Pro Bike Bag. - Singletrack Magazine

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Studio Tool Box Style,function,finesse and power combine to give you the ultimate tool companion. Prestige brands from i-ride.co.uk 9 // Editorial: On Progress. Chipps muses on the pinnacle of evolution. 10 // UK Adventure: Trail Centre Zero. Chipps talks to those involved in the rebirth of the original Welsh trail centre. 78 // Classic Ride: Glen Tilt. This Scottish gem contains some big-country bike riding, beautiful views and more than a few hazards, as Andy McCandlish discovered to his peril. 24 // The Big Column: Telling Lies. Al Leigh is sorry to tell you that a new bike isn’t the answer to all woes. 90 // Through the Grinder. The fine, late-summer weather has helped us rack up the miles on our latest collection of test components. 13 pages of them! 28 // Singletrack Heroes: Dan Jarvis. Barney chats to the commentator, team-manager and all-round nice bloke. 95 // Subscribe to Singletrack. Already a Premier Member? Well done, we love you. No idea what we’re on about? Read this! 32 // Column: It’s gym life, but not as we know it. Proper jobs are a necessary evil for most of us but Meerkat explains how he’s made his work for, not against, his riding. 106 // Grinder Bike: Saracen Kili Flyer 123. Chipps finds the new, new Kili as easy as the proverbial ABC to get along with. 34 // International Travel: Spanish Utah. How hot is too hot? Pete and Sam hit the Basque Country. 46 // Racehead: Commonwealth Games. Local/racer/boy-racer Rab Wardell reports from the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. 56 // International Travel: Autumn Leaving. Nicolas Switalski tags along on the Autumn Girls’ mini Chile tour. 68 // International Travel: Mountains and/of Cheese. There’s something special about the way the French organise mountain bike races. Beate tackles the Transmaurienne. 108 // Grouptest: Trail Pumps. Puncture fairy been to visit? You’ll be wanting one of these, then… 118 // Bike Test: Fun for £850. Bikes from GT, Ragley and Specialized that leave enough change from a grand to buy yourself some really nice socks. 128 // We Just Work Here. Who does what, how to get in touch, what helped this issue on its way and who we’d like to thank. 130 // Premier Listings. Proud owner of a Singletrack Premier Member’s Card? Here’s what it gets you. 77 // Propaganda. We’ve got new T-shirts, and they’re perfect for the imminent Indian summer that’s just around the corner. Maybe. These symbols tell you which features and reviews in the print edition have extra, enhanced content in the Singletrack App. Whether it’s bike test and adventure films, 360º product shots and animations, or an extra helping of the stunning photography we’re famous for, you’ll find it all in the digital pages of the Singletrack App, available through your subscription. singletrackworld.com/subscribe. 6 Above: The perfect antidote to three days trekking around the indoor halls of Eurobike, Kona’s 2015 range was launched at Serfaus-FissLadis in Austria with a mix of alpine enduro trails and plenty of bike park action too. Big mountain riding, fast and fun bikes, with a bit of jumpy lift-assist for good measure. Thanks Kona, it’s just what we needed. Picture by Joonas Vinnari. Rider: Dan Bladon. Cover: “This shot is from Colorado’s Two Elk Trail in early October, when it had snowed the night before. The rider is Brady Schlichting, a legendary – and some say one of the best – mountain bike mechanics in Vail. Fast smooth single track on the top section flows through Vail’s famous Back Bowls and then tightens up for the technical and challenging rock gardens that wind along Two Elk Creek into the town of Minturn.” Picture by Jeff Cricco. 7 Blink and you’ll miss it… Chipps muses on the pinnacle of evolution. Words by Chipps. Canon’s EOS 1V SLR camera was launched in 2000 to much acclaim. It was the company’s finest film camera to date and boasted speeds of up to ten frames a second. Nikon answered the challenge with the Nikon F6 camera, launched in 2004. Around this time, the digital photography revolution really started to get a hold with better and better cameras launched, seemingly every month. Professional photographers started to shift away from working with film, leaving it to the hipsters and the analogue purists, and the world went digital. I really wanted a Canon 1V when they came out, but could never afford the thousands of pounds they cost. I made do instead by buying Steve Behr’s spare Canon 1N, previously ‘the best Canon in the world’, when he upgraded to a clutch of new 1Vs. After only a couple of years, I realised that I didn’t really use my film body that much, having gone to digital myself, and sold it for a couple of hundred pounds – which, ironically, is what you can pick up a second-hand 1V for these days. Those ultimate Canon and Nikon film cameras are still available, but the slightly melancholy fact is that they’ll never be improved upon. Both of these companies created these masterpieces, using more than 50 years of experience in making cameras and optics that were the absolute state of the art of film cameras. They probably weren’t intended to be the pinnacle of film cameras at the time – there were doubtless plans for a Nikon F7 and a Canon 1W, but the sheer scale of the digital revolution was, at the time, unknown. The demand for state-of-the-art film cameras has dried up rapidly in the last ten years and no one now has the budget or the will to dedicate to improving on those cameras. They will always remain the best film SLR cameras you can buy. And this brings me to the wheel size thing. Mountain bikes evolved rapidly from their cruiser-bike origins in the late 1970s, so that by the time the century turned around, front and full suspension were already well established and it was a case of refining some already great designs. The pressure to improve year-on-year brought out some brilliance from the bike and component designers as they whittled away frame weights and improved on angles and efficiencies. Then came big wheels in the early 2000s and distracted those designers, who now had two different, and sometimes competing, criteria to design around. And then, just yesterday in mountain bike terms, came the 27.5in wheel. Not wanting to be the last ones to the party, manufacturers fell over themselves to show that they too were on the programme. 29ers weren’t left out either, as they’ve shown themselves to be a better choice for longer and smoother (and sometimes not so smooth) rides too. But what about the classic 26in wheel? Our struggle to find three production bikes for our ‘26 Ain’t Dead’ bike test a couple of issues ago shows that, while the majority of bikes out on the trails are still 26in-wheeled, anything new coming from manufacturers is in one of the two larger wheel sizes. Things aren’t that bleak yet for existing 26in wheelers: tyres are still available, rims and suspension forks are out there in large numbers. The issue, though, is that few companies are ever going to devote the resources to develop new 26in wheel products – and certainly few bike companies will be looking at anything small-wheel again. Does this mean that we’ve reached the peak of perfection for the 26in bike? For full suspension, I would say that we probably have. Just what it is/was is open to debate and depends what you want from a bike. It might be the Ibis Mojo HD, or the Santa Cruz TRc, the Turner 5 Spot, or perhaps the Yeti SB66. Whatever your ultimate 26in bike is, it’s out there now. You don’t need to worry about a better one coming out next year. There’s never been a better time to buy one, as it will never be bettered. 2012’s awesome 26in bikes are still awesome in 2014, so get out there and get one if you want. They’re always going to be just as great. 9 The rebirth of Coed y Brenin. Words and pictures by Chipps. 10 Challenging Singletrack… Back in 1995, there was no such thing as a British mountain bike trail centre. There was barely such thing as a marked mountain bike route, outside of a tour of the fire roads. But in late 1996, the UK’s first dedicated, public, free, legal and purpose-built mountain bike trail opened at Coed y Brenin, a quiet forest park in North Wales. Since then, the mountain bike landscape in the UK has changed forever and trail centres have become as much a part of the mountain bike scene as dedicated skiresorts have to skiing. Coed y Brenin was the first place of its kind and its success snowballed at an incredible rate. Land managers and tourist boards from across the UK saw a huge influx of big-spending mountain bikers going to North Wales and took the idea back to where they lived, using Coed y Brenin’s example to get funding to build their own trails. These areas used Coed y Brenin’s stone-pitched trails as inspiration, but improved both the riding and the infrastructure, adding skills areas, berms and bacon sandwiches to the mix. It then seemed that CyB got a little left behind as riders were distracted by the swooping jumps of Spooky Woods in Glentress and the singletrack climbs of Glyncorrwyg’s Wall, as well as a dozen other centres around the country. Even as little as five years ago, it looked like Coed y Brenin might sink back into obscurity, overtaken by the new centres built on the coat-tails of Coed y Brenin’s success but with major population centres and motorway corridors on their doorsteps. Snowdonia is a hard area to get to; it’s sparsely populated and there’s no denying that the mountain biking there is hard work. Other trail centres had smoother, more flattering trails, easier access and could be reached in an hour or so by millions of people. However, a few years ago, we started hearing stories of major new sections of trails being built in the forest and others being sympathetically renovated. Over a period of three or four years, the place has been expanded, improved and brought up to date, to the point that riders who’ve not visited for a few years have been shocked and surprised on their return. 12 …with new greens and blues. Flow has returned. The way-back machine. Sian and Dafydd Roberts will always be inextricably linked with Coed y Brenin. Back in the early 1990s, when both were successful racers, they worked at Beics Betws, a bike shop in nearby Betws-y-Coed. The Forestry Commission asked them if they’d like to start hiring mountain bikes in the forest, in an attempt to boost visitor numbers. Those numbers were so low (under about 15,000 a year) that Coed y Brenin was on the verge of losing its ‘forest park’ status and being forced to go back to being a commercial harvesting forest again. Since the early 1990s there had been some singletrack trails in the forest used by riders and for local races, built by the North Wales Mountain Bike Association but not widely known. Dafydd Davis, a Forestry Commission Ranger for the park, started trying to promote Coed y Brenin to the wider mountain bike community in an attempt to lure more riders to the area. The Forestry Commission was largely disinterested, but Sian brought in Patrick Adams to the project, now best known as the organiser of Mountain Mayhem but then closely involved with a new brand called Red Bull which was keen to further itself in the action sports world. Somehow Red Bull was persuaded to put up some money for trail materials and signage and the Red Bull trail was created. The Foundry’s taster trails: red on the left, black on the right. Trail centres have become as much a part of the mountain bike scene as dedicated ski-resorts have to skiing. 13 Approaching the fork of indecision! Riding and cake. What else is there? The time of distraction. Riders were driving from as far away as London, Bristol and Glasgow, passing iconic natural riding on the way. To get an idea of what an impact this first trail made, consider this: it was about seven miles long and took just over an hour to ride for most people – and yet riders were driving from as far away as London, Bristol and Glasgow to do a lap, passing iconic natural riding on the way. It wasn’t even all singletrack, starting with a seemingly endless fire road climb and then progressing through a terrifying tumble of relatively short singletrack sections armoured with intimidating Welsh rock, another climb and then more singletrack before popping out at the visitor centre for cheese on toast and a coffee. It’s hard to see the appeal now, but back then we rejoiced in the fact that this trail was just for mountain bikers; we could ride it as fast as our RockShox Judy forks could carry us without getting lost, having to get a map out or bumping into irate dog walkers. The other defining feature was that the trails were truly weatherproof – you could ride there in the pouring rain and not end up hub-deep in a bog. By the turn of the century, the Red Bull trail had been joined by the Karrimor and mbr trails. The car park was extended, then extended again. In the Foot and Mouth lockdown of 2001, Coed y Brenin was one of the first places to reopen because of its self-contained nature. Riders continued to come from all over; riding a couple of trails on the Saturday, staying in nearby Dolgellau and then doing a quick lap of the Red Bull before heading home on the Sunday. It seemed that a mountain bike centre of excellence had been created. However, by 2001, a trail centre had also opened in Afan Forest Park in South Wales. Soon, the trail crews started work at Glentress, Dalbeattie and other locations in Scotland. Trails appeared at Nant yr Arian and Cwmcarn, as well as nearby Llandegla and Betws-yCoed. The trail centre was now ‘a thing’. Many of Coed y Brenin’s early trails were initially built with raw manpower; sometimes RAF officertraining exercises, sometimes volunteer groups, often BTCV (British Trust for Conservation Volunteers) groups. Work could be painstakingly slow, especially given the boggy (and midgey) nature of the forested hillsides. By contrast, the new generation of Europeanfunded trail centres were able to use contractors with machines, greatly speeding up the trailbuilding process. By the mid ’00s, it seemed that Coed y Brenin was lagging behind in terms of excitement and contemporary trail design. And while there had been money to initially build Coed y Brenin’s trails, little was put aside for their ongoing maintenance. Slowly, parts of the Karrimor, Red Bull and mbr trails eroded from red grade riding to flowless blacks. Ironically, those tough and tricky reds were another issue that hampered Coed y Brenin. It only had trails for experienced mountain bikers and not much for anyone else. Great for mountain bikers riding the first wave of the sport’s popularity, but after ten years, not a great place for them to bring their new-to-riding partners, or children, to ride. The new £1.6 million visitor centre opened across the road from the old centre in the middle of 2006. The rather tired-looking original trails were all rerouted to start and finish there, which did require some new linking trails to be built. The trailheads gained funky artwork, new names and cute trail markers, but still the draw of Glentress was stronger. Glentress had berms and jumps and drops. It had a remarkably fun blue trail, some very natural-feeling rides and some expert-only trails. This corner of North Wales only had its reputation. 15 Looking more Tahoe than Trawsfynydd! Turning the supertanker. Behind the scenes, though, things were happening. New trails need funding and that funding takes time to apply for and secure. By the time that Andy Braund, the current Coed y Brenin Ranger, started work in 2009, a year’s worth of work had already gone into planning the next chapter. It was recognised that the area desperately needed a blue grade trail and a really good skills area. The tiny bike shop, Beics Brenin, needed more room. The mechanics had to literally unpack their workshop every morning and spread hire bikes and incoming jobs outside in order to have room to work. An extension to the existing centre was planned, with meeting rooms and the kind of spaces that council officers like justifying, but it would come with a large new downstairs area for a bike shop too. Andy was constantly reminded by the centre staff that Coed y Brenin was more than just a mountain bike centre. There were walking trails, a playground and a couple of running trails too. But it needed the popularity of a successful mountain bike centre to get the buzz going that would keep the regular tourists coming to visit. Messing with our trails. There wasn’t a single bermed corner in Coed y Brenin’s three original trails. There were few (intentional) dropoffs, and little flow. Some early trails had unintentionally been built right over public footpaths. All of them were rock-armoured in defiance of the wet weather; built to resist water, rather than more modern (and less noticeable) trail design methods that keep water off the trail in the first place. In fact Andy is proud of some of the early trails still in use: “A lot of stuff in the forest is real classic ‘retro’ trail centre.” Retro – that’s how old some of those trails now are. 16 Berms - Coed y Brenin style. He presided over a long-term plan to improve some of the singletrack. ‘Adam and Eve’ was a new section built early in Andy’s reign, in order to bypass a footpath. Given its position right next to a forest road, it was easy enough to sculpt this new trail with machines and so a pump track-style section was created. At the time, there was confusion and consternation among riders. Why replace tricky singletrack, an hour’s ride into the forest, with whoopy motorway? All new trails show their scars too visibly though and now, a few years later, it’s a smooth, narrow and eagerly anticipated part of the trail. New sections of trail popped up; other sections were fixed and redesigned to deal better with water. Some were quietly retired. This was all done by the growing band of mountain bike-specific trailbuilding contractors – workers who were as handy at spotting a sweet line as they were with a digger’s bucket. There are even berms to be found on the trails of Coed y Brenin now. Andy Braund enjoying a day in his ‘other’ office. “A lot of stuff in the forest is real classic ‘retro’ trail centre.” Retro – that’s how old some of those trails now are. Sian and Dafydd, Adam and Eve. Ben Washington drops in. 17 Racsyn photo-bombs. Dafydd Roberts - still a scary fast rider. Getting blue. The new MinoTaur trail was built over a couple of years to be wide, smooth and fun; a true-blue beginners’ trail – and also one that was wide and shallow enough to accommodate mountain bike wheelchairs and other adaptive machines. Yet it was still flowy enough to appeal as a gentle warm-up loop for experienced riders, too. Ten kilometres in length, it was a major part of the half a million pounds of European money that had been applied for before Andy joined. The other major spend was in developing the Foundry skills area. The Foundry was designed to have sample trails of all the different grades you’d find deeper in the woods. A rider could try an easy green or blue grade trail and see about tackling a red or a black before committing to a big loop in the forest. The Foundry has several different sets of these graded trails, plus a downhill pump track and a couple of try out/show off areas like the Lemming Stone – a rocky drop into a graded, shallow bowl that flatters bad landings. There are also a couple of features harder than anything you can – currently – find out in the woods. Perhaps a sign of things to come… And all of this can be ridden within sight of the car park. 18 You’re my only hope. I’ve been to Coed y Brenin several times in the last year now, having drifted away from it over the years. Every time I go, I find something there that delights me: whether it’s trying the skills area, or enjoying the new, smoother, faster sections of the classic trails. There are already young kids turning up, week after week, to play in the Foundry. There are hordes of school children on hire bikes, rented from the new, extensive bike shop – still run by Beics Brenin. There are families on bikes and enduro types in full faces and pads. Even Dan Atherton’s bought a house not that far away. There are local, bike-specific bed and breakfasts and guiding companies. There are even venison burgers in the cafe, made from the forest’s deer. The old bike shop is now a trail running shop, with shelves of off-road shoes to try before you buy. And the other riding in the area has had a boost too: Betws y Coed has been revamped, Penmachno has some new surprises and there’s Antur Stiniog just up the road for a day out on the big(ger) bike. We knew the Singletrack airship would come in handy one day. It seems that there’s a buzz in the forest again. A visit to the long-disused, old visitor centre on the other side of the road shows what might have happened if things had gone differently. Brambles now grow wild in the car park. Some of the less popular older trails grow green with moss (and yet still ride perfectly). If Coed y Brenin had rested much longer on its laurels of being ‘Trail Centre Zero’, as someone put it, then it might have all been quietly swallowed up by the forest, remaining known only to the locals. Now though, the trails there seem built for modern mountain biking; custom-made for trail bikes and riders with a few more skills than we used to have back then. There are berms and drops, narrow slivers of brown singletrack in mature green woods and everywhere there’s that hard, intimidating Welsh rock. Although, perhaps, it now seems a tiny bit more welcoming. The old centre sits silent. 