Innholdsfortegnelse for Nov-Dec-Jan 2016 i Mountain Biking Australia

“From off-track fatbike adventuring through to all-mountain riding and good old fashioned trail riding. With this many bikes you could even spread the love and loan one to a non-riding buddy and get them involved too.” Ultimate Dream We always get excited when a new mag is finished and ready to roll off the printing press. A lot of research, photography, travel, bike testing and a good number of late nights goes into each and every issue of Mountain Biking Australia, so signing-off on another magazine is always rewarding. Besides, the temporary respite that follows provides time to clear the head and hit the trails! This issue however is really special, more so than usual. We’re giving away the biggest prize ever assembled in Mountain Biking Australia— the Ultimate Garage!…

Let’s face it; every red-blooded mountain biker could use a few more toys in their garage. Well one lucky reader will ride away with over $16,000 of new bikes and gear—everything you need to create the Ultimate Garage! Take a look at all the awesome gear on offer and don’t forget to check out our equally amazing second prize! KTM LYCAN 273 SE1 - $3,799 It seems that mid-travel trail bikes are all the rage at the moment, combining low weight and efficient pedalling with loads of funfactor. With 125mm of travel, 27.5 wheels, short 433mm chainstays and a 67-degree head angle, the Lycan 273 SE1 provides a fast and engaging ride. The ‘Straight Line’ suspension system keeps the frame simple and light, as does the Shimano SLX/XT 1X11 drivetrain.…

The name may sound Finnish but Suomy helmets are actually designed and made in Italy. The brand has a long history in motorsport protection but has only recently ventured into cycling. With its extended rear coverage, adjustable visor and plenty of vents (23 to be precise), the Scrambler is their take on the trail/enduro helmet. It’s available in no less than 10 colour-ways and two shell sizes. Our small-medium weighed 295g including visor; slightly more than the claimed 280g but still very much a lightweight compared to many similar helmets. The Scrambler retails for $219, which is getting towards the upper end of the spectrum. It seems the Suomy team have paid a lot of attention to the details on the Scrambler. Although it’s made using the now…

As the saying goes, there are two kinds of cyclists; those that have crashed and those who are going to crash. We do not want to think about it but the odds are we will either hit the dirt ourselves, see a riding buddy go down or come across a fellow mountain biker that has taken a tumble. As a result it’s important to have the basic knowledge and skills to provide assistance (or even look after ourselves until help arrives). There are three levels of first aid capability to consider: - Managing basic injuries to either continue riding or safely find help. - Dealing with more serious injuries whilst waiting for help to arrive. - Responding to life threating situations. Basic Injuries Your garden variety injuries will typically include…

Now there’s a string of numbers for you; 120, 9, 7000 and E—okay, the last is a letter. The marketing team aren’t going to win any creativity awards but the name of Merida’s One-Twenty is nonetheless pretty descriptive; 120mm of rear travel, 29-inch wheels, a high-end carbon fibre frame (bigger numbers mean better in Merida-speak) and an electronic drivetrain. The Taiwan-based company may have only been making bikes under their own name for around 15 years but they’ve been making bikes for some of the world’s biggest brands since the ’80s. Around 2000 they setup an R&D department in Germany and got serious about their own brand. While they have dabbled in gravity enduro and all-mountain bikes, their primarily focus has been cross-country and XC race oriented bikes. The current…

Building Up Jumping is one of the most fun things in mountain biking but it is also something many people struggle with. However it doesn’t need to be scary or particularly dangerous if approached in the correct way. Building Up You need to start on a table top jump, or a ramp up onto a flat area as shown in the pictures. In these situations it won’t matter if you don’t clear it, even if your wheels fail to leave the ground. You then need to start gradually with a focus on technique and you’ll be in the air in no time. The most important thing with jumping is the takeoff. If you mess up the takeoff, the landing just gets worse. If you are nice and smooth and get…

I remember my first mountain bike. Its beautiful blue frame and glossy black handlebars, very down to earth. A real bike next door type of bike. We did everything together. I loved that bike. Well, at least I thought I did. But then I saw the one, and by the one I mean a single speed. With its long slender steel tubes, beautiful curves and gazing 29-inch wheels. A real spring in its step. I was immediately in love. Though I really loved blue bike next door, I had to let it go. After all I’d found my saddle mate. It wasn’t long before I made a full commitment to single speed. For better or worse, in sickness and in mud. We were inseparable. I would defend single speed…

