Innholdsfortegnelse for Feb-Mar-Apr 2017 i Mountain Biking Australia

More Funding for Blue Derby Over the last couple of years Derby in north-eastern Tasmania has been undergoing a quiet revolution, as $2.5 million dollars of federal money has been injected into the region to create a ‘world class’ MTB destination. Of course building 80 kilometres of MTB singletrack doesn’t happen overnight and this project is still taking shape. The latest addition is a new singletrack descent from Poimena. It runs parallel to the original Blue Tier ride offering a fun and flowing World Trail built alternative to the rugged old school fire trail. The original Blue Tier track was 12.3km long, descending 569m and climbing 218m, the new version is 20km long and offers 780 vertical metres of descending with 388m of climbing. An IMBA blue rated ride,…

1 ST PRIZE TOTAL VALUE OVER $16,000 SALTED ROCK CANDY - $4,895 Win the Ultimate Garage Giveaway and you’ll be able to choose between the Salted Popcorn Enduro or the Salted Rock Candy pictured here. Both are fully-fledged fatbikes that offer the ability to explore far beyond your regular MTB trails. Where the Popcorn is a hardtail, the Rock Candy offers 110mm of rear wheel travel with a highly adjustable Cane Creek Inline shock. It makes this fat dually a versatile all-rounder; take it to the beach one day and race it in a gravity enduro event the next. It comes with a SRAM 1X drivetrain and a 120mm travel Bluto fork up front—what a beast! KTM LYCAN 273 SE1 - $3,799 It seems that mid-travel trail bikes are all…

Read any of our bike reviews and you’ll notice we bang on a lot about frame geometry. It mightn’t seem as exciting as an all-new suspension linkage, or as visually obvious as a top-end Eagle 12-speed drivetrain, but frame geometry can make or break any bike from the outset. Experienced mountain bikers already know that frame geometry is important but it’s a very complex topic. You’ll commonly hear people say that a bike will do this or that because it has a 65-degree head angle. Well it may, but looking at one digit in isolation isn’t going to paint the full picture. You need to look at whole range of measurements and consider how they interrelate. Do all this and you’ll still be guessing, but at least it’ll qualify…

The Craftworks ENR is a rare beast indeed, and not just because it’s only recently come into existence. It’s designed in Australia. It uses a very novel suspension system. You can buy it direct from the manufacturer. And rather than being the product of a full design team, just one man is behind it all; from frame layout to suspension kinematics. That man is Hugh McLeay, and he’s not employed by a big bike company, or any bike company for that matter. He’s simply a very smart cookie who wanted to design a better long-travel trail bike, so in typical Australian fashion he set about doing just that. It’d been quite some years in the making but his brainchild, the Craftworks ENR, is finally here. Birthing the ENR Some of…

It’s not based on anything too factual, but I’ve always seen Merida as a relatively conservative brand. They’ve long held a strong presence in crosscountry racing; one of the more traditional aspects of our sport and for the most part they are slow to adopt new trends. Times are changing however. For 2017 they are stepping away from their 16-year long sponsorship of the Multivan Merida mountain bike team and two of their most recent bike releases are pitched squarely at the trail and enduro markets; the all new One-Sixty and the Big Trail that we have on review. The Big Trail is Merida’s first foray into plus bikes and it’ll be offered at two price points; the $1,999 Big Trail 600 and the $2,599 Big Trail 800. Both models…

WINNER! Scott DeVries Looking out from the South East Head trail on Hamilton, a 9km return trip from the resort—what an awesome looking location to ride! Kelly Walker The Red Hill Riders recently held their first gravity enduro event at Arthur’s Seat in Victoria. Kelly took this awesome photo at the top of their feature track; Charlottes Pass. Nice work Kelly! Scott Hannaford Scott took this photo of his mate, Tim Grainger, riding the Tathra trails on his 40th birthday Paul Clarke Exploring some MTB singletrack in the Kimberly region with sunrise over Lake Argyle. Matt Goodwin Looking out from ‘The Narrows’ on Tianjara Plateau, up above the NSW South Coast. Shayne Gauci Nine year old Cayden Gauci riding Trail Seven at Atherton Mountain Bike Park—these tracks are virtually in…

Bike or Body I’m a 50 year old part-time XC mountain biker. I ride a 2011 Scott Spark 60 with Shimano tubeless wheels and some Hope Technology bling. As I ride occasionally (every six weeks or so), I’m generally happy with the performance of my bike. In fact, it’s usually my own sloppy performance that I’m less-than-impressed with. As soon as I hit a hill of any size, I’m off the treadly and walking! Anyway, lately I’ve become aware of the trend towards 27.5 and 29-inch wheels and now I’m wondering, is my ‘old’ 26-inch bike past it? When I ride, I sometimes feel the Scott is a bit skatey but I have no idea how to set up the original RockShox/DT Swiss fork/shock combo. Given it is entry level…

Think Spicers Retreats and you’ll probably conjure up images of upmarket accommodation with fine food, usually in a rural setting; the sort of place you escape to for a luxury getaway. Endless singletrack probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind, but it should be if you’re visiting the Spicers Hidden Vale Retreat at Grandchester, about an hour’s drive southwest of Brisbane. Hidden Vale has a longstanding relationship with mountain biking and much of this stems back to one man—Graham ‘Skroo’ Turner. One of Australia’s wealthiest and most successful businessmen, Skroo is the driving force behind the Flight Centre travel agency – a multi-billion dollar business in itself – and he’s also a keen mountain biker. Back in 2002 he did an epic 117km ride along the Bicentennial Trail…