20 Thanks to: Andy Braund, Joe Hayward, Steve, Tegid, Reece, Ben Washington, Sian and Dafydd Roberts (and Racsyn) at oldskool-mtb.co.uk. www.ragleybikes.com Piglet frame 4130 CroMo RRP £349.99 For all dealer enquiries contact www.hotlines-uk.com I Email: [email protected] I Tel: 0131 319 1444 I T ’ S TI ME TO RIDE No more excuses. No more checking Pinkbike. Lube your chain. Load your pack. Grab your Remedy. We’re going for a ride. Stef f i Ma r t h | tre k bi kes.com/remed y Think that new-to-you bike will fix everything wrong with the world? Think again…  Words by Alex Leigh, illustration by Grace. We all tell lies. Really, we do – all the time, and at any time there is a need to balm truthful scars with deceit. It’s an entirely human trait, and failing to follow our instincts would likely result in us never getting out of bed other than to reach for a bottle. I know this, so am ready for it – but can’t deny the clearly deceitful rationale which suggests buying a new mountain bike somehow represents outstanding value. We all understand any such purchase is baselined by the running costs of a Chieftain tank – or possibly an entire small war involving gunboats, helicopters and a minor thermonuclear device. And if you think, for example, that new cars suffer inestimable devaluation on leaving the showroom, bikes make these look like a safe longterm investment. The second a bike gets muddy, it loses about 50% of its initial value. Not so much of a shelf life, then: more of a half-life. Which suggests to the fiscally prudent that a handsome dividend could be returned if one delved deep into the second-hand market. Woah, steady on there, cowboy! The first rule of any second-hand market is never to consider touching another man’s smalls. Mountain biking is a destructive activity and unseen damage hides inside seemingly pristine components – especially as one man’s full service regime is another man’s chuck it in a damp shed and forget about it. You see? Everyone lies. 24 Even so, taking advantage of a vibrant second-hand market was clearly a better option than prostrating myself in front of the Marketing Man and His Shiny Appendages. I bought a new frame. It represented outstanding value. It was to be an honest workhorse, built as a minimal viable product comprised of low cost bargains and freely available spare parts. I sallied forth into a reverse auction, funnelling barely used, half-price components into the low-cost build I’d promised my wife. A short evening spread across a few choice internet forums had me preparing my inbox for the incoming avalanche of previously enjoyed parts. But inevitably, when the multiple emails arrived they appeared to be nothing more than the curation of various sellers’ photos from their ‘private collection’ – possibly the result of some kind of mass dirty protest. If this was how these items were presented for sale, how the hell were they treated beforehand? The sellers told lies and I didn’t believe them… so here we are no further on, but suffering much disappointment and something else rather more profound. You see, behind their dirty secrets hides one of mine, and it is this: mountain bikes are memory banks for good times and their authenticity is proven by a patina of wear spread across components of a similar age. Even a relatively new bike has the scars bookmarking great rides and mapping specific events where 92illo_new2.pdf 1 02/09/2014 10:16 C M Y CM MY CY CMY K 26 paint was scratched, rims were dinged, pedals were scraped and cranks were dented. It’s a Trigger’s broom kind of thing. Stuff needs to wear out or be destroyed from a single generation of stuff that once represented a shiny new build. Throw something new on there and don’t be surprised if the bike rejects it like a foreign organ. This hypothesis of what is true and right allows us to lie about the efficacy of second-hand parts. It’s not a great lie as fibs go, but this in no way prevents it being wheeled out on an almost daily basis as the weary postman collapses under the weight of the new and shiny. There’s something else as well. A molecule of self-awareness suggests the world is as it is, rather than the way we would wish it to be. We may want for perfection, but that’s a rainbow-ended fantasy somewhere beyond the end of an infinite ‘to do’ list. A list I am too tired, lazy or clueless to work through; instead I soothe my task failure with beer. But a new bike? Now we’re talking: here is something framed for perfection. Just for a brief moment as it comes off the bike stand, all is pristine. Anticipation in its purest form is a mirror for your imperfections. For all of the newness, all you can offer in its future is decline. But what a fantasy while it lasts. This will be the bike which transcends the very heart of mountain biking. The tool to mine deep into the mythical mother lode of flow. A time – briefly glimpsed and then cruelly snatched away – when bike, rider and trail coalesce in perfect harmony. Chasing dust from your best riding mate’s rear wheel, summer air lit by sun-kissed motes of joy, that perfectly carved turn, the promise of beer and bullshit later. The time when you know it cannot get any better and then somehow it does: that is exactly what a new bike represents. Which is exactly the lie we tell ourselves. It’s sentimental bullshit of course. All we’re doing is waving ‘stop’ at the marketing bus, rushing on while brandishing our credit card and demanding a first-class ticket to lifestyle central. For me, that metaphor is better realised if I continually throw myself under that bus in the belief/lie that the fiscal pain of being repeatedly run over is somehow worthwhile in the wider view of things. Delusion is the most wonderful thing – the mistake people make is to believe it looks the same from the outside. So what have we learned? Our utopian world view is nothing more than delusional deceit placing ourselves central on this planet. We lie to ourselves, our friends, our loved ones, to complete strangers, and most of the time we don’t even know we’re doing it. We pretend to make rational decisions, but we’re slaves to a system that sells to our many and varied weaknesses. We buy, consume and discard with frightening callousness. That’s all a bit depressing really. So let me finish with this. Mountain biking makes me happy in a way that absolutely nothing else does. That’s not even close to a slight on my family, what laughably passes for my career, or having a beer with my friends. But it’s different: less nuanced, more visceral, fewer lies, more truth. And I don’t have the patience to postpone that happiness, nor diminish it with things not quite right. So rather than be a passive receiver of lies and meritocracy, I need to plan many adventures. Anticipate great rides. Pretend that suddenly I will become a better rider, forge future memories of perfection under burning skies, achieve nirvana, ride to the end of the rainbow. For this, I need a new bike dripping with the nicest stuff. And luckily I seem to have built one. As lies go, there are plenty worse. Dave Sheppard, Evans Cycles Head Office Image courtesy of David Hearn Photography NEVER GET CAUGHT Conditions change in a flash on the tracks and trails. So it’s better to have all the kit you need than be caught out by the weather. That’s where our new autumn/winter range comes in handy. Helly Hansen Active Base Layer was £35 £32 Endura MTR Windproof LS Jersey was £70 £67 Fox Clothing Attack Q4 Shorts £85 Specialized Defroster Trail MTB Shoe ENJOY THE RIDE £150 IN STORE | ONLINE | MOBILE Dan Jarvis. Our regular look at the unsung heroes of the mountain bike world continues, with commentator, team manager and all-round lovely bloke Dan Jarvis. Words by Barney. Dan Jarvis has been a stalwart of mountain biking for quite a long time. His face and – more pertinently – his voice, have been fixtures of various events around the country since the ’90s. He has commentated at some of the biggest events in the mountain bike world, from World Championships and World Cups, to the Commonwealth Games and of course the Olympics – and he’s been a friend to the sport in many other ways too. But how on earth did this happen? And what else has the ever-ebullient Mr Jarvis been up to in the meantime? In the ’90s Dan studied environmental science at Brighton, but like many of us of a certain age, he was firmly plugged into the mountain bike scene, supplementing his meagre student income by working in bike shops. Now thoroughly steeped in the lore of all things bicycle, Dan found a job at Penshurst Off Road Cycling (PORC). As he held the appropriate qualifications, he found himself skills coaching a lot of kids, but he also helped to run the place – which included helping out at events. And so it was that our hero helped to organise the National Short Course Downhill Championships, the Women On Wheels ladies mountain bike events, and all sorts of coaching events and birthday parties. On top of this, Dan was also putting his degree and bike experience to good use at the Forestry Commission, assessing the trails. It soon became clear to everyone that he was a man who liked to keep busy, and who could get things done, although Dan is sanguine about his strengths: “Well, I managed to keep the wolf from the door and not do any real work for quite a few years. Back when I was racing with the university team we had some great riders, but I found I didn’t have that competitive drive, and I wasn’t bothered about winning. If I worked really hard I’d maybe come 20th – which was great, but not amazing. However, I found I was good at working stuff out and sorting out other people’s shit for them – so I went into management.” Things really took off in 1997. The Ski and Snowboard Show at the Birmingham NEC had decided to run a mountain bike area; as PORC had a portable skills track at Penshurst, Dan and his colleagues delivered it to 28 Birmingham. Dan picks up the story: “At the same event was the Pro-Flex trials team, which was managed by Giles Wolfe. But for some reason, Giles couldn’t make it and, as they decided I was gobby, they asked me to MC. That was my first commentating gig, and it all went from there.” After Penshurst, Dan found full-time work with British Cycling in 1998. Initially he was tasked with promotions, but he ended up running UK domestic mountain biking, including the World Class Performance programme and the BCF Rav4 National MTB series – enough to keep most normal people extremely busy. But Dan had a side project: a women’s downhill team. “I started the downhill team when I was in Penshurst, but 1998 was our first season. It came about from the Women on Wheels events. Pat Adams [of Mountain Mayhem fame – Ed.] was working on some women’s crosscountry stuff, but no one was doing anything with downhill. I thought we should see what we could do; we had some terrific riders, but nothing was in place for them.” So Dan put on his suit, got busy with the PowerPoint presentations, and got hold of some kit. “Our first sponsor was Dawes – it’s hard to believe, but Dawes had a downhill bike back then. I got a few other sponsors on board, and we raced the Nationals series with them, in 1998 I think.” But funding didn’t exactly grow on trees. “All the money for the team, pretty much for its entire existence, was from me. I used to work out deals with the commentary, so it didn’t actually cost me anything I couldn’t afford, and all the fees I earned went into the team. At the time I didn’t smoke, drink or gamble, so it was my vice, if you like.” Dan called the team BN3. “Yeah, that was my university postcode. I had to come up with a name quickly, and off the top of my head postcodes were the first thing I could think of. My home one, in Essex, was SS9 – which was perhaps a bit inappropriate.” At first, the team was relatively low-key but then SRAM got involved around 2001 – to the extent that they found themselves the equivalent of SRAM’s UK factory team. And then BN3 rider Petra Wiltshire won the Masters World Championships in Canada in 2002. Dan (left) does the hokey cokey with Chris Furber at Fort William. “Over the life of the team I think we picked up three World Masters titles with Petra and four or five World Cup podiums in four-cross with Joey Gough; we’ve won national titles, national medals; Jess Stone won the Junior national title in her first season racing for us. I think we were the top non-factory team in the World Cup in terms of results for at least one season. The downhill team was doing international races, World Cups and all sorts. We got pretty successful, and hand-in-hand with that I was still doing commentary all over the world.” It’s not just mountain bike events Dan’s commentated at, either – although the innumerable World Cups, World Championships, two Olympics and Commonwealth Games (Manchester and Glasgow) appearances aren’t to be sniffed at. He also provided live commentary at the Olympic road race in 2012 and at the track World Championships for the UCI; he’s commentated on cyclocross, triathlon and road events... the list goes on. Not bad for a side-project – because as well as all this, Dan has always kept a ‘proper’ job going at the same time. In the real world, he’s an Environmental Management and Health and Safety Consultant – catchy, eh? So what of the present – and the future? Dan wound down the BN3 team in 2007. “I’d just been kind of a bum and living from day to day, and I had some life changes that meant that I needed to settle down a bit. I still help some of the folks from the team, but not really formally. And I’m informally advising some other teams now, which is great, ’cos it’s not my money... “Now I’m not trying to get cash for the team I can pick and choose commentary work a bit more, which is great. I’ve got some great ideas for the future, which I can’t talk about too much, but I’m trying to help British riders, and I’ve got some great ideas for the Olympics in Rio 2016 – watch this space!” It’s clear that Dan is still keeping busy; he’s still planning and he’s still coming up with grand ideas. And if mountain bike history has proved anything, it’s that if Dan’s involved, it’s going to be pretty special. 29 WITH OUR LINE DEVELOPED SPECIFICALLY FOR THE BRITISH WEATHER YOU CAN BEAT THE ELEMENTS. VIEW THE FULL WINTER 14 LINE AT ALTURA.CO.UK 2 NEW COLOUR 3 1 FEATURES: ADJUSTABLE CUFF REMOVABLE HOOD WITH FRONT & 2. REAR MOUNTED SLIDERS 1. 3. 1 2 3 ZIPPED CHEST POCKET Leisure Fit Waterproof Windproof Breathable W I N T E R 2 0 1 4 LOCATION: THE HEART OF THE LAKE DISTRICT The perfect go to jacket for those winter rides. The hard-wearing waterproof and windrproof fabric protects you from the elements, while the breathability ensures you don’t overheat on those technical climbs. • Removable hood with front and rear mounted sliders for structure and stability • Internal storm flap • Hook and loop wrist closures • Draw cord hem 100% Polyester Much as we hate to admit it, most of us have ‘proper’ jobs that push mountain biking some way down the list of priorities. Meerkat explains why it’s worth persevering. Words by Meerkat. Since I started writing these columns, I’ve gone from regular nineto-fiver, with modest but adequate weekly opportunity to straddle a mountain bike, to seasoned road warrior barely able to unpack between a succession of ‘inexpensive’ hotels. Under these conditions retaining one’s sanity is an achievement, but staying in physical shape requires a close acquaintance with the hotel gym. Different hotels have different approaches to recreational facilities. If there is a gym at all (rather than just a tie-in with a leisure centre miles across town), training apparatus appears in drearily descending order of frequency: Treadmill: by far the most common piece of kit, but of no use to me. If I had any interest in running I’d be writing for Reeking Trainers, not Singletrack. Cross Trainer: cardiovascularly pointless and guaranteed to make you walk like John Inman in ‘Are You Being Served?’