Hidden Peaks Adventure YOU may be aware of the trails that surround the Spicers retreat at Hidden Vale in Queensland, a bit over an hour out of Brisbane. They currently have over 50km of trails in and around their property which is expected to grow to over 100km once the Hidden Vale Adventure Park is complete. In addition to the Adventure Park, another option has recently opened up; the new Hidden Peaks Trail. This is a four day point-to-point ride that travels from Spicers Peak Lodge, way up on the Scenic Rim, and finishes at Spicers Hidden Vale. More than just a ride, this is pitched as an all-in luxury guided MTB tour and they’ll even supply you with a Merida 140 dually and riding gear if you don’t want…

Yackandandah or ‘Yack’ as it’s known by locals is a quiet little place with a real community atmosphere. It may rely heavily on tourism these days but there’s no facade on this town. The people are genuinely friendly and the town itself appears to be straight out of the history books. Nobody’s in a hurry and the colonial architecture really makes it feel like you’ve stepped back in time. While I’d heard that Yack was worth a look for its historical value, their folk festival and homemade jams, it was the whisper of mountain bike trails that eventually drew me here. The town is an easy half-hour drive south-east of Albury and it’s not far from a number of other MTB hotspots, both Bright and Mt Beauty are around 50…

GripSport has been making bike carriers for over a decade. I last reviewed one in 2007 and even then it followed very similar lines. Rather than hanging the bike by the frame as many racks do, it cradles the wheels from underneath and uses a padded hook to hold the bike in place. This system ensures the bike frame doesn’t encounter any undue stress, and it also accommodates all manner of suspension designs, no matter how weird the tube profiles. While the latest version looks nearly identical to the ’07 rendition, there have been numerous tweaks over the years. The wheel hoops are now bigger to accommodate all the newschool wheel systems; I carried everything from 29ers to semi-fat 27.5 plus bikes and it worked with all of them. The…

We constantly hear marketing guff trotted out about such-andsuch being a game changer. While much of this has no real foundation, we feel that the sport has seen a few true game changers over the years. For our money they would have to be disc brakes, suspension and dropper posts; we rate each of these as a real innovation that has genuinely improved the way our bikes ride. While most accept disc brakes and suspension, dropper posts are a more recent addition and many people still think they are only of use if you ride down steep stuff. Take full advantage of a dropper and it will allow you to corner better and boost your confidence through any technical terrain, even if it’s flat. The key is remembering to use…

I like doughnuts. A lot. My wife knows this. My kids know this. Some of my friends know this. When I read health magazines, it appears I’m not supposed to like doughnuts. Let alone eat them before I ride. That makes me sad. I love nachos, pizza, juicy burgers, party mix lollies and Tic Toc biscuits. A quick flick back through my health magazines and nope, I shouldn’t like these either apparently. Don’t get me wrong I also love banana smoothies, Weetbix, chicken with salad, vegetables, fruit, good oils and grain filled bread but is it wrong to eat less healthy foods—especially if I want to ride my bike? To answer this, I’ll start by outing myself and revealing that I follow a group on Instagram called ‘Doughnuts and Deadlifts’.…

Devinci’s Django is both a very modern and very old take on mountain biking. It’s not a downhill bike and it’s not an XC bike; it’s simply a mountain bike and it’s designed to go wherever and however you want it to. It’s also perhaps a backlash against the tendency for riders to be ‘over-biked’ in recent years; just because you can get a super slack 160-170mm travel bike that pedals efficiently uphill and descends like a demon doesn’t automatically mean that it’s the best bike for most of us to ride most of the time. With its 120mm of rear wheel travel paired to 130mm up front and a fairly moderate 67.5 to 68-degree head angle (the geometry is adjustable), it would be easy to pigeonhole the Django as…

How often do you lube your chain; after each and every ride, once a week or only when it starts to squeak? And what about cleaning; how often should the chain be degreased? While there are no hard and fast rules, here’s some general advice that will help you get the most out of your drivetrain. What is Wear? Let’s start by looking at what drivechain wear actually is, beginning with the chain. Each link in the chain consists of two inner and two outer plates, a pair of rollers and pins to hold it all together. There are also bushings that the rollers sit on, but on a modern chain these are formed as part of the inner plate. You’ve probably heard people refer to ‘chain stretch’. This is…

