuilders looked for in a trail they built. The first impression I got from Adam King—one of the two directors of Rotorua-

based Empire of Dirt—is his enthusiasm and passion. He’s a mountain biker who is stoked to have found a job building trails he loves to ride. And this goes throughout the industry; all the commercial builders I’ve spoken with can’t believe their luck to find themselves working in an industry they love.

To the question about whether ‘flow trails’ are taking over the world, the landowner’s specification of each project is key.

“Landowners are looking for fluidity”, noted Adam. “Gentle climbs with good reward. Trails that are fun to ride. They want mum, dad and the kids to get out and get stoked, not something where it’s, ‘It’s so hard I shat

“are communities still engaged in trails that they don’t have sweat equity in?”

g n i r i t ork w Talking treads and tripping with tough nuts WORDS BY JASON MOESCHLER PHOTOGRAPHY BY CALEB SMITH When I think back on the epic trip we took to New Zealand in March, it’s hard not to think about what brought us there—us being me, my WTB/Cannondale Overmountain teammate Mark Weir, and our families. I’m a sales and product development guy for WTB and outside of this I do my best to hold my own as a bike racer.

So when the EWS named New Zealand as its first stop, it was as if my two worlds collided.

New Zealand was definitely a place my wife and kid would go, so score one for dad! The race would give me just enough of a taste for world-class enduro racing to last me the rest of the year, and I would get a chance to hang out with Mark Dickson, head of KRD Imports (WTB’s New Zealand distributor), and the guy who, unbeknownst to him, might have done the most to advance WTB’s tyre and tread design.

It all started with an intense interaction with Dickson at the WTB distributor camp in

Downieville, California, circa 2008, my inaugural year as a tech rep with the company. I can’t remember anything from that long ago but I can remember the feeling he left me with following that conversation. He had creative criticism, to say the least, regarding WTB’s tyre line of the time.

The conversation went something like: “Your tyres are (expletive) terrible, I can’t (expletive) sell them, and I really don’t (expletive) like riding them.” As the new guy fresh off the Downieville podium, I could hold my own on the race course but going toe-to-toe with a guy like Dickson––as straight a shooter as they come, along with being a sun-up to sundown, go-big-or-go-home kind of guy on the bike––all I could do was take it in. So I did, and when we finally turned it all around with a totally revitalised tyre line, I knew Mark would be waiting.

While he’d simply said what everyone around the globe was thinking about our tyres of the time, it took moxy to cut through the bull and just say it. This trip was a chance to put it to the test on Dickson’s home trails, which proved to be as gnarly as he is. The guy competes in the Coast to Coast, and I know for a fact that he came real close to beating our Trail Boss, Fred Falk, in the Downieville Classic.

After getting my ass handed to me in the EWS Rotorua (a great reminder that enduro isn’t the preferred race format for an all-mountain guy

Jason Moeschler and Mark Weir climb to Lagoon Saddle, Craigleburn Forest Park.

“THE SWAMP-LIKE PATCHES OF MARSH WE WERE RIDING THROUGH LET ME KNOW THIS WAS TO BE NO ORDINARY RIDE”