. Recumbent Bicycle: uniquely designed to train a subset of leg muscles never employed in regular cycling or any other form of human locomotion. Rowing Machine: an instrument of medieval torture updated for 21st century paying guests. Utter purgatory. Static Bike: the best a cyclist can hope for. One, only ever semifunctioning, missing toe straps and with a torn saddle fixed at a jaunty 45°. If you are lucky enough to find a contraption that even remotely mimics the joy of cycling, you will still have to contend with your gym companions. These fall broadly (literally and metaphorically) into two extremes. Pairs of prattling women giving their jaw the sort of workout the rest of their body sorely needs, and menacing males, wielding free weights and bellowing ostentatiously with each increasing exertion. Next morning all will be found gorging on the breakfast buffet, clad in the best man-made fabrics money can buy. Despondent with the acrid sweat-fest of the hotel gym and looking for alternatives, I briefly experimented with a talking smartphone yoga app. I reasoned that if I couldn’t stay fit, at least I’d get supple. After initial success in the privacy of my room with a Downward Facing Dog and the Revolved Half Moon (not recommended by a ground floor window), I suffered a bad experience with the One-Legged King Pigeon (you couldn’t make it up, and I haven’t) 32 that left me unable to ‘come into my box’ as instructed. Since my hamstrings have survived intact for four decades without Far Eastern tenderisation, I consigned the app to my phone’s graveyard, where it now resides unused alongside Strava and Elementary Taxidermy. If I sound jaded by life on the road, it’s because I am. Resisting temptation when every meal is on expenses and the oyster really can be your world is a constant challenge. Menu choices become less about the desirability of the dish and more about the length of gym sentence needed to counteract chef ’s enthusiasm for lard. At night, I’m taunted by reminders of how lucky I used to be: by the Facebook page of my local riding group buzzing with arrangements for midweek rides I’ll never join; by websites enquiring why I’ve stopped diverting 25% of my disposable income to them; by magazines once avidly pored over now gathering dust in their wrappers. At weekends, when the guilt of stealing even more time from the family prevents me from riding, I gaze at my bike collection and think that it (like me?) is falling behind the times. Why don’t I have a 160mm, 27.5in enduro bike like everyone else? Why are my handlebars only 720mm wide? Is that really a 70mm stem? How very 2011. Other anxieties, always present, have grown and multiplied. Will I be able to keep up with friends when I eventually do get out? Should I cancel the annual cycling holiday to avoid disgrace? Have I lost my trail skills and been reduced to nothing more than an inappropriately dressed roadie? Then last week, something unexpected happened. I managed to get out with the old gang and wasn’t completely shamed by my performance. I snuck in my local 20-mile loop on a cheeky ‘working from home’ day and my time was more than respectable. Rather than fretting that all this gym time is utterly pointless, I’m beginning to think that maybe ‘proper’ athletes are on to something. OK, it’s a sterile experience – like a microwave burger compared to a Kobe steak – but how sweet the riding tastes when it does come around. When you ride regularly you risk becoming desensitised to just how fantastic ‘that’ feeling is, to just how important being out there is in your life. When you’re forced into the gym you can get fitter, but you can’t emulate the joy of mountain biking. If I’ve learned one thing from these months off the trails, it’s that I didn’t fully appreciate what I’d lost until I got a glimpse of it back again. © SCOTT SPORTS SA 2013 | DANIEL GEIGER, FRED LEISER BIG WHEELS 12 & 13 APRIL BUILTH WELLS SPRING MTB FESTIVAL 24 & 25 MAY RHAYADER, MID-WALES 28 & 29 JUNE CHURCH STRETTON SHROPSHIRE 02 & 03 AUGUST DRUMLANRIG CASTLE SCOTTISH BORDERS 13 & 14 SEPTEMBER RUTHIN, NORTH WALES FIND OUT MORE: PERFECT FOR EVERY M A R AT H O N MTB-MARATHON.CO.UK No matter your big wheeled appetite, we have a 29er to satisfy your cravings. The Scale, Spark and Genius 900 are all efficient, lightweight and deliver the best attributes of the 29er. Whether it's XC, Marathon or Enduro you ride, the 900 series has you covered. How hot is too hot? Pete Scullion finds out the hard way in the Basque Country. Words by Pete Scullion, pictures by Sam Needham. 34 Long sleeves are for keeping the sun off. Despite the thunder and lightning, the sky hadn’t leaked much and the air was sticky, like Chinese rice – and hot like it too. 36 Sitting in the passenger seat of the Basque MTB thunderbus as we motored our way south, I was fairly aware that the darkness meant I had no notion of what to expect the following day. The impressive lightning storms that were gathering around us did an even better job of distracting me. Several days into our ambitious trip with Basque MTB’s head honcho Doug MacDonald, the combination of early starts and late finishes had begun to take its toll. At this juncture sleep was something we were all very much in need of, but that night wasn’t going to offer much respite. Several hours from our last stop in the Pyrenees above Huesca, we had driven towards Zaragoza for long enough for Madrid to not be too far away. We rolled late into a town that, despite having learned Spanish for 11 years, I couldn’t pronounce and can’t recall. The bullring and the tall buildings lining narrow streets are the only indelible reminders of this township deep within Aragon. Our beds for the night would kick off the Wild West theme that would continue well into the following day. The doors that greeted us were well-built, armoured oak beasts that stood a good 20ft high and had no doubt seen a fracas or three in their time. The town was quiet when we arrived just before midnight; no gunfights tonight. Through the doors looming over us, the building was reminiscent of a staging post from our favourite spaghetti westerns. A high central courtyard overlooked by balconies that led to the rooms. Exposed, tarred beams at odds with the baby-blue wash of the walls. Not a cathouse, honky-tonk or craps table in sight, though. As Doug and his right-hand man, Antonio, peeled off to their room, our rather pasty trio lumbered with heavy bags on tired shoulders up to ours. Joining me on this trip would be a brace of Yorkshire folk. Sam Needham is known for his lens work, and Joe Flanagan is known for his bicycle riding and numerous overseas jaunts: a fine combo indeed. Our first problem was one not familiar to us Brits. Having got dibs on the beds fairly quickly and showers rapidly dispatched to ensure more sleep, the main problem was that of oppressive heat. Despite the thunder and lightning en route, the sky hadn’t leaked much and the air was sticky, like Chinese rice – and hot like it, too. Windows were flung open but offered nothing. The air was still and just as unpleasant outside, but little did we know what heat we would be subject to the following morning… 37 Duelling banjos. As we made our way through the deserted streets shortly before sunrise, moving through the air for the first time in hours seemed like a luxury. Rarely have I been happier to be on a bike, and that is saying something. The tall buildings and the narrow alleys and streets gave the journey out of town a claustrophobic feel. Many of the buildings lay empty, the signs of subsidence written all over them. It was too quiet. Were we being watched? Was a raiding party about to attack our train? Unlikely, but our room for the night had my head full of six shooters, Eastwood’s scowl and Ennio Morricone. One last water stop before we ventured into what would become a baking hot ride in the Spanish interior and we were off. As with many rides, regardless of where you are in the world, you will inevitably have to ride through or past farms. The farms here are completely dissimilar to the low stone affairs we’re used to in the countryside of the UK. For a start, there was tarmac, and smooth tarmac at that. The courtyards of the farms were high-wall cinder block numbers with large steel doors. Simple, yet effective, although lacking the rustic charm of dry stone. One constant though was the mental Collie dogs. As soon as we were within earshot, the barking started; a dash towards the steel door arrested by the tightening of a chain. Onwards and upwards, slowly but surely. The mountains here, less prominent and precipitous than the ones of the previous day, might only be the ripples from when Africa crashed into Europe millions of years ago, but they certainly do sting. Much like the Calder Valley, Exmoor or Dartmoor, the lack of vertical is made up for by its percentage. The trails here either sling themselves along the dry riverbeds, or up the steep faces of the valley walls. Our sunrise mission was grounded before it even took flight. A solid bank of cloud lying east denied us what would have been one of the most stunning views of the trip. We were primed for mountains, a Moorish castle and an endless horizon – but ’twas not to be. Wasting no time getting moving, we dropped quickly into some singletrack that offered a truly unique experience. Dirt like crumbly clay offered masses of grip before giving way into controllable slides, allowing a rate of knots that would otherwise be impossible. Elbows in as the riverbed narrowed, ant nests saw the trail turn black and move beneath our wheels. Out of the wind in the shelter of the trail’s low-slung position, a complete lack of moving air made remaining stationary far from pleasant. From the fire track of our aborted sunrise view, singletrack was all we rode for mile after mile. The dry riverbed now offered the fastest way to Apache territory, the shallow gradient allowing us to cover the ground quickly and the whole time I couldn’t help but keep my eyes up for an ambush. Too many westerns watched, I think… Tall reeds and small trees clung to wherever the water had come to a stop as the rains receded, the green starkly contrasting with the bleached white clay. Rustling under wheel, plant life also offered the only sounds other than that of a passing kestrel or egret. The massive grey vultures of the Pyrenees were long gone now. Static air, now hotter than before, ensured our skin continued to leak, and all the while the humidity meant the sweat stung the eyes long before it evaporated. 38 Riding the lake of custard turned out to be a mirage. 39 Natural kickers need to be exploited. The heat was starting to take its toll and I found myself becoming irrationally angry. Monument Valley, Spanish style. 40 The universal allure of singletrack. After a solid 10km spin along the riverbed, we climbed a short, sharp, technical climb into the trees and were afforded the first cover from the roasting hot sun. By now the temperature was well into the 30s and still rising. Every now and again a gentle breeze would move through the widely spaced conifers. As soon as the cool air hit the skin, everyone would stop, and look like they were in a trance, so unrelenting the heat and so lovely the moving air. Still in a tall gully, but with the edge now less than a few feet above our heads, the singletrack turns darted their way down the hill, dips and crests allowing us to forget the fireball above us and have some fun. All the noise of our tyres searching for grip on the rock-hard dirt was softened by a thick layer of ginger pine needles. The gentle crunch of these accentuated the feeling of speed and the smiles started to come thick and fast. It’s amazing what a few fast, flowing turns can do to transform the mood of five horribly sweaty men in seconds. Once we’d ridden the life out of the gully turns, we hopped up onto a fire road and I swear I could sense a rotten climb coming. Thankfully, we were at the top of probably the biggest surprise of the trip. Doug had spoken of Spanish Utah prior to heading out, and on every other ride we’d been on, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the landscape change as abruptly as it did that day. Out of the woods, just like any other Mediterranean pine forest, the smell of hot pine as thick as the needles that carpet the forest; onto a fire road, as nondescript as any other, a means to an end if anything. Then, boom! Bright red, weather-worn, sandstone cliffs rose up from the still-green wheat fields below, the Pyrenees now looking more stunted on the horizon. It was almost as if someone had whisked us to Monument Valley: the sandstone maybe a deeper hue of burnt orange, and the cliffs a little less vertical in their prominence, but spectacular nonetheless. Again for a moment, even our guides seemed to take the time to enjoy the view. After checking the ridges for lone horsemen and potential ambush places, we were into the singletrack proper. Below the upper cliffs was yet another odd surface under wheel. Lighter sandstone gravel, baked hard and very predictable in spots but loose and unruly in others, brought back the smiles. Everyone had found their place in the freight train by this point in the trip. My ailing freehub meant myself and Antonio kept up the rear while constantly trying to keep Joe, Sam and Doug in check. Pine trees like before but no longer in neat rows offered some shade from the now clear sky and the ever-present sun, which was now pushing the heat past the 40° mark. Out into the open again, the trail dived into a series of switchbacks, each one progressively tighter and more technical than the last. Again, with Joe in front making everything look supremely easy, the Needham freight train was close behind but considerably more sketchy with Doug breathing down his neck. By this stage I had started to wilt and decided to ride at my own pace, while Antonio, ever the professional, kept an eye on me so I didn’t droop too much. The turns kept coming and only the front runners cleaned the lot. With no exposure to worry about and the grand view at our backs, the trail was the only thing to focus on. Braking needed expert timing to not fall foul of the broken surface, and loose rock on bedrock made the going tough. With the turns dispatched with varying degrees of skill, the trail flattened and started to undulate below another set of aged sandstone cliffs. The elements had shaped the stone here into some impressive shapes and rock formations of all shapes and sizes sat almost at random about the head and base of the cliffs. Climbing out of the bowl we’d dropped into, the heat unrelenting and bodies suffering from the lack of breakfast, we decided to cut the loop short, more than likely for my safety and sanity. The afternoon heat was starting to take its toll and I found myself becoming irrationally angry. Doug took to keeping Sam and Joe happy, their sense of direction not being particularly acute, while I set about taking my mind off things by practising my Spanish with Antonio. 41 Reserved for hunting (...mountain bikers?) Enjoying the shade of the valleys. ¿Dónde está el limonada? One short, horrible climb later and one of the best descents going offered another smile-heavy break from the brutal heat. With the front three long gone, finding their energy where I could find none, I took to doing my best to keep as much wind as possible between Antonio and myself. Sublime, dusty singletrack took the sting out of cutting the ride short and the competitive edge took over once more. Atop another riverbed, rockier this time, with some fair exposure off to our right-hand side, this was one for the books. Riding fast down singletrack, blind, with someone who knows where they’re going hot on your heels was a fantastic buzz that certainly perked me up. I would rather have succumbed to the heat or become raspberry jam on the rocks below than be caught. Prior to setting off, we had been warned about a corner that could go terribly wrong and had done for one of the locals. Forgetting the heat, the fact that the toys had almost ejected themselves from the pram and the prior warning, I set off down the trail with renewed vigour only to hear Antonio’s cries reminding me of the danger as I went in hot. Luck was on my side thankfully – the obvious line was the safest option, although poor Antonio was given a fair fright! 44 As we busted out onto the last fire road, we all fell to the ground under the shade of a line of trees before the final plunge back to the hotel. After taking on the remaining water in my pack in a single gulp we set off in convoy down some rocket-sled-fast singletrack that offered little remorse for a bad line or an over-the-bars incident. Shooting out onto the road we’d climbed up hours before, the smiles from Sam, Joe and Doug said it all. Fists were bumped, and chat soon turned to the lucky escapes, the near misses and the awesome corners. Despite our overexcited, wide-eyed chat of the trails above, our minds soon turned to an icy cold Kas Limon, our official beverage for the trip. As the frosty drinks helped return our core temperatures to something more acceptable, I remember feeling about as unattractive at that moment as it’s possible for a human to be or feel. While I feel pretty daft cutting rides because the weather was ‘too good’, it took an experienced eye in Doug and Antonio to realise I wasn’t doing so well. To put it lightly, I felt like hammered shit. It does go to show though that the best or most memorable rides aren’t always the perfect ones. RECHARGE & RIDE SMALL LIGHT. BIG PERFORMANCE. 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Local boy/racer/boy-racer Rab Wardell reports from the other side of the tapes. Words by Rab Wardell, pictures by Matt Robinson and emmafeltonphotography.co.uk. Glasgow was a brilliant place to be in the final days of July. Years of work came together as thousands of athletes, officials and fans descended on the city to participate in and enjoy the 2014 Commonwealth Games. The atmosphere was electric all around as different cultures were celebrated, not only through sport but food stalls, live music and art at venues across the city. Mountain biking was showcased for the third time in Commonwealth history and Cathkin Braes, overlooking the city from the south, hosted the race for medals. The Games offers one very rare opportunity for British cross-country racers to represent their home nation [‘British’ riders compete for England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, depending on their country of birth or passport held – Ed.] As a Scottish mountain biker it was incredible to see full squads selected for the men and women of Scotland to line up on race day. Early on that Tuesday morning, I caught the bus from the south side of Glasgow to Castlemilk on the southern boundary of the city. I walked into Cathkin Braes park with my brother, both of us in Scottish attire. He had chosen to wear his original ‘Scotland’ cycling jersey from racing the British XC Championships as a youth, while I was in a kilt. We carried our flags with us up into the woods of the recently transformed park where, in the years before the Games, a 5.2km race circuit had been built. The fast and modern ‘trail centre’-type track – with jumps, dual slalom lines and rock gardens – would be the stage. Even this early in the morning, the crowds were huge. The 4,000 allocated tickets for the ticketed areas of the course had sold out and at least the same number of spectators again had come to Cathkin Braes to support the racers from the unticketed sidelines. 47 Flat pedals and trainers. The Commonwealth Games mountain bike race is a completely unique event. Riders from some of the developing nations are often competing in their first-ever mountain bike race, against World Cupseries regulars. In 2006 Chris Froome rode and finished a lap behind gold medal winner, England’s Liam Killeen. It was one of the first competitive outings for a man who has gone on to win the biggest prize in cycling – albeit in a different arena. Glasgow was no different. The women’s field ranged from Kenyan riders, some with flat pedals and trainers on borrowed bikes, lining up with former World Champion Catharine Pendrel from Canada. The men’s race was just as strong a field, with Australian rider Dan McConnell leading the line-up having finished second overall in the World Cup last season. There were riders from Canada, England, Scotland, Australia and New Zealand who had been on the podium at world level; it was a small yet quality field for sure. I made my way around the strict venue security to try to find the Scottish girls before they started to warm up. As I walked down the closed road, peering through the fencing and into the tented team area, I noticed England and Scotland team riders Beth Crumpton and Lee Craigie pinning numbers on. I enjoyed a short chat with the girls through the high metal fencing, with security cameras every ten metres. Finally I said to Lee “Are you meant to be getting into the zone? Am I taking you out of the zone?” Lee said with a laugh “Sort of…” “Well get back in the bloody zone Lee Craigie! Right, I’m off. Have fun!” 48 Noisy noise just out of shot. The next time I saw the girls was over an hour later. I was standing at the crossing point of the course next to the tunnel with around 400 other spectators. Victoria Pendleton and staff from Radio 5 Live were nearby, commentating on the race and there was a huge boom camera placed in the woods. Hannah Ferguson, sister of Scottish racer Grant Ferguson, had borrowed a megaphone from the velodrome where she had been working as a volunteer during the first four days of the Games. Former downhill World Cup racer Emma Guy and Olympian Tracy Brunger were standing on their vantage point of a fallen tree with a group of friends. I was banging a handlebar around an old broken wheel rim to make a racket. It was a veritable who’s who of Scottish mountain biking. The girls passed us in one line, led by a duo of New Zealand girls. Focused and determined, with only inches separating their wheels, they dropped into and through the tunnel before disappearing into the woods to continue on their first lap of the race. The noise was bloody noisy. Really noisy, with noisy noise. It was ace! 49 Gareth Montgomerie (16) charging ahead. Paul Oldham, England. “It meant a lot! It’s a massive honour to represent my country. It was also very special being close to home and racing in front of family and friends; even though we aren’t Scottish everyone got behind us! It was the best atmosphere I’ve ever raced in. It makes all the training in the rain worthwhile!” 50 As the race wore on, Pendrel continued to build her lead ahead of Trek Factory Racing teammates Batty and Henderson jostling for position. Craigie slipped back a few places after losing pressure in her tyres mid-race and then charged back through the field in pursuit of Last and Barnes. In the final lap Batty managed to distance Henderson to secure the silver medal. Annie Last was the top British finisher in 4th, with youngster Barnes taking an incredible 5th place. I was really proud to see the performances of the Scottish ladies with Craigie in 7th place, Roberts in 11th and MacPhee in 13th. Fast and furious. He’s either racing for England, or the White Stripes. By the end of the first lap, Catharine Pendrel had a commanding lead over fellow Canadian Emily Batty and Australian Rebecca Henderson. Behind this group the Brits were fighting for position and aiming to move into the medals, with Alice Barnes battling with London 2012 Olympic star Annie Last. Meanwhile Lee Craigie was in a tight fight with the New Zealand girls, and the pride of the Scottish islands, Kerry MacPhee, raced closely with Beth Henderson and Jessie Roberts. Claire Oakley was representing Northern Ireland. Nearly every home nation was represented, apart from Wales, and it was a huge shame not to see a single Welsh rider in either the men’s or the women’s races. By the time the men’s event was getting ready to start the weather had started to come in a little bit. The wind had picked up and the sunny intervals were broken by light showers. The race started at a fierce pace, with South African Philip Buys stringing out the field through the deafening amphitheatre at the tunnel and into the first downhill. As they came back around to cross over the tunnel, young Kiwis Anton Cooper and Sam Gaze took air over the jump with a small gap back to Max Plaxton from Canada. Buys had been distanced by a few more seconds and no one was able to pass in the tight singletrack. It looked like the race-defining moment had happened. Moving into the second lap, Scotsman Gareth Montgomerie had taken up the chase with Dan McConnell and Grant Ferguson following closely. As they approached the tunnel Ferguson led. In a late move on the right turn after the feed zone McConnell made his move, though he clipped Grant’s front wheel forcing him to unclip and lose a few bike lengths. By the bottom of the downhill Ferguson was with McConnell who was riding across to the front three. It was just over the top of the Clyde Climb that McConnell distanced the young Scot. Grant continued the chase as McConnell rejoined the two Kiwis and the Canadian to make a lead group of four. 51 High post, big air. Further down the field Liam Killeen was passing riders and had moved up to 7th place, racing closely with Kenta Gallagher who was typically stylish over the jumps. This was to be Kenta’s final cross-country race as he resigned from the British Cycling Olympic programme to return to his roots and resume racing downhill. A bold move to give up so much, but a decision which should suit the man from Inverness. As the crowd continued to roar and the race drew closer to its conclusion, the leading group of four looked like it would contest the medals. McConnell was my favourite to take the victory, already having a senior World Cup win to his name and a reputation for finishing races strongly. As the lead group came onto the final half-lap, Plaxton had been dropped and Cooper led into the flowing singletrack through the old woodlands. As the trio climbed out of the woods towards the finish, Cooper was still in command. In a daring display of confidence he tightened the buckles on his shoes before eyeballing McConnell and opening his 52 sprint up the final climb and onwards to the line, taking an emphatic victory. McConnell was beaten to the line by 18-year-old Sam Gaze, giving a one-two for New Zealand to match Canada’s onetwo in the women’s race. Plaxton managed to hold on for 4th while Ferguson came out on top over Killeen. Ferguson even managed to whip out the back wheel for the crowds at the tunnel on the final lap, showing just how much he likes to have fun on his bike. Killeen was the first English rider home in 6th with Hope Factory rider (and worker) Paul Oldham in 9th. Gallagher came home in 10th place, with Montgomerie in 11th having suffered a front puncture on the fifth lap. That tyre tread is actually drawn on with felt-tip pen. Aurélie Halbwachs, Mauritius. “During the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow I really liked the MTB cross-country track. It was a good combination of technical parts, climbs, fast and fun sections. Nothing too hard, but of course nothing easy – racing in a cross-country is never easy! We were lucky to have really nice weather in the days before and during the event. From the village we could easily ride the 7kms up hill to the track and then cool down on our way back. I was amazed at the organisation and the public who turned out to support us on race day. Everyone was nice and everything was well managed. The crowd encouraged everyone and we really felt they were happy to be there and see the race. So at the end I will forget about my feelings on the bike and will remember forever the warm atmosphere!” 53 All in all it was a brilliant day on the Braes. British mountain bike fans had created an unforgettable atmosphere for the riders. The track, although not the most technically difficult, had made a brilliant racecourse and is now there for the people of Glasgow to ride, with more trails planned and in the pipeline. Glasgow City Council has recently given the go-ahead for a grant of £1,000,000 towards the visitor centre project and more events are proposed for Cathkin Braes in the coming years. The 2014 Commonwealth Games will leave a great legacy for mountain biking in Glasgow. 54 The Scottish racers win our best-dressed award. Heiko Redecker, Namibia. “When we arrived for our first practice session at the Cathkin Braes course I wasn’t sure what to expect, having never ridden my mountain bike on Scottish soil before. After passing through the now all-too-familiar metal detectors and having my helmet X-rayed for hidden rocket launchers, I was surprised to hear that our team car was allowed into the race compound, nuclear bomb in the boot, no questions asked… Jokes aside, I was pleasantly surprised on my first lap out on the course. The 5.2km lap comprised mostly loose over hard surface and one long grass section. With a few rock gardens, rock and log drops, twisty dual singletrack and lots of fast flowing corners, the course wasn’t as technical as some of the World Cups, but nonetheless very fast, flowing and fun to ride. My prep for the Games didn’t go as planned with a crash three weeks prior and flu a week prior to the race. Thus my legs felt quite flat when it finally came down to business and I only managed an 18th place. The support of the crowds was really great, however, cheering my country’s and my name every time I came past, motivating me to push harder.” 210mm x 275mm Sunshine was imported for the event. 100% Waterproof SADDLEBAGS va Ortlieb saddlebags. From the Micro - ultralight saddle bag to the mighty 4 litre seatpost bag. All easily mounted and removed, and all 100% waterproof. SEATPOST BAG SADDLE-BAG MICRO • Lightweight waterproof seat post • Waterproof Saddle-Bag for • Ultra lightweight Saddle-Bag for bag in two sizes (1.5 and 4 L) with integrated mount • PU-coated nylon and Cordura® fabric • Ideal for day tours by mountainbike or roadbike mountain, road or touring bikes • Size S, perfect for roadbikes (e.g. for spare tube) • Size M, perfect for MTBs (pocket tool, tube) • Size L, provides enough space for race bike and mountain bike • Ideal for spare tube and tools • Reflector • Includes mounting set for saddle • Simple mounting to seat braces allows single handed removal a jacket and those essential small items (alternative to a backpack) • Snap-lock for quick fitting and removal 5 YEAR GUARANTEE MADE IN GERMANY WWW.ORTLIEB.COM Ortlieb products are distributed in the UK and Ireland by Lyon Equipment - www.lyon.co.uk Even top-class international racers need to let their hair down every now and then… Words and pictures by Nicolas Switalski. Riders: Anita Gehrig, Carolin Gehrig and Diana Marggraff. The song says: “I’ve come to know that memories were the best things you ever had”, and I think this is so true. Far from home is this place where singletrack should never end and almost feels like it never will; where steam greets our descents and red, orange and yellow do not mean ‘stop’ but instead they are the ‘go’ for autumn shredding in Chile. I arrived in Nevados de Chillan, Chile, 400km south of Santiago, to race in the first round of the 2014 Enduro World Series. Upon my arrival at the hotel, I met two tall girls who did not speak any Spanish. The people at the hotel spoke no English, so I had to explain to them that any time between now and never the girls’ bikes should arrive – the airline had lost them and race practice was due to start tomorrow. The girls were Anita and Carolin Gehrig from the Specialized Twins Racing Team; luckily and to my surprise, the missing luggage arrived a few hours later and we spent the afternoon assembling our bikes and getting to know each other. This would be my prelude to the great memories that followed. For the next few days the twins were kind enough to give me a ride up to the race venue in their rented pickup truck in exchange for being their non-official team translator in Nevados. Chile’s EWS race format allowed for two days practice followed by two days of racing. All four days were perfect; the weather could not have been better, blue skies and cool wind making this a perfect first round. The race went really well for the twins – Anita managed a 7th place, Carolin 11th, and their friend Diana Marggraff 10th. It was a great week’s racing; we had conquered EWS round one and for the twins it was the first of six more to come. 56 58 Downtime. Racing over, I find myself sitting in a cabin having dinner with Anita and Carolin, enjoying the great times just passed, decompressing from the pressure of racing and having some good laughs. This is where I first meet Diana Marggraff; she is a good friend of Anita and Carolin and stopped by our hotel to have dinner with us. To my surprise this girl is from Ecuador and as good Latinos do, we instantly become old friends. For the second time since I met the twins, the topic comes up: “We should have a photo shoot here!” This was first discussed a few days earlier, the day we met, but everyone’s priorities were then on the race – now the next few days would be all about this. Quickly making plans, we agreed to leave early in the morning and head up to the Valle Hermoso trail, stage four of the race, to begin what would be a collection of great memories. Diana had already shipped her bike back to Ecuador, but I offered to loan her my bike since I would be behind the lens this time. This was the girls’ last day in Nevados and we wanted to make the most of it; that same day they would be heading back to Santiago to ride some trails near there, and we didn’t have any time to waste. We managed to do one last run of what had been one of the most spectacular stages in the race – without racing to worry about, we could focus on having fun and getting the perfect shot. 59 Unveiling the stage. The steam rises and unveils the first sunrays, showering the epic singletrack that awaits three girls eager to have fun and shred. But first, we must mark our faces with war paint. We have to become one with our surroundings and the mix of ash and hot water make the perfect paint. We come in absolute peace but are willing to conquer these trails without mercy. Revealing the colour from time to time and clearing our mind, the fumarola, or steam hole at the top of the mountain, sends boiling water and vapour to meet us as if to purify and cleanse our minds ready to start riding. No need to chant ‘om’ here: it’s already part of the package. Now we are ready, no time to waste. To be standing here at the beginning of the trail is one of the best preludes for what is to come. Just by looking ahead you know this is going to be a memory you will never forget. The trails here look man-made, with amazing switchbacks and tunnels made from the tree branches turned autumnal red; the dirt looks almost perfect, but it can get tricky sometimes. This is not the famous deep dust of ‘Chilean Antigrip’, but it has characteristics all of its own and it spices up the ride. This is no problem for these girls – these warriors know how to have fun and they really know how to bomb down with their bikes. I wouldn’t want to be at war with them because they’d kick the boredom out of anyone. 60 61 62 63 64 Their unique riding styles are what makes it possible to tell the twins Carolin and Anita apart; and the ever-present big smile on Diana’s face while on the bike is something to admire, but don’t be fooled: these girls can ride, they are the kind of people that make riding any terrain look easy. You can hear the sound of the hard pounding and rock rumbling of these girls descending from afar; the ground trembles as they pass by, leaving a cloud of dust, a stampede of bikes, the full cavalry. I can still see the dust when they are far over the horizon. These trails are like looking through postcards, there’s no going wrong here, every pedal stroke presents us with a perfect moment, the perfect instant, perfect timing; timing for a photograph, timing to brake into a corner… The perfect time of season, the perfect millisecond in the shutter of anyone’s life, this place is almost surreal. I’ve heard people say again and again how difficult it is for the eyes and the mind to conceive this landscape’s almost handpainted colours. These are the places most of us spend our lives searching for and every once in a while we are lucky enough to stumble across them. As the day becomes afternoon, the echoes of laughter and chain slapping become more distant. We have to accept that every good descent becomes more and more level, the volcanic steam from the top of the mountain is now distant and the dust has settled. That which in the beginning seemed endless, now becomes finite. It’s over, with victory for everyone. We have covered so much ground and the path is ready for the next warrior willing to accept to let go; none is lost and all is gained. We have our memories to keep us going, the fuel of life. 65 66 For every surface there’s a Schwalbe Shop online: schwalbe.co.uk Join the ride on Facebook Featured tyre: The Magic Mary Whether fast or slow, there’s something special about the way the French organise mountain bike races. Beate tackles the Transmaurienne. Words and illustrations by Beate Kubitz, pictures by Chipps. 68 The gladiators gather. I did almost give up on the awful, garish, white-writing-on-red event website, but there was a tantalising picture on the home page which made my painstaking deconstruction purposeful. Alps. Blue sky. And a mountain biker apparently disappearing off the edge of the world. My French is sketchy but after a few days of clicking and cross-eyed notetaking, I had a basic outline of the event to sell to my boyfriend as our summer holiday plan. The website is probably why, when we finally lined up on the start line, we were two of a grand total of five Brits participating in the event. Yes, but it’s pointing at the race finish. The Trans Where? The Transmaurienne is five days of racing in the Sybelles, in the Maurienne region of the French Alps. The days range from a 12km prologue with a mere 500m of climbing, to a monstrous 60km tour of the area, clocking up 4,000m of altitude in one stage. Exciting and intimidating in equal measure. The Sybelles in the Savoie is a ski region in the winter. The road winds up from Saint Jean de Maurienne, signposting seven villages and topping out at the infamous Col de la Croix de Fer. In the summer, the main lifts still hum for mountain bikers and hikers, while a steady stream of roadies take on the Croix de Fer. Despite the relatively busy resorts, everyone there seems extraordinarily enthusiastic about taping off town squares, sticking in inflatable arches, timing tents and bike washes and generally creating a fête du velo. The race is like riding an advert for mountain biking in the region, with each day starting in a different ski station with routes criss-crossing the valleys, looping through the landscape taking in rocks, wooded singletrack and high alpine meadows. It’s soon clear that within a few hundred metres of the off, three hundred plus mountain bikers are pretty much absorbed by the vastness of the Alps. Our race begins with a mass start and fanfare each day and within minutes we’re just about the only people on the network of trails, apart from cheery and encouraging marshals and a few enthusiastic supporters, whose enthusiasm never faltered. 70 You can never have too much energy. We lined up at the start of the prologue, six at a time on the start ramp. I realised, with growing horror, that I was surrounded by hardtails and lycra skinsuits bearing slogans like ‘Team Adrenaline’. These chaps (chaps were a very large majority) were clearly of the dedicated racing snake persuasion and would take no prisoners. There was no time to change my mind though. The commentator was busy giving it his all and every group of six was cheered off the ramp. My group departed at breakneck speed and I struggled to keep with them to the first bend. By the first descent I had stars before my eyes and as the route climbed back up I felt decidedly sick. The steep hairpin corner ahead of me afforded magnificent views of the valley below and the peaks beyond. Probably. My vision was a bit patchy. But there was a marshal urging me onwards. I was doing my best but it was time to ease back a bit on the racing and just try to make it to a descent that would give me back my self-esteem. It took a while, but gradually the course started to turn. Stretches of singletrack swooped around the edges of fields. Little dirt chutes plummeted through trees. And the final straight catapulted us down the four flights of stairs around the Mairie. Suddenly my full suspension bike and baggies felt at home. Only 1km to the finish. Vertically down, that is. I realised, with growing horror, that I was surrounded by hardtails and lycra skinsuits bearing slogans like ‘Team Adrenaline’. A rider climbs towards the storm clouds. Beate’s ‘before’ photo. 71 Sunshine, lycra, kneepads. This is French cross country. Riders head for the food stop. 72 Probably this way… The feed station lay at the foot of what I remember (less than fondly) as the ‘giant hogweed deathmarch of doom’. Salvation at 1,800m. There was a fair amount of this. All over again. Holidays when you need to be more organised and get up earlier than you would for work are a bit bizarre. We retired to our chalet for an early night, making checklists of our kit for the morning and questioning our sanity. But when the morning came, it didn’t seem such a bad idea to be embarking on a monster ride from Albiez-Montrond after all. We lined up in results order. Our allotted places were virtually at the back. There was one other woman in the long race – in full lycra with knee pads (quite a popular look in France if the race was anything to go by). A racket of cowbells and hooters cheered us under the inflatable arch and we were off for a quick lap of some woodland before the climbing began. And climb we did. I’d printed out course maps and tried to memorise the routes but all sense of direction quickly left me. I soon started to watch the altitude numbers increase on my Garmin rather than second-guess where we were. We progressed satisfactorily up through slippery, muddy woodland trails (an unseasonable amount of rain was responsible for this) into the more open upland landscape, but my self-congratulation came to an end when I realised that I’d been watching the calorie counter and not the altitude readout. Unhappily, 1,200 calories translated into a mere 700m of climb. Only 1,300m more to do then. Just as it all seemed a bit lacking in fun, the route dropped down a stony chute straight into a burbling brook and onto a ribbon of red singletrack through pine trees. Of course it didn’t last, but that tantalising rush of flow spurred me on through the next section of never-ending climb. Somewhere on one of these hot slopes, I realised I’d run out of water. There was no need to worry though – the feed stop was surely nearby. Sure enough, as we began crossing high mown meadows, I could hear cowbells in the distance and started looking out for the eagerly anticipated stand full of cheering, cowbell-clanging marshals. Rounding the next bend my face fell as I was confronted with a herd of actual, cowbell-wearing, cows. I’d started to wonder whether I’d missed the stop, when the path was flanked by two small boys, handing up orange segments. I’ve never been quite so taken by either small boys or orange segments. It was a perfect prelude to the feed stop, a hundred metres on, well stocked with cakes, bananas and other goodies. Unbelievably, we were still climbing. The feed station lay at the foot of what I remember (less than fondly) as the ‘giant hogweed death-march of doom’. Only then did the course turn to more entertaining things. Fast paths, technical descents into rocky alpine rivers (make your own stepping stones). Oh, and more climbing. Granted, it was through alpine turf, dotted with intense blue harebells, but climbing nevertheless. It was almost surprising when we were finally pointed downhill into a wooded hillside, descending on rooty switchbacks to the finish. The finish appeared to be sponsored by the local saucisson seller. Middle-aged women poured Coke into plastic cups and enthused about the region. I concurred wholeheartedly, mouth full, that it was both beautiful and delicious. 73 Red Bull arches grow wild up here. Earn it… …to turn it. And again? By the second stage, our holiday was beginning to feel like a task to be completed (albeit with nice views). So I was not really expecting that, on stage two, the intensely stupid climbs would be truly and properly rewarded. After a brief and near-vertical warm up climb of a mere 400m followed by a pleasingly knobbly singletrack descent, we recommenced the now-familiar uphill march. This one distinguished itself by a relentless start, from which it kicked up into barely rideable woodland paths then, at the treeline, ceased all pretence at reason and began zigzagging in minuscule increments up a turf wall in the full glare of the midday sun. After about an hour of this, a rider came haring past, all wiry fellrunner, holding his carbon hardtail aloft. ‘The descent had better be good’, I muttered, reminding myself that despite full suspension, my Ripley is a miracle of lightness and will make the descents – when I reach them – a million times more fun. 74 A Red Bull arch and feed station marked the high (2,100m) point at which we finally ran out of mountain. And within a few seconds, the memory of the climb was obliterated. The trail crested a ridge, a tiny cinder rollercoaster edged with pretty meadow flowers. Truly the top of the world. Then it began to wind its way down off the exposed spine and into trees. A little singletrack ledge, just wide enough to skim down. I passed my wiry hardtail friend making hard work of the tiny rock lumps that popped out occasionally. A few muddy sections slowed progress and even stopped the bike as goo packed between tyre and frame. I began to remember the climb. But then turn after turn the trees became taller and the path dried out, the caked mud crumbled off with a satisfying patter as it spattered the trail, and the winding red earth began testing all my hairpin skills. For a few hundred metres it turned out onto a ledge, halfway up a scree cliff. The valley floor, it turned out from a sideways glance, was still a long way below. A first-aider in a Red Cross T-shirt looked on nonchalantly as I ducked back into the woods for an extra helping of singletrack rooty hairpin goodness. I lost count after 60 singletrack switchbacks. 60! Where else would you find that kind of descent in a cross-country race? Brand new Today T-shirt. Available in blue, grey or green. £19.99 RRP, £16.99 for subscribers. Purchase today from the Singletrack shop: singletrackworld.com/shop Beautiful, until you have to get to the top of it. The final free lunch of champions. Beate’s unscheduled pit-stop. By stage three we were embracing the early starts and the climbs. If we had descents like yesterday, it was all worthwhile. So I really didn’t have a trip in the ambulance marked into the plan. But sure enough, I was seeing the mountains disappearing through the rear window of an ambulance. One moment I’d been flying down a gravelly descent, the next I was sitting myself upright with concerned voices all around me. I’d clearly decided to use my chin as a brake and blood was splashed on the pebbles around me. While I was trying to work out whether I could continue to ride, the marshals conjured up a 4x4 and stashed me (and bike) into it. Good job too – I emerged from French A&E several hours later with 11 stitches as holiday souvenirs. The racing might have been over for me, but, perhaps oddly, I was still enjoying my holiday. I packed the boyfriend off for the final day of the race and inched my aching self along on my bike to find a nice view to paint. Then the camaraderie of the race beckoned, and battered though I was, I joined the finish line dinner. The quality of the food was a constant throughout the race and this was no exception: generous, steeped in local cheese and accompanied by wine. We sat on benches in the sun, sharing our stories in broken French and English and chatting about next year’s offering. 76 The Transmaurienne is not the only such race in France. If the leaflets in our starter packs were anything to go by, stage races pop up here, there and everywhere, from the Vercors to Corsica. Usually there’s a choice of courses – the Transmaurienne offered the monster Grand Parcours that I did, the shorter Petit Parcours and a Randonée, which is basically a sportive version on the shorter trail. All for a very reasonable €35 a day, or €110 for all five days. You can do any number of stages and spend your days in the mountains, on a fantastic route where you’re counted out and back by intensely cheery French people, and handed water, oranges, bananas and cake at very welcome moments. And if it all goes tits up, the same cheery firstaiders dispatch you to hospital with the Pompiers. Just don’t forget your EHIC card. transmaurienne.com BECAUSE OUT THERE… THERE ARE NO TEAM CARS, NO PODIUMS, AND NO SAG WAGONS. IF IT WORKS FOR THESE RIDERS, IT WILL WORK FOR ANYONE. 78 Glen Tilt. The Scottish Highlands bite back… Andy Mac tells a tale of misadventure while tackling this Perthshire classic. Words and pictures by Andy McCandlish. Leeze me on our heather-land wi' a' its hamely gloom. Glen Tilt is just one of many places etched into my 25-yearold mountain biking brain. Coming from a mountain climbing background, my early days on the bike were fed by searching out remote places in the Scottish hills you could take your bike into and disappear, using this fancy new mode of transport to provide challenges and cover huge amounts of ground in the places I loved. Trails that led into the hills were all fair game, but a few stood head and shoulders above the rest – for a variety of reasons. Tilt managed to combine just about everything that mountain bikers craved in those early days – and still do, for that matter. It was remote, with sections easily 20km from the nearest road end; the trail was top-notch, with singletrack of the best quality threading through its steep sides; and it sits in some of the finest hill country anywhere. Lastly it was a challenge, linking up distant – certainly in walking terms – villages and towns that would otherwise have taken days to walk between. Riding between Braemar and Blair Atholl at either end of the glen seemed almost 80 impossibly exotic in those days, and it will forever hold a little of that excitement for me. In short, it’s an adventure. Better than a frozen earworm… So why – why? – when I think of Glen Tilt does my brain always turn to the name of the village at the foot of the glen? The start point to many expeditions up that magnificent area, Blair Atholl, is a beautiful village, but it does sound altogether too much like a pivotal character in Dallas. So when I think of Glen Tilt I think of a sharpsuited Texan billionaire, complete with an immaculately backcombed and broadly shoulder-padded wife. And it is getting irritating. Especially now, when he has kicked my arse. But more of that later. So I passed that irritation on to Chris Marquis – good luck with that, Chris – when we met that morning in Atholl and tooled up ready for a day out in the heather. We had planned a circular route I hadn’t done before, climbing steeply away from civilisation, swinging round by Fealar Lodge before dropping back into Tilt for an easy return along the glen to Blair Atholl and his bootlace tie. Sounded easy, and it certainly was when I traced my finger over the map, but it was nigh on 60km with a whole lot of climbing in store. Chris forgot the Haribo. More of a lean-from than a lean-to. Sometimes the path just gets shy. A great weather forecast fizzled, as they often do, into a slightly grubby morning of drizzle and low cloud. Chris just squinted at the sky and shrugged his shoulders – a veteran of these hills too, he was used to it – so we both stuffed some extra gear into our bags just in case, and cranked out of the car park. A group of German hillwalkers were just coming to life after what looked like a gruelling night’s sleep in their estate car at the exit. Staggering out of the car door, lively ‘slept in my car’ hairdo in evidence, the driver nodded a greeting before opening the rear door to a scene of wet-gear carnage. That cheered me up a fair bit – we might be heading into a day of drizzly hill bashing, but at least I hadn’t spent the night using a pair of wet boots as a pillow. The road climb away from the Old Bridge of Tilt car park proved to be relentlessly steep and unforgiving. An Asda delivery van passed on its way back down the narrow tarmac hill – goodness knows where it had been delivering to – as we cranked on up, passing through gates and groups of fishermen donning waterproofs out of their car boots. The hills opened up from the lush, tree-lined calm of the village outskirts to open moorland cut through by our rough Land Rover track. Turning occasionally to the vista opening up behind revealed hills marching away across the moors, the A9 corridor snaking north and some pretty heavy-looking showers appearing for all the world to be huge grey pillars joining hillside to sky. Local knowledge. “I went a bit wrong last time I passed through here,” confided Chris as we pulled up to the abandoned house at Shinagag. “We ended up shouldering the bikes for a fair bit through the heather…” As we carefully planned how to avoid such a scenario, the rain swept over so we dashed under the cover of the crumbling corrugated iron roof for a map check and quick nosebag to keep the energy levels up. Fortunately it wasn’t cold, so when the inevitable happened and we found ourselves shouldering the bike a fair bit through the heather five minutes later, it wasn’t too chilling. Quartering the hillside, bikes on shoulders as we waded through the knee-deep heather, the path just wasn’t for being found. More than once we crossed and recrossed the single dotted line on the GPS screen map, muttering those most oft-used of statements in this situation: “It’s right here, we are on the path right here!” Nothing. 81 S is for spectacular. Well, at least for about a hundred metres until I stumbled, cursed and fell out of the heather onto a pretty distinct singletrack. Eye level with a hoof print and looking down a hidden corridor in the undergrowth, I beamed to myself and shouted Chris over. We could at last hop on and begin to ride. I have to say I was enjoying the old-school feel of this route already. Stooping low at a river crossing, I filled my bottle with deep brown peat water and watched another sunny patch approach. The heather was a sea of purple and our singletrack had developed steadily into a peachy trail, beautifully etched over the heather moors under the brooding, dark hills of Beinn a’Ghlo. When the sun came it was truly roasting, so it was a good job a lengthy spell settled over as first Chris, then I, waded across the knee-deep river. Shoes soaked instantly under the flow, but neither of us mourned the loss of our dry socks – the trail was just superb. Spotlit by sunbeams. Skirting Sron na h-Innearach, the bikes slid round rocks, crunched over heather roots and slid round peat ruts, and it was great. We had a grandstand, uninterrupted view of the hills around and all the weather that was coming our way. Rain showers were greeted with a smile – we could see how short they were going to be – but the sun was truly welcome when it passed over our little patch of hillside, briefly spotlighting our journey from high above. Over the top it turned more rocky, then steepened up to a saddle before steadily turning into a Land Rover track. When I say ‘steadily’, I mean that first of all it assumed the width of doubletrack, but kept the muddy and rock-studded peat surface; after 50m the rocks were gone and it was smooth but soft peat; and only then did it reveal its true identity and turn to proper track. It was like a timeline of the estate running out of will – or cash – to take the track any further. There followed some proper, big hill, estate track riding. Hacking over incessant hill climbs and drops – why can’t they ever follow the contours? The track headed north-east, swinging southeast to the remote keepers’ cottages at Daldhu. Chris had warned me about the climb up the Allt Fearnach towards Fealar Lodge – 6km of solid up – but even he hadn’t expected the impressive headwind we would be up against. Turning north at Daldhu, our ears were instantly assaulted by the kind of wind roar only a free-fall parachutist would expect on exit from a fast-moving plane. Shouting 83 "I can see Chipps' summer house from here!" That's future whisky flowing to Blair Atholl. to Chris, I only got a smile in return – he hadn’t heard what I said. No surprise really, neither had I. It was a long road, winding up and over a saddle, before descending off towards the beautifully kept pink buildings of Fealar. It was quite an odd feeling, this far from civilisation, to come round a corner and be faced with a delightfully domestic scene of pink houses, expensive cars and a well-groomed driveway. It is reputed to be the remotest permanently inhabited house in the British Isles, and standing on the trail as it cut off to the west from the foot of the short driveway, I wouldn’t argue with that statement – it had taken us literally hours to get here, and the alternative access routes weren’t a great deal shorter. They can be cut off for weeks at a time in winter – again, no surprise – so although on our benign summer’s day it looked idyllic, it must be a hard life up there at times. All downhill from here. This is where the singletrack to Glen Tilt started, and where my day unravelled fast. The trail left the Fealar access track at the foot of the drive by a small picture of a walker and cyclist (very enlightened I thought), pointing west across a hillside on grassy singletrack. It proved to be great riding, alternating between grassy trail and 84 beautifully distinct gritty singletrack. Now and again runnels that were three inches wide and deep cut along the trail, a remnant of some recent heavy rain perhaps, neatly camouflaged by overhanging grass. Balancing along the edge of them solved the problem, but we had to keep our wits about us as they would grab a wheel if you weren’t on the ball. Contouring round the hillside the path was really enjoyable. Then, as it turned down the hill for a final burst of lovely open trail across more heather, I let the bike run on. I remember looking around at the trail, thinking how perfect it was in this far-off hillside – then it all went mildly wrong. I spotted the runnel a bit too late and, at the same time my brain processed this, it also took into consideration the large but indeterminate hole overgrown by grass immediately behind. I couldn’t pop over the runnel as I had instinctively thought to do, and instead decided that the best option, once as much speed was scrubbed off as possible, was to drop the front wheel into the runnel and just jump clear to the left of the bike. Damn that scenery. My ogling and idle mind had left it all a bit late to do much other than leap off. Go get help, Lassie - er, laddie. Leap of faith. So leap is what I did, but the downslope to the left meant I flew through the air, arms wheeling, a bit longer than expected. Hitting the ground with my arm very shortly after my feet I felt the heavy impact of a serious fall, and instantly knew it was bad. That, and a fairly bone-chilling crack, told me what I probably didn’t want to know. I rolled, sat up and looked down the hill at Chris who had paused to wait for me. ‘Erm… ouch?’ was all I could think to say: ‘I think this might be pretty bad…’ (or words to that effect). My wrist had already swollen badly between my watch strap and glove, and was instantly worse than useless. Movement brought instantaneous, electric-shock style, pain, so regardless of the medical issue this was going to be a problem. I got up and pushed my bike towards Chris, who had worked out all was not well, and as I did the full implications hit me. Immediate concerns: we are 20km from the nearest road, with rough track and fast river crossing to negotiate. I can’t drive, so poor Chris will have to take me home. Longer term: hospital, where and how long will we have to wait, even once we do get there? And what am I going to do for work if I can’t ride or drive...? This all washed over me in the short walk to a concerned Chris, but already I knew there was nothing we could do now other than start to get out of there. With little said we started the plod out straight away. The river crossing was a lively few minutes of thinking I was going to be swept away holding onto my bike one-handed, terrified of putting my bad arm down if I lost my feet. This was followed by an eternity – actually about 20km and an hour and a half – of one-handed riding down the Tilt estate track. Finally we rolled into the car park and I was more grateful than I have ever been to see my van. Old Blair himself had sharpened up his tasseled Armani slip-ons and given me a royal boot in the backside for taking my eye off the ball, but it could have been a whole lot worse. The result: one wrist, broken in two places and slightly impacted. And all I can think is how lucky I was. 85 Illustration by Beate Kubitz. Glen Tilt – why bother? The Perthshire hills, of which Glen Tilt is a fairly central feature, are simply covered in trails. You can choose to stay low, skirting the famous River Tay on rooty singletrack, or aim into the hills for some genuine mountain experiences. There are more than a few classic Scottish routes in the area too – the Beinn a’Ghlo circuit, Ben Vrackie, Loch Bhac and the legendary Pitlochry singletrack are all within easy reach – but to me the area is best known for its big rides. Kicking off from Blair Atholl you can use the A9 corridor to get up to the Gaick Pass and pop over into Glen Feshie, before completing a circuit of the Cairngorms back down the Tilt and your start point at Blair Atholl. One hundred and forty miles of perfect and empty trails combined with the adventure of an overnight or two. Of course, there is a little of everything in between these extremes too, and a healthy network of estate tracks to convey you neatly between the most appealing trails. If you are after an adrenaline fix, just take to the Dunkeld downhill trails along the road and test your mettle. 86 Pre- and après-ride is also superb with some great places to eat and stay in those most Scottish of Scottish towns, Pitlochry and Blair Atholl. Bakeries and great coffee shops are all that’s needed to bring a smile to my face, but you can’t go wrong throwing some good pubs in too, and there are plenty of them around. While you are there, why not go canyoning, white water rafting down the River Tummel, or partake of any number of other extreme activities in the hills – Nae Limits (naelimits.co.uk) is just down the road at Ballinluig, and the sky’s the limit for ways you could burst yourself too. The upshot is you could easily spend a week or two here without riding the same trail twice, or climbing the same peak. But equally, you could just happily gaze at them all day. THE FIRST FORK THAT THINKS FOR YOU. eLECT Choose between Auto Ride Sensor Mode – Senses fork inclination and trail impacts, automatically activating or deactivating fork lockout. Wireless Remote Mode – Locks fork on/off manually as needed, with the bar mounted ANT wireless remote exclusively from MAGURA. AUTO OFF AUTO OFF AUTO ON In Auto Mode, during extreme drop situations, lockout opens automatically in .02 seconds. eLECT is optional on all 2014 MAGURA TS8R and TS6 forks. Auto Mode can be easily calibrated to rider preference. 40 - 60 hours ride time battery life. Power via Micro-USB. eLECT rear/front shock system coming soon. AUTO ON For technical information, visit magura.com/elect magura.com The Knowledge. Glen Tilt Classic Ride Distance: 54.7km Total Ascent: 1,224m Maps. ‘OS Landranger 43: Braemar and Blair Atholl’ covers the whole ride in adequate detail. How to Get There. By Car: Blair Atholl and Pitlochry are easy to reach by car, being situated just off the main A9 north of Perth. From the south, follow the motorway network (M74 and M73) north to Stirling where you join the M9 to Perth. From here take the A9 north for around 30 mins and you are there. By Train: There are railway stations in both Pitlochry and Blair Atholl, so the train is a viable option for coming to the area. Bikes and trains tend to be a bit sticky though, so make sure you book both you and your steed a seat as far in advance as possible. Accommodation. Blair Atholl has a few options, namely the Atholl Arms beside the train station (athollarmshotel.co.uk) well as a number of guest houses. If you are keen to 88 camp, the Blair Castle Caravan Park is well equipped and very family friendly (blaircastlecaravanpark.co.uk). But if you are after a bit more buzz, five miles down the road Pitlochry has a vast array of hotels, plus the youth hostel (syha.org.uk) and the Pitlochry Backpackers Hotel (pitlochrybackpackershotel.com). A cracking place – if a little pricey – is the Old Mill Inn just off the main street (theoldmillpitlochry.co.uk), which also makes a great fireside place to eat and drink at the end of a long day. Where to Eat. Our favourite is the aforementioned Old Mill in Pitlochry, basically an old-style pub with great food and good beer in front of a roaring fire. Apart from that there are plenty of other spots, like Café Biba down the main street (cafebiba.co.uk), open all day for coffee and meals. In Blair Atholl itself you shouldn’t miss the excellent Watermill where they not only serve great coffee and food, but also mill all their own flour and do superb breads to take away (blairathollwatermill.co.uk). Bike Shop. Rest assured, there is an excellent bike shop in the area, in the form of Kev Grant and his Escape Route shop/hire/workshop (01796 473859 escape-route.co.uk). They have great stock and workshop facilities, but more importantly Kev and the crew are all big local riders who will gladly guide you on to some of the best trails in the area. Drop in and see them, and if you are lucky you could sample coffee strong enough to floss your teeth with. Oh, and there is a minor injuries hospital in Pitlochry which comes highly recommended… Thanks to Chris for his patient waiting in the rain on the ride out, and the long lift home. A GPX file of this ride is available in the Singletrack Mag Archive: singletrackworld.com/magarchive/issue-92 Ordnance Survey mapping © Crown copyright AM054/11 BIG MOUNTAIN SHRED THREADS A kit that stands up to the fastest tracks in the world · Developed over 2 years with the Madison Saracen Factory Race Team · The jerseys low bulk and fast wicking construction help keep you dry and comfortable · Underarm and rear neck mesh panels provide a cool flow of air · The elasticated waist features woven in grippers to keep the shorts in place · Limited lifetime warranty · The shorts are constructed from strong poly 600D fabric to resist abrasion and chunky air-mesh panels prevent you overheating Long Sleeve Jersey srp £37.99 Short Sleeve Jersey srp £32.99 Shorts srp £54.99 * Also available in Black / Olive / Limeaid colour option www.madison.cc facebook.com/madisonclothing twitter.com/madisonclothing Long, warm, summer days and taking bike-riding holidays in the right part of the year has meant that we’ve put a ton of stuff through the Grinder this issue. Words and pictures by the Grinder Team. Easton Havoc 35 stem and handlebar. Price: £79.99 (stem), £69.99 (bar) From: Silverfish, silverfish-uk.com Tested: Five months. First question: why make an 800mm-wide handlebar? Simple: because Easton’s riders asked for it. Bikes have been getting slacker, longer and lower for a while now; suspension just gets better and better and the terrain that we are able to ride is rougher. A bigger bar makes sense, offering more leverage and greater control. Next question: why add 3.2mm to the 31.8mm clamp diameter standard? Also apparently simple: this increase means that handlebar length can be increased, with the desired characteristics retained. Stiffness can be maintained without having to increase wall thickness and add weight. Compromises don’t have to be made. Before riding the Easton 35mm setup I slipped into my lab coat, stood over my bike and pushed and pulled on my usual handlebar… In my notebook I then wrote: ‘can feel quite a lot of give’. But Easton takes a more scientific approach. It has 30 years’ experience in working with aluminium, a team of engineers and a testing facility with a machine that repeatedly subjects the bars to high loads and repeated cycles. Both components are made to a high quality, with great attention to detail. For such a long tube of aluminium the Havoc handlebar feels light in the hand. Prior to installation I popped them on the scales and noted 308g (up 8g on the claimed figure). That’s low for an (aluminium) bar of this width, especially one approved for downhill applications. Easton labels the Havoc 35 as gravity (the Haven 35 is the all-mountain version) and states that this version of its Havoc handlebar is stronger, wider and lighter than ever before. 90 Compared directly to the 31.8mm clamp bar, it is 50mm longer and weighs 15g less. It’s also only 30g heavier than the Haven 35 (allmountain/trail riding), with 50mm extra width. How much can you cut them down by if you don’t want to run full width? There are cut marks down to 750mm, in 10mm increments. It’s comfy too, with similar measurements to many others on the market: 20mm (or 40mm) rise, 9° backsweep, 5° upsweep. To me they feel just right. Of course, you have to run the 35mm clamp stem with these bars. The Havoc stem is CNC machined from a solid block of aluminium and employs Easton’s Top Lock technology. This clamping method is mo’ carbon friendly; it’s designed to help eliminate stress risers and it effectively unifies the different parts of the stem. It also reduces fatigue on bolt heads; tighten the top two bolts first until the faceplate contacts the stem body and then turn your attention to the bottom two bolts, rather than potentially overtightening all four. I fitted the bar and stem to a 140mm-travel 29in bike. After the first couple of (local) rides I thought about cutting them down a little… then the moment passed. I am 6ft 1in-and-a-bit tall, and my arms are long. I did not experience any upper body discomfort or aches in my shoulders after switching from my old 740mm bar to the 800mm. Instead I noticed the increase in control. On a trip to the steep and densely forested hillsides of the Tweed Valley for the UK Gravity Enduro, I rode stages with no tree clipping incidents. This may have been luck, but I never did pick up the hacksaw. Five months later the Havocs remain untouched and enjoyed at full width, trees be damned. Overall: Strong, light and wide – bigger is better! If, of course, it suits you and where you ride. James Love. Scott Mind LS Fit shorts. Mudhugger mudguards. Price: £112.00 From: Scott, scott-sports.com Tested: Five months. Price: £42.00 front and rear (for 27.5in full sus/29in hardtails) From: Mudhugger, themudhugger.co.uk Tested: Three months. Shorts are one of those pieces of gear that if they’re slightly the wrong fit, colour or style, you will notice it the whole ride. Too tight or loose, not long enough to cover the top of your pads, the fabric too lightweight for the job at hand; these are all things to take into account, and avoid, when picking your leg wear from the wardrobe. The Mind shorts aren’t cheap, but what they are, is a welldesigned item of technical riding gear that comes with a non-fixed inner short (the catchily named Underwear Plus Shorts). The inner short resembles the design of a pair of boxers, with the Scott logo running round the waist band and an all-over graphic pattern. For an inner short the padding is very reasonable, keeping my tush comfortable on long rides. The outer shorts have an abundance of design features. The fabric is light and well vented, there are some marks starting to appear and a little fading on the seat area, but I’ve used them on some pretty wet, muddy rides so that’s not really surprising. A multipanel cut provides an exceptional fit: loose with plenty of freedom on the upstroke and not flapping around when legs are extended unless you have heavy items in the pocket. Ventilation is provided by very fine mesh material near the knees and waist. By far the most outstanding design feature though is the waist volume adjustment. Scott has done away with velcro tabs and uses discreet watertight zips on either side. These lock into place, so once set you can leave them alone and they don’t have that annoying feeling when the velcro sticks to your jersey [or worse, your man fluff – Ed.]. Overall: A well thought-out and designed package, not cheap but filled with very nice features that make you wonder why you haven’t seen them before. As at home on the bike as they are in the café or pub post-ride. Richard. For 20 years, the mighty Crud Catcher/Crud Guard combo has ruled the land. Nothing could beat it for sturdiness and, well, crudcatching. However, the Crud Guard doesn’t play well with dropper posts (especially internally-routed ones). Step in Mudhugger, a company founded because its owners had just that problem. The company now does a range for all wheel sizes. It also makes a special rear guard for the problematic Orange Five and Alpine. Unlike seatpost-mounted mudguards that can slip round, the Mudhugger fits securely using zip ties to your seat stays. You are provided with some scratch-protector tape to keep your frame looking shiny. Not all bikes I tried the rear guard with worked perfectly though. Frames like the Ibis Ripley, with cables running atop the seatstays, didn’t give the Mudhugger anywhere to sit, but other frames, like the Saracen Kili in this issue, fit perfectly in seconds. The chaps at Mudhugger are very helpful though and offer all sorts of advice as to which version works best with which bike. When mounted, there’s a very ‘trials motorcycle’ look to it that I think looks very smart, although all the cool kids around here eschew any form of rear mudguards. The front guard works very similarly to the ‘bent bit of plastic sheet’ spray guards that are popular and unobtrusive. It does offer a more rigid way of doing it though and it keeps its shape well, even after having your bike strapped to a French farmer’s Vitara (long story…). Both front and rear guards are a semi-permanent fit, but offer a great protection from spray and flung mud without jamming up in all but the most clay-monster of conditions. Overall: A great rear guard if you’re happy with fitting it all winter, though the front guard doesn’t offer too much over the bent-plastic ones – but if you have neither, then it’s worth getting the pair. Chipps. 91 Suunto M5 heart rate monitor. Price: £100.00 From: Suunto, suunto.com Tested: Five months. Being a newbie to fitness training, I plumped for the Suunto M5 heart rate monitor as it had all the basic functions I was after – and no more. There are many heart rate monitoring options out there, with varying levels of fandangled gadgetry, but I know being overwhelmed with too much, too soon, would only lead to me not using it. The M5 is a lightweight, neat piece of kit, and one of the few heart rate monitors which sits comfortably on a slimmer wrist. So comfy in fact, I wear mine as a watch. To set up, the monitor takes you through a series of questions to assess your fitness level. A training program is built in and more are downloadable from Suunto’s Movescount website, with suggested targets which pop up every couple of days. I ended up ignoring my program as it didn’t fit in with my schedule, but the programs are adaptive; so if you’re keen to use them but miss some sessions, the M5 gets you back on track. The heart rate chest belt is nice and comfy too. While exercising, the M5 continually measures heart rate and calories consumed (always less than you might think – sigh…). With a big, bold display on your wrist, it’s easy to keep training within your specified limits. Post exercise, you get a summary of your workout plus an indication of recovery time, and all this is downloadable onto the Movescount site to keep a record of your amazing fitness achievements (ahem). The next purchase for me will be the GPS track pod, which records speed and trail distance. Overall: A super-simple, entry-level heart rate monitor, for those investigating their first forays into fitness training. Jorji. Kenda Honey Badger 29 x 2.2in tyres. Price: £36.99 From: Moore Large, todayscyclist.co.uk Tested: Two months. ‘You ride bikes long enough, something like this happens…’ No – nothing that dramatic; the ‘this’, in this case, is knowing you’re going to love a tyre before you’ve even freed it from its packaging. Kenda’s Honey Badger is, like its namesake, a sticky, grippy, sharp-clawed thing. It’s a common misconception among mountain bikers of a certain sort that more grip only comes from gnarlier rubber, but if the right combination of carcass shape and flexibility, tread pattern and depth, and rubber compound are put together then you can end up with the sort of tyre that really is a true all-rounder (not just an ‘all-rounder that I put up with being slow on hardpack/lethal on wet grass/an anchor uphill because it does this one other thing really, really well’…). And so it is with the Honey Badger. Small, shallow and widely-spaced knobs coat a rounded, 2.2in carcass, which seems a little oversized thanks to the ballooning profile but still fitted into frames without clearance issues. In terms of what they’re best suited to, it’s probably better I say what they’re not suited to, because there’s only one thing they don’t do well, and that’s really sticky mud. In common with most other low-profile tyres that have a small, closely-spaced tread pattern (and some that have more aggressive tread, too), they do clog in these conditions, and once the muck is in there they don’t clear especially rapidly either. In any other sort of trail surface, though, they are superb: the low profile tread and rounded body give plenty of grip on loose rubble and wet, fall-line loam slicks alike without adding too much extra rolling resistance; I’ve tried them inches-deep in both dust and slop (the former being particularly novel in a UK summer), and they work equally well at maintaining traction and control in both. It’s pretty hard to get them to break away under anything other than stupidly sharp braking, too; this suits my preferences though if you’re a more ‘flamboyant’ rider then it might not suit you. 92 Like the Nevegal reviewed elsewhere in this issue, the Honey Badgers’ sidewalls are on the flexible side of pliable. They don’t seem to be fragile, with no problems with cuts or tears in the four tyres we had on test across three bikes and testers, but they’re not especially supportive and feel better at low(ish) pressures and running tubes. Without, they have a tendency to wallow in turns, and of course the risk of pinch flats is ever present. Kenda’s DTC compound has long been a favourite of mine too – you get some of the benefits of a true sticky rubber but with none of the sluggishness, and improved wear too. Overall: A true all-rounder. Likely to be on my bike until it is completely bald. Jenn. Formula R1 Racing brakeset. Price: £249.00 an end From: Silverfish, silverfish-uk.com Tested: Six months. Formula’s website proudly proclaims the R1 Racing to be “the lightest disc brake on the market” – it’s hard to tell whether or not that is, or was ever true, thanks to the fuzzy descriptions employed by all brands (are quoted weights with or without rotors? Full length hoses? Mounting hardware or pads? And so on…), but at a real-world 370g for the pair on my kitchen scales, including trimmed braided hoses (but without any mounts/adapters or bolts), part-worn brake pads and a fair amount of dried-on mud, they’re still pretty skimpy. The R1 Racing’s master cylinder received a major redesign over the previous R1, bringing the lever much closer to the bar thanks to a shortened body, and the cap is composite rather than alloy, shaving a few grams off the overall weight. Hoses are kevlar braided as standard and fittings are titanium. I’ve not previously enjoyed using Formula levers, finding them too long for effective one-finger braking and too far from the bar to suit my small hands, but for the R1 Racing, Formula’s designers have gone down the route of shorter blades with a shallower bend that’s become more common as brakes have got more powerful. So, how does all this affect performance? I won’t lie and say that the lack of heft wasn’t a major draw for me – I like a light bike as much as the next girl but I’ve yet to find any super-light brakes that don’t suffer on the power front as a result. The R1s are no different. While there’s plenty of bite at the bottom end of the stroke, don’t expect them to haul you up on a dime in the same way that more powerful brakes can – because they don’t. The clue is in the name I suppose – when you’re ‘racing’, you’re aiming to do less slowing down, not more, and ultimate power comes second to ultimate svelteness. There’s not a great deal of modulation either – the R1s are either biting hard and sharp or not doing anything at all, which can get wearing on long descents or ‘fast bits in the woods’, where you want to scrub off a little bit of speed, not a lot. It also doesn’t suit riders who like to feather or drag their brakes for peace of