Some think of Bali as a budget priced resort town while others know it as a place of parties and excess. For many this reputation somewhat serves as a deterrent, but there’s a whole other side to this tropical island and you don’t have to dig too deep to find it. You’ll find this ‘touristville’ is limited to a very narrow strip and the other 95% of Bali remains a defiantly beautiful. As it happens, the island is also littered with rugged mountain trails and quite possibly the best riding in the region. It had been around 10 years since I’d been to Bali. At the time there was just one small company promoting mountain biking on the island. It may have been on a tiny scale but even…

Unless you’ve been under a rock somewhere, you’ll be well aware that SRAM has been on a big push to make the front derailleur obsolete. This mission has gone hand-in-hand with a campaign to make you feel inadequate if you don’t have 11-cogs on your rear cassette. As is customary, this process began with the ultra-light and similarly wallet lightening XX1 groupset. The concept has since trickled down through to X01, then X1 and then to GX. Each step has seen a slight gain in weight, but a comparatively large decrease in price whilst maintaining essentially the same performance and technology as the flagship product. And now we’ve got SRAM NX; an 11-speed drivetrain for the masses with a very wallet friendly price of around $575 for the lot; cranks,…

One of the most recognisable brands in mountain biking, Santa Cruz Bicycles is well and truly established in the upper echelon when it comes to prestige and desirability. Their bikes are ridden by absolute legends of the sport; from Danny MacAskill to Greg Minnar and Steve Peat—their propayroll is a veritable all-star cast of mountain biking. The bikes really stand out from the crowd too; clean, straight lines ensure they look sharp and purposeful with all manner of bright and sometimes gaudy colour schemes that shout ‘look at me!’ Of course for every candy apple red or baby blue and pink model there’s also a more stealthy option, just in case you’re not keen on looking like a popstar (or a popsicle). With Santa Cruz, their strength has always…

What is this mystical key to improving your riding ability; an ancient meditation technique or maybe some new performance enhancing drug? Well no, it’s about becoming better attuned to how you pedal and learning how to do so in the most efficient manner at any given point during a ride. To do this, you need to take a step back and think about how you actually pedal. First up, we’re not going to tell you to buy clip-in pedals and concentrate on pedalling in perfectly round circles—something you’ve probably heard regurgitated countless times. Clipless pedals have their advantages but from an efficiency standpoint, you can pedal very effectively with either flats or clipless—just ask Sam Hill who has placed top ten in elitelevel marathon events on flat pedals. Most…

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We’ve looked at Spank wheels previously, having reviewed the Oozy 295 a few years back. The 345 is a new generation offering that reflects the trend towards wider rims. Where the 295 measured 24mm between the bead hooks, the 345s are a full 30mm wide (35mm externally). Wide rims allow you to use lower air pressures for enhanced traction without encountering excessive tyre squirm or burping. The main pitfall with going wide, at least when using an alloy rim, is that the rims tend to get pretty heavy or very fragile. In an effort to avoid these problems, Spank uses a unique and quite elaborate rim extrusion. Where the inner wall of a rim is typically concaved, their ‘Ooh Bah’ shape is convexed—it actually has a raised ‘bump’ between…

Iran is very much a veiled and closed society, or at least it is to the majority of westerners. Outside of the highly weighted media reports, few of us really know a lot about the country. It is an increasingly staunch Islamic state and this brings certain restrictions, especially for women and even more so for women who actually want to ride and race bikes. We spoke to Faranak whilst she was taking part in a stage race in Turkey. Here the slender, confident, elegant and well-spoken Iranian girl didn’t just hold her own on the race track; she beat the European Champion and won the race outright. MBA. How did you get into mountain biking? FP. I’ve always been adventurous and I also love being out in nature. Mountain…

Fuji mightn’t be the first brand that comes to mind when you think of mountain bikes; they’re definitely better known on the skinny tyre scene. Nonetheless, they’ve been in the bike game for a long time and while their newish Rakan is an attempt to push the brand further up the MTB food chain, they’ve generally focused on making good value entry-level mountain bikes. The Reveal is the latest player in that camp. It’s pitched squarely at someone who’s just getting serious about riding and is looking for a doit-all bike to get them out and enjoying ‘proper’ MTB trails without needing to sell the car or refinance the house. With that type of rider in mind, we’ve been giving the Reveal a little roll around in the dirt…

Jonathan Cowen The Readers’ Rides competition is for the people who like to tinker and modify. The winning ride for this issue definitely qualifies on that front. This is Jonathan Cowen’s 2008 Specialized Stumpjumper—confused? Well we were to begin with but that’s what this bike started out as. After about six months of ownership, the modifications began. According to Jonathan the Stumpjumper was great on the downhills but the climbs and flatter sections were a slog. He then replaced the frame with a steel On One Inbred hardtail. Next came the carbon bars, XT/XTR drivetrain and Shimano SLX brakes. The only items that remain from the original bike are the wheels, the Fox 32 fork, the saddle and cranks! Jonathan says the bike is super-fast, fairly comfortable due to the…