Derailleur Swaps I just finished reading your very interesting article on the new Kona Precept 130 from your Aug/Sept/October 2016 edition. In the last section, the reviewer mentions that to get a clutch derailleur, you’d need to go all 10-speed with the drivetrain. My question is, why can’t one just swap the nine-speed derailleur over to a clutch equipped 10-speed unit? Am I incorrect, in thinking that the indexing is contained in the shifters, and that the derailleurs movement is entirely controlled by those shifters? Perhaps the jockey wheels would be a bit slimmer on the 10-speed derailleur. But surely that wouldn’t cause any issues? Certainly I retained a ninespeed front derailleur when I had to replace all the other elements with 10-speed (I couldn’t buy decent nine-speed shifters anymore…

" Jomsom is a small one-yak kind of place with limited electricity and facilities. There’s a distinct mountain chill and a very Tibetan feel—both in the architecture and its people." To say it took my breath away would be a monumental understatement; Mustang that is. This ancient high-rise Himalayan land did just that, and it did so in every conceivable way; physically, emotionally and visually. I’d waited nearly 20 years to make this journey and the experience was as wild and dramatic as I’d hoped—it’s impossible to put the reins this particular Mustang. My first visit to Nepal was back in the ’90s with the aim of completing the first solo mountain bike loop of the famous Annapurna Circuit—one of the most famous and spectacular multi-day high-mountain treks in the…

The current MTB market is flooded with different brands, from multinational giants to small-time cottage industry builders. From this there are a handful of brands that really punch above their weight. They mightn’t have a huge market-swallowing range of models and a limitless marketing budget but they stand out regardless. There’s no doubt that Yeti is of this ilk. It really is a classic and desirable brand; one that’ll cause eyes to wander and heart rates to lift. The whys and wherefores of this appeal are hard to pinpoint but the brand awareness extends way beyond what it should given their relatively small size. No doubt their involvement in the race scene plays a role. They’ve been around since the ’80s and sponsored riders such as John Tomac, Juli Furtado,…

First introduced for the 2016 season, the Loki is Orbea’s take on the 27.5 plus hardtail—a segment of the market that’s growing at quite a rate. For the uninitiated, plus tyres and rims are wider than a regular mountain bike wheels, but not as wide as a dedicated fatbike. Where the true fatbike has tyres that are 3.8-inches wide or bigger, the plus tyres are between 2.8 and 3.2 inches in width, usually mounted to a 40-50mm wide rim. In our last issue we looked at this category in great detail. To briefly surmise, going to a ‘midfat’ tyre helps to enhance traction whilst adding a bit of comfort when compared to a traditional 2.1-2.4 inch MTB tyre. Instead of running 20-30psi, the larger tyre volume and wider rim will…

Winner! Mel Hayes Mel Hayes is very proud of her ‘Bronny Baby’; a Christmas present from her awesome man she says. The first thing she did was pull the Bronson down and rebuilt it with a few modifications along the way; custom Goodridge cables, a KS Lev dropper post and Race Face Atlas pedals. Mel says, “She is the best ride I've ever had and all my heart and soul has gone into her, I will not be parting with her for a very long time, but I guess every rider thinks that about their own bike.” Awesome bike Mel! Daniel Brownlie Daniel built his GT Sensor Carbon up from a frame kit—it’s the ‘Team’ model. To pull it together he used a mix of components from his old bike,…

Winner! Myles Greenwood An awesome ‘light-bro’ moment captured on a sunny winters evening with a lone rider along the Yarra trails in Melbourne. Peter Syme A road trip photo taken on Great Ocean Road whilst travelling home from Forrest in the Otway Ranges, Victoria. Alex Reid A good old bike selfie taken on the Majura Pines trails. This was Alex’s maiden voyage on his Haro Shift R5. Chon Hogan A bit of sibling rivalry with Mazey (10) and Jakko (9) out on the dry, steep and dusty trails at Strath Creek in Victoria. Andrew Duff Enduring the Tassie winter with Andrew’s ‘old faithful’ Giant Talon—so far this bike has covered 26,189km. Pedro ‘Sneaky’ Salisnew Sneaky snapped this shot of trail building guru Peter ‘Mozzie’ McLean test riding the newly completed…