mind (and whether you think that’s right or wrong, there’s a lot of people out there who do it). The new lever shape, and position, is lovely though – I never had a problem with the ergonomics of the lever blade and they were always within easy reach. Another plus point is the flippable lever, with two-part clamp for ease of fitting around everything else on your bar. The master cylinder even has a bleed port on both sides, for maximum ambidexterity. The composite master cylinder cap is well tucked away behind the lever blade – there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t stand up to an impact as well as a metal cap but in any case it’s well protected. If you do manage to give it a smack, you’ve probably done more than enough damage to the rest of the brake to write it off first. And at £500 for a bike’s worth, you really don’t want to do that… In summary: don’t ignore the ‘Racing’ bit of the title. If you’re building up a race bike, with an emphasis on cross-country/hooning around the woods, and weight is your primary concern, then the R1 Racing will do you fine. For the majority of riders though there are brakes out there that aren’t much heavier but are much more powerful, which will do a better job. Overall: Lightweight brakes for the race set. More of a tickle than a punch in the power stakes, though. Jenn. 93 Osprey Pixel Port pack. Price: £80.00 From: Osprey, ospreypacks.com Tested: Six months. Much as I’d like to spend all day, every day, riding, the greater proportion of my job is just like any other media professional’s: either sat at a desk, or commuting to that desk while thinking about being sat at it. Both states are burdened by an ever-expanding array of electronic devices, all of which have somehow managed to become essential not only for work but also for leisure, meaning that they have to be carted back and forth between home and office on a regular basis. For this, repurposed hydration packs and even courier bags just don’t cut it. While you can (usually) squeeze a laptop into the bladder compartment of most mid-sized hydration packs, there’s then precious little space left for eBook, tablet, sandwiches, jacket, cuddly toy etc. The fine silt that hides in the nooks and crannies of a pack that’s seen true trail use will work its way into and onto your precious devices too, regardless of how well you thought you’d cleaned it out. And a heavily loaded courier bag is a one-way ticket to spending significant amounts of money with your physiotherapist of choice. So a dedicated commuter bag definitely has a place in my life, and it possibly does in yours too. Osprey makes great hydration and active packs, and its range also includes travel gear and luggage. Hence it made sense when the brand launched a range of ‘tech packs’, the Portal series, designed around the needs of those who travel, often but not always on a self-propelled basis, with electronics on board. This pack – the Pixel Port – isn’t designed specifically for use on a bike but the substantial shoulder harness, well-padded and ventilated back, and compact footprint mean that it works quite well as a commute bag. Its 94 USP is the large, clear sleeve on the front of the pack – it’s hidden underneath the well-padded front flap but allows you to use a touchscreen device without taking it out of the pack. Inside the pack proper, there’s a soft, secure laptop sleeve that takes my 13-inch MacBook with plenty of room to spare, several organiser pockets for pens and the like, and another zipped, soft sleeve for the other tablet. There’s also room for jacket, cuddly toy and sandwiches – though not if you want to carry the latter in a lunchbox. Construction and materials are excellent, with little wear occurring at all, though I’m always aware of the pack’s fragile contents when taking the fun route to work so it maybe hasn’t had as hard a life as it could have done. There’s a chest and (removable) waist belt to fine-tune the fit, but the minimal nature of both, and the high-seated nature of the fit, means that it’s hard to get the pack to feel stable when it’s heavily loaded and you’re cranking into town to catch your train. I find the catches for the front flap fiddly to use with gloves on, and I’d also like a couple of external pockets that are accessible when you’re wearing the pack, for things like phone and wallet that are in and out all the time – the zipped pocket on the outside of the front flap is hard to reach when the pack’s on, and it’s also a bit of a security risk if, for example, your commute includes any time on a crowded train. No doubt Osprey will be making amendments to the Portal series in future though, and none of those are deal breakers, for me at least. Otherwise it’s a super bag that will probably outlast the devices within it. Overall: Handy bit of kit that has earned its place in the luggage rack. Jenn. Premier Benefit # 6: Singletrack App Access It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3! Log in to Singletrack, visit your account settings page and note your subscription number. Download the Singletrack App from the app store of your choice. Open the Singletrack App, click on the settings tab and enter your subscription details. To learn more visit: singletrackworld.com/ subscriber-app-access/ To find out more about Singletrack subscriptions visit: singletrackworld.com/subscribe 21 A M R R P O’Neal Pin It shorts. Kenda Nevegal X-Pro 27.5 x 2.35in tyres. Price: £64.99 From: O’Neal Europe, oneal-europe.com Tested: Two months. Price: £39.99 From: Moore Large, todayscyclist.co.uk Tested: Three months. I was quite excited to get my hands on the O’Neal Pin It shorts. I only had moto pants and downhill shorts in my wardrobe of riding kit, and I was missing that all-important pair of lightweight, breathable, easy to ride in shorts. First impressions were good: I liked the design and overall finish of the shorts, finding them cleanlooking and practical. At first I wasn’t a massive fan of the colour though, because – let’s face it – it’s bogey green. However, I found after a little while I grew to like it: it didn’t stand out too much but still gave off a bit of character. The first time I wore the shorts I was really happy with the fit and adjustability, these made the shorts really comfortable right away. At first I thought the shorts might be quite hot when riding because of their thickness. However, after riding and getting a sweat on, I was really pleased with how well ventilated they are. During the cold/windy rides the shorts kept some of the warmth in too, which was of course nice. I liked the ventilation zips for added breathability and the small microfibre goggle cloth was really useful to clean off any dirt or condensation from your lenses. It makes a nice change from using my T-shirt, which is usually equally as filthy. I didn’t have any issues with the durability of the shorts at all; over the duration of the test I had a few spills and the shorts weren’t damaged in any way. I also haven’t had to pull any loose threads off either. Overall: For me the Pin It shorts are a must-have, they’re comfortable and breathable to ride in. They don’t burn a hole in your wallet and can be worn for any occasion. [Weddings and funerals? – Ed.] Dan. The Nevegal is named after a now-defunct Italian UCI World Cup downhill venue in northern Italy. The course there involved everything from grassy meadows to rocky, rooty, dank forests. The original tyres were aimed at being a good all-round tyre for this multitude of unpredictable terrains. The new X-Pro version features a tweaked, shallower tread and a claimed 10% reduction in weight. The 2.35in tyres feature a directional tread, with central knobs chamfered for quick rolling, and made of a harder compound than the softer shoulders. Sipes (cuts in the tread blocks) allow them to deform under cornering and braking to add traction. Solid shoulder knobs are angled to dig in on cornering and are aided by hollow side knobs that add support in corners. The whole tyre has a much more rounded shape than the previous version and the tread extends quite far down the sidewalls. This should allow extreme lean angles, but also has the benefit of keeping a knobbly profile to the tyre if you’re running it on the new generation of wide and super-wide rims (which I was). The tyre presents a cheerfully round profile on a wide rim, with lots of tread on offer at all angles. There was more trail and road buzz than I was expecting from the chamfered tread, but this did translate to increased grip off road. I ran them tubeless, but after a couple of pinch-flats (on wide, hookless rims) I stuck tubes back in as I found the sidewalls too thin to inspire confidence. Traction was great, though the tyres do love to slide (albeit predictably) a little too much for my tastes. Overall: Big, knobby, all-round tyres, if a little fragile of sidewall. Better on the back wheel than the front. Chipps. 96 RACE READY PERFORMANCE. The Super PROTECT YOUR HEAD AT BELLHELMETS.COM RIDER: MICK HANNAH PHOTO: ADRIAN MARCOUX ALL MOUNTAIN RULER. CRC Pro bike bag. Price: £249.00 From: Chain Reaction, chainreactioncycles.com Tested: Six months, four flights and a road trip. Travelling with a bike is a serious business these days. Paying anything from £25 to £70 each way to fly a bike, plus the worry of whether your bike will get there in one piece, or at all, can make renting a bike at the other end seem mighty appealing. However, nothing rides like your own bike (for better or worse) and a rider on the trip of a lifetime naturally will want to take their own bike to ride. Of your bike transport options, this CRC bag aims to be at the top end of the soft case world. Not just a squishy bag, the CRC bag has pockets for everything as well as a good amount of extra protection in the form of extra padding and rigid, padded protectors. Wheels come off and fit into the side pockets (even 29in ones with tyres fitted). Bars and stem, seatpost and saddle come off and are strapped securely to the sidewalls of the bag. The bottom bracket shell straps solidly onto a central, padded unit while a (fully included) selection of dummy axles hold your bike solidly front and rear. (Everything from a front QR to a 12x150mm bolt-thru rear is supplied, all neatly in little, labelled pockets.) Packed correctly (instructions are included), nothing can move. The bike is held solidly and the bag has a good, firm shape to it. It rolls on a pair of widely spaced rollerblade wheels and there are six handles to grab it by. Our bag seems to be ageing prematurely, sustaining a broken zip pull and a couple of fabric cuts and scuffs on the first journey, but the bikes it has transported have all survived without a scratch. Overall: Works with hardtails, full sus and even road bikes. A good investment if you travel lots with your bike(s) – especially as the bag now sells for under £200 on the website. The outer fabrics felt a little vulnerable though. Chipps. Weldtite_Singletrack_Sept2013-Half_Horiz_Layout 1 16/07/2013 4:37 pm Page 1 “I’d strongly recommend Dirtwash to anyone” Dirtwash Bike Cleaner Martin Pounder, Wiltshire Visit weldtite.co.uk/reviews for more product insight MADE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM weldtite.co.uk • weldtite.co.uk/twitter • weldtite.co.uk/facebook Bluegrass Golden Eye helmet. Price: £99.99 From: Bluegrass, bluegrasseagle.com Tested: Seven months. The Golden Eye was introduced to the market last year as Bluegrass’s first offering in the all-mountain helmet market. It’s designed with more coverage and protection in mind for those big mountain descent or enduro (sorry…) situations. There’s a distinctive, almost 90° corner around the top of the ears where the helmet drops low around the back of the skull, offering great protection. This cut-out provides room for your ears, a platform for goggle straps and didn’t interfere with glasses. All this coverage doesn’t massively affect your temperature. Bluegrass has done a very admirable job of ventilating, with 13 vents and deep internal channels to get the cool air flowing through. Other neat little features to aid temperature control are the ventilated straps (the centre of the strap has small slits in) and a front gel pad, which is very comfortable and provides more padding on the forehead. Putting the Golden Eye on instantly gave me a boost in confidence. I felt it would definitely help protect my precious brain and good looks in a crash. I’ve used it as my main race helmet and opted to wear it in situations where I considered the risk of crashing to be increased thanks to riding at the edge of my limits. It stayed in place during an over-thebars, head-first landing and I’m very impressed in the overall security provided. Even if Chipps isn’t going to embrace the goggles and open helmet look, the Golden Eye has a large goggle lock that holds your strap firmly and stops it from lifting at the back. The adjustable motocross-style peak has plenty of space under it to fit a goggle strap when you want to flip them round and run them backwards on climbs too. For me the only downside to the Golden Eye is that I could sometimes feel the inner edge of the rear cradle pressing on my head. Overall: A well-thought-out helmet, with good coverage, ventilation and most importantly protection at a pretty reasonable price. For my wardrobe I’d prefer one of the other colours though. Richard. The Right Direction GE1 Our new GE1 was developed with the help of Fab Barel and gravity movement analysis. Result: A grip with an ingenious, ergonomic directional shape which supports automatically an “elbows out” posture. This concept greatly reduces arm pump and fatigue while increasing hand traction and rider control. Choose the right direction – GE1. www.ergon-bike.com The Enduro Grip - full details www.ergon-bike.de Rider: 3x Downhill-World Champion Fabien Barel Halo Vapour 29in wheelset. Price: £124.99 (front), £194.99 (rear) From: Ison Distribution, ison-distribution.com Tested: 11 months. Arguably better known for its robust downhill and dirt jump wheelsets, Halo is also turning out some lighter-weight equipment for those required to pedal up the hills, as well as down. Aimed at the ‘trail’ segment of the market – although how you determine which niche you occupy these days is beyond me – these Vapour 29in wheels will tick a lot of boxes. They feature what Halo describes as tubeless-ready rims (although this is just a revision to the bead hook and tyre well, rather than a sealed rim bed), doublebutted spokes and a front hub that, in its XCD guise, comes with a kit to allow conversion from a standard quick release to take a 15mm thru-axle (another version, the SD6F, is also available and allows conversion to a 20mm axle). Looks are just the right side of garish. Sure, the black rims with bright red hubs and spoke nipples will be too loud for some, but overall, as one person remarked, they are best described as “snazzy”. And for those wanting a less intrusive colour scheme, a silver hub/rim pairing is also offered. The rear hub comes in two variants: Halo’s Supadrive freehub with three pawls or the Spin Doctor 6 Drive (yes, really) which features six reversed, double-tipped pawls for 12-point engagement. On the Supadrive model tested there seemed little difference in engagement between the Halo hub and any other, but freewheeling is phenomenally noisy. It’s not quite up there with the angry metallic cacophony produced by a Hope freehub, say, but it’s not far off. Halo boasts that inside each freehub are 120 pick-up points, and based on our test wheel you will have ample opportunities to count them all as the body shows a worrisome and wearisome tendency to part company from the rest of the hub whenever the wheel is removed 100 from the frame. The cause appears to be the hub axle and its mounts, which are too loose-fitting to hold everything together. Conversely, the front hub, for all its promises of easy conversion, proved nigh on impossible to separate from its axle. One key measure for a wheel, however, is its strength. During a near 12-month test period the Vapours were used as a set of disc-ready cyclocross wheels, rather than on a 29in trail bike. They are certainly light enough for the task; the front weighs in at around 825g (against a claimed 822g), the rear at 975g (960g), and the 26mm rim width gives a nice profile to an otherwise narrow ’cross tyre. Their use as cyclocross wheels means that, on the one hand, they weren’t subjected to the heavier lateral loads you might expect from mountain biking, but on the other, they endured a fair degree of abuse on root and flint-filled Surrey trails, including the inevitable rock strikes. In fact, both the front and rear rims sustained dents during the test period, although only the latter was knocked out of true. The other casualty of note was a spoke on the rear wheel that snapped while riding along the road. On the plus side, the wheel stayed remarkably straight given the circumstances, but you have to wonder whether the spoke should have let go at all, considering how the wheels were used compared with their intended mission. Overall: These lively wheels fair rocket along on the right bike, but I have my reservations about their overall robustness given the damage they sustained. And I really hope the falling-apart-at-a-gust-of-wind rear hub is a one-off, otherwise it’s a design that needs to go back to the drawing board. Dom Perry. Endura MT500 waterproof shorts. Price: £69.99 From: Endura, endurasport.com Tested: Two months. Bike kit tends to fall into two camps for me: keepers, and (k)onsumables. ‘Keepers’ are anything from frames and forks to gloves and socks; things that wear in, not out. ‘Consumables’ covers all the usual suspects: tyres, drivetrain parts, brake pads, helmets. These are the things that you have no qualms in chucking and replacing when they are worn out. Waterproof shorts fall into this latter category, too, because – being relentlessly pragmatic about the whole thing – I’ve yet to own a pair of waterproof shorts that lasted more than a few months, let alone a full winter’s riding. What’s led me to adopt this cavalier attitude toward waterproof shorts in particular is that all of them – regardless of brand or material – wear in, wear out and then fail, in the same way. It’s a flaw in function, rather than manufacture. You’re asking a waterproof fabric to be thin, flexible and light, but to also stand up to being abraded with the equivalent of course-grade sandpaper for hour after hour. Then it has to withstand being chucked in the washing machine with 102 all the other filthy biking kit, with a regular detergent, because who in the real world has time to do a regular wash and a technical wash, every time they go for a ride? I certainly bloody don’t… Is it any wonder then that waterproof shorts always die identically? First they lose their water-repellent coating; they’ll still keep the rain out but they’re not as breathable and things can get a little moist ‘down there’. Then they lose their ‘real’ waterproofness – normally in a patch where bum meets saddle. And finally, they start to come apart at the seams; with the stitching literally worn away, the various bits of fabric beneath the crotch part ways, and that’s the end of them. So here’s a pair of shorts from Endura that, although they’re nowhere near the end of the process, have already started on their slow decline. That doesn’t mean they already have points against them: far from it. In terms of longevity it’s looking as though they’re going to end up just like their brethren and once that’s been accepted, we can look at the other things in their favour, of which there are plenty. First up: the cut. There’s plenty of length in the leg and a nice taper, too – they work well with knee pads and are neither too loose nor too closely fitting. In fact the cut’s the single best thing about them – they seem to give better freedom of movement than most other waterproof shorts. The light weight and flexible hand of the fabric makes them comfortable to wear. There’s a touch of stretch to it too, which no doubt aids the fit, and the seat is cut from hardwearing Cordura, so should be at least a little bit more resilient than a straightforward waterproof panel. There’s a zipped security pocket on the lower back, which is a nice idea for keys and the like but does mean it’s in the firing line for everything that comes up off the back wheel – predictably filling the zip with grit. The elasticated waist is nice and high – not especially flattering to even the most sylph-like of riders but when it’s chucking it down with rain, who cares? I’ll take improved coverage over aesthetics any day. So, these are good waterproof shorts, with a super cut that makes them very comfy even when the riding is not. They’ve not transcended the wear and tear problems of every other pair of waterproof shorts out there but I’m convinced that one day someone will crack it, and with the MT500s Endura has a head start. Overall: Good at being shorts, and good at being waterproof shorts too (for as long as they stay waterproof ). Jenn. RaceFace Indy Jersey. Price: £46.95 From: Silverfish, silverfish-uk.com Tested for: Three months. It’s June. We are in the first proper heatwave of the summer. I get home, already sweaty and sticky after sitting on a clammy bus for 30 minutes. I want to get out as soon as possible and rip through perfect trails, to reap the benefits of slogging along the same tracks in mid-winter darkness. A quick look through the explosion of bike kit from my cupboard drawer reveals two options – lycra jerseys, or long sleeve base layers. Oh dear. Luckily the Race Face Indy arrives for testing just in time… The Indy is a nicely designed riding T-shirt. It’s very breathable, has a lighter fabric on the back and a mesh fabric under the armpits. Cool – in both senses of the word. No one looks good in a sweat-sodden top. I was impressed with the cut: it’s neither race-tight, nor motocross-voluminous, and trimmer than similar tops I’ve tried in the past, but still loose enough to allow good air flow while riding. Despite being relatively lightweight, the fabric has shrugged off the grasps of summer brambles much better than my exposed forearms do, and is wearing well. The graphics are subtle, as is the colour choice. A little zip pocket is a neat addition – and one that I use for a house key on those two-hour blasts from the door, where a riding pack is unnecessary. A glasses wipe is another thoughtful touch, but not one that I’ve often used, and it seems a bit small to be truly useful. As with all synthetic tops, there is a bit of a pong after a long, sweaty day in the saddle, but the Indy suffers no more than any other I’ve used. Overall: Maybe a little pricey, but a T-shirt that is thoughtfully designed for regular riding. Tom Hill. Trail Flow. SME3 Rider: 3x Downhill-World Champion Fabien Barel Saddle Ergonomics perfected for Gravity and Enduro. The SME3 improves your control and comfort. Using a flat V-Shaped design, rounded transitions and a ‘downhill spoiler’ the saddle is optimised for position changes and dropper post height adjustment. EVA foam, combined with a flex tuned, isolated saddle shell ensure your comfort on the trails. Perfected Ergonomics from Ergon. www.ergon-bike.com SME3 Comp Black SME3 Pro White Saddle Selector Online Visit saddleselector.ergonbike.com or scan QR-Code. SRAM Roam 60 wheelset. Price: £1,670.00 From: Fisher Outdoor, fisheroutdoor.co.uk Tested: Ten months. The Roam 60 is SRAM’s flagship all-mountain wheel. It’s been designed to embrace everything a mountain will throw up at you as you throw your bike down it; embracing it and, I guess, shrugging it off. Being the all-singing, all-dancing model, it’s the Roam 60 that gets fancy carbon rims. With a 21mm inner width and UST compatibility, the rims are built with SRAM’s Taper Core profile which focuses material to resist impact forces, using a mix of woven and unidirectional fibres, reinforcing the sidewalls but tapering to a thinner profile where it’s not needed. Now, mention carbon wheels and most people start thinking cross-country and lightweight. But SRAM has taken a different approach with the Roam 60, focusing instead on the ability of carbon to be built into something stiff and strong without too much of a weight penalty. Given the level of abuse these wheels are designed for, these 29er wheels still weigh in at a decent enough 1,660g. That’s similar to the aluminium-rimmed Roam 50, but much stronger. Sapim CX Sprint Bladed straight pull spokes are used to hook up a SRAM-designed and DT Swiss-built hub. One nice touch is the fact that both wheels use a single spoke length throughout, which really simplifies spares packing for long trips away. The rear hub makes use of DT’s star ratchet freehub which has proved very reliable throughout the test. The wheels offer a reassuringly quick hook-up from freewheeling. The DT Swiss internals also offer a lot of peace of mind given the known reliability, good sealing and ease of servicing. Despite putting ten months of riding time into them, they haven’t needed touching with a spoke key yet and have no noticeable play in the hubs. 104 I’ve ridden carbon rims before and was impressed by the way they transformed the ride of the bike they were fitted to. Similarly, strapping the Roam 60s to my Tallboy LTc it was noticeable just how much more precise the bike felt. Tracking through rock gardens showed just how well the wheels held up in the rough stuff, giving nice direct steering with no noticeable flex. I’ve happily hammered them down a wide variety of trails from Lakeland passes, Enduro World Series rootfests and local tech, and never once felt they would let me down. In all the time I’ve ridden them they haven’t faltered once. They’ve put up with some gnarly riding and some clumsy big hits when I’ve managed to get a line horrendously wrong, and despite a couple of small battle scars they’ve proved themselves to be a pretty tough pair of wheels. On the ups and alongs they’re not too shabby either and are happy to translate your inputs into acceleration or efficient climbing, like you’d expect from a performance crosscountry wheelset. They’re a sprightly set of wheels that are up for a bit of argy-bargy – perfect I guess for 140/150mm trail bike territory. It’s fair to say that £1,600 is a fair chunk of cash for a set of wheels, but I’m not sure I’d be as happy on something substantially cheaper and the Roams are definitely ballpark for most carbon wheelsets out there. If you’d asked me a few years ago I’d have told you they couldn’t be worth the money but having tried these wheels, I wouldn’t want to give them up. Overall: Pricey but so worth it. A stiff, strong wheelset that’ll keep you pointing exactly where you want to be when the trail gets rowdy. Dave. C Giro Alpineduro boots. Price: £149.00 From: Zyro, zyro.co.uk Tested: Five months. M Y CM MY CY Not much of the US has our kind of tepid-sleety weather in the winter, so it’s a brave move from California-based Giro to come out with a winter boot designed for British-style murk. The boot is a very subtle thing that immediately calls to mind the traditional Brasher walking boot. These boots instead are made with a synthetic upper which has worn well and weathered like leather too. The sole has a semi-aggressive Vibram IceTrek rubber over a stiff, but not rigid shank. The boots lace up (with red and black laces both included in the box) and the tongue is a bellows-style to keep water out. The tongue and boot are lined with PrimaLoft insulation to keep you warm. I’ve been trying these boots since the spring and have found plenty of places where they’ve been the ideal shoe for the job. They fit pretty true to size, so go up a size if you like thicker socks, and the laces allow a large amount of adjustment, then stay put when needed. On long, Lakeland and Alpine push-slogs, I’ve found them to be excellent. There’s minimal heel lift and the sole is stiff enough to walk in all day, but grips well to wet rock. A more aggressive tread would work better on mud and wet grass, but it’s a good allround compromise for winter. While riding, the boots offer great power transfer and still keep some toe-wiggle room. While they are insulated, I’ve rarely found them too hot, even in the Alps in summertime, and I’ve found them comfy enough to wear in the office once I’ve ridden to work in them. Overall: An excellent boot if your winter riding has as much scrambling and pushing as it does riding – and versatile enough to wear in all but the hottest weather too. Chipps. CMY K Saracen Kili Flyer 123. Price: £3,199.99 From: Saracen, saracen.co.uk Tested: Eight months. The rebirth of Saracen was covered reasonably comprehensively in issue 91, so I won’t repeat it except to say that the Kili Flyer was the most iconic bike of the ‘classic’ Saracen and this model is, by default, the flagship of the new Saracen line. The new Kili Flyer was launched in 2013 and we liked the bike very much indeed, it being one of the first 27.5in full sussers around and a very well balanced trail bike. For 2014, the Kili frame has been revamped, gaining a full Toray carbon fibre back end that drops 600g from the frame weight, and the spec has also been looked at. There are three aluminium Kili Flyer models, starting at £1,999. We have the top end one of those here: the 123. The transmission and brakes come from Shimano, with a mix of SLX and Deore and a feel-good XT clutch rear derailleur. Other components come from Kore, like the alloy-nippled 27.5in wheels with thru-axles front and rear, the 740mm bar and 75mm stem and the saddle. A welcome upgrade from last year is the inclusion of a KS dropper post with a crotch-grab under-saddle lever. External cable and internal dropper post cable/hose routing is included in the frame design too. The fork, too has been changed to a 120mm Fox 32 CTD to match the 120mm of Fox-sprung suspension out back. Tyres are British summer-approved Maxxis Ardent and Ardent Race, and a pair of Saracen grips rounds out the package. Talking of summer, the frame comes with a pair of mudguard bosses on the downtube to celebrate its UK origins. 106 All of the improvements over last year’s bike have a positive effect on the ride of the Kili: the bike is now a pound lighter, the clutch mech eases chain-batter on the chainstays and the dropper post brings it up to date. There are still some quirks peculiar to the bike, though: the cable routing guides, while neat, are almost impossible to install without a cut-down hex key. The top tube linkage is a good 80mm in width and ideally placed to smack knees when crashing or just muscling the bike around and the rear axle, while it allows the 142mm axle to be removed like a quick-release wheel, has a very small end nut that is easily lost during van packing and wheel changes. Oh, and the (now redundant) seatpost quick release is long and ideally placed to snag a baggy short, whether pointing forwards or backwards. The proof is in riding through the pudding, though. Stepping over the bike, the cockpit feels contemporary: a 23.5in top tube, a shortish (though not trendily teeny) 75mm stem and some comfortably wide 740mm bars. The bike pedals uphill with very little bob or pedal feedback, even though you can look down and see the rocker moving actively over the bumps. Lockout is rarely needed, apart from on endless mountain road climbs. The all-up weight is 29.1lbs, underneath the magic 30lb point at which bikes start to get reluctant to climb, and even long days of big-mountain climbing were comfortable (with the exception of the hard and narrow Kore saddle that nobody really got on with). Mind your knees on that rocker. Internal cable run through the chainstay. A full Fox Float matched pair for 2014. Once you’ve paid into the Gravity Bank, though, the fun begins and the bike is a lot of fun on the contours. The weight balance feels very centred, allowing easy wheel lofts while still keeping a good amount of weight on the front for hard cornering. Although 120mm is on the short side for a bike pitched as an ‘all-mountain’ machine, the travel feels very usable and is everything that I’d need for a regular mountain bike ride, trail centre or enduro foray. I’ve finished rides feeling like I’ve wrung every bit of travel out of the bike, rather than riding something with 160mm at the same speeds and feeling like I’m not doing it justice. The transmission was fine, only running out on the steepest of grades and the brakes were effective at bringing the bike to a controlled stop(pie). The spec is reasonable for the money, although there’s still room for lightening and upgrades. I imagine that a cabled dropper post will be an early addition, along with some knobblier tyres and a few more weight-saving efforts. Overall: The Kili Flyer is a bike that makes you want to get out of bed and ride. If you feel you need a bigger, better bike then you must be a talented rider indeed. Chipps. 107 Has the puncture fairy been to visit? You’ll be wanting a trail pump then – but which one? Words and pictures by Barney and the Grinder Team. Let’s set a scene: it’s half past three in the afternoon. You’re in the middle of nowhere. You’ve been riding since around 10am with a short stop for lunch. You’re tired, but there’s still a big climb and a long descent to go before you can reach the pub. The midges are out; it’s just started to rain. And you’ve just got a puncture. All you want to do is change the tube and get home. And for this, my soggy friend, you’ll need a pump. Trail pumps are an oft-forgotten but always critical component of any sort of trail riding. You buy one almost begrudgingly, as they’re stark reminders of the fact that things can go wrong and you need to be prepared. So you hand over your readies to the shopkeeper in the vain hope that you’ll never have to use it. The pump will probably sit, unloved and uncared for, in your everyday backpack, getting more and more battered, until something goes catastrophically wrong in the tyre department. And then, probably in the pouring rain, you will dig it out and expect it to perform faultlessly. Once the job is done, you will sling it back into your backpack and you won’t touch it for another few months (or days, depending on the type of terrain you’re in, or the sort of rider you are), until you get another flat, and the cycle repeats. Again and again and again. It’s difficult to think of such a critical piece of kit which gets as little love. So what makes a good trail pump? It’s not a nambypamby tiny thing you could store in a back pocket or 108 next to half a toothbrush on a round-the-world trip – this thing’s got to inflate a mountain bike tyre relatively quickly, so you don’t get even more wet and/or bitten, and you don’t want to be getting arm and shoulderpump either. It shouldn’t rely on that racer and lazy-boy’s cop-out, the CO2 canister, either. As well as being a lot less environmentally-friendly than using a pump (aren’t cyclists supposed to be the smug tree-hugging ones?), you don’t want the possibility of getting frostbite if you hold the thing wrong when you’re inflating. And what happens if you have more than one flat, and only one cartridge… doesn’t bear thinking about. (That bit about stuffing your tyre with grass? Sorry, that doesn’t work.) So, your pump needs to be a rugged, outdoorsy, allweathers tool. It needs to move a relatively high volume of air – but not too high. Push too much air, after all, and once you get your tyre to about 25psi, you’re going to know about it. It has to lie comfortably in the hand, nestled as if it’s born to it. Presta/Schrader convertible? Sure. But above all, it needs to be dependable, low maintenance, and ready when you need it – even if that’s only once in a blue moon. Here we take a look at a selection of the finest pumps, with a variety of different designs, features and prices, to see which are the most trail-worthy. Which pumps, in short, should you splurge your cash on? Airwave Motion. Price: £16.00 From: Hotlines, hotlines-uk.com Length: 29.5cm. Weight: 168g The Airwave Motion has the look of a pump designed by a committee. Or by a clever engineer in a shed full of spare parts. That’s not to say it’s not a good pump, but there are a lot of ‘Why did they do this?’ aspects to it. The pump itself is made up of a slim-looking pair of barrels which, while compact, looks ungainly on its bottle-boss mount, so it’s been mostly kept in a pack. To step in and save the day (or at least the puncture), the pump first hinges to reveal the main, alloy barrel with fold-out stirrup and folding T-handle. The second part is a rigid, plastic barrel that hinges out in two possible directions. At the end of this is a pop-out 20cm flexible hose with a regular, reversible lever chuck on the end. This lets you stand comfortably away from the wheel while pumping furiously. The stroke is a short 140mm and the barrel is slim, yet the ergonomics are very good and allow enough frenzied pumping to get even a 2.5in tyre hard within minutes. I can’t for the life of me work out what the rigid, plastic barrel adds to the functionality apart from adding a very vulnerable-looking hinge at the base of the pump. For the moment, though, it’s working perfectly and despite the odd looks, is staying in my pack. An oddball design that works a lot better than it looks. Oh, and it’s excellently cheap. Chipps. Axiom Exterminateair HV. Price: £35.00 From: Paligap, paligap.cc Length: 26.5cm. Weight: 225g The Exterminateair (weird pun – does it also disinfect as it pumps?) is beautifully constructed from aluminium, with a plastic handle at one end and a knurled ring holding a wire stirrup footplate at the other. The handle is almost streamlined, and also serves as the locking mechanism – you must prize the handle off the barrel to allow the pump shaft to extend. You’ve got to do the reverse when you’re finished, which is initially a little counterintuitive, but I soon got used to it. The pump stroke feels quite short – it’s a couple of inches shorter than the barrel length – but due to the barrel volume it’s efficient at getting your tyres up to pressure quickly, without any undue arm pump. The wide base and the footplate provide a solid grounding for use, but I’d like to see a little more rubber at the base of the pump: mine was looking pitted after a couple of uses on the trail. That said, it’s easy enough to clean. The hose that emerges from the base is long, at 42cm, which makes for easy location onto the valve, and it stows away tidily when you’ve finished. The Re-valver universal valve nozzle allows for Presta or Schrader attachment at a turn of the barrel. It worked perfectly for the most part, although a couple of times I found it impossible to secure and twist onto a Presta valve without some serious pushing, which isn’t exactly what you need in the middle of a rainstorm, especially as I began to fear for my valve. I had similar occasional problems when trying to remove the nozzle, too. Overall this is a good, well-made pump, with occasional valve attachment issues. Richard. 109 Birzman Velocity. Price: £29.99 From: iRide, i-ride.co.uk Length: 18.3cm. Weight: 122g The Velocity is a small, CNCed aluminium trail pump from Birzman, a Taiwanese toolmaker. It’s a beautifully constructed piece of kit, with a buttery smooth, positive pumping action. To pump, you flip open the rubber stopper at the top and pull out the flexible hose. For Presta valves, attachment couldn’t be simpler with Birzman’s SNAP-IT connector. Simply place over the Presta valve, pull a cuff on the connector towards the valve a couple of millimetres, wrap your hands around the barrel and proceed to pump; it’s quite simple. If you run Schrader valves, you have to screw off the SNAP-IT connector, and then screw the remaining connector onto the valve, but this is also quite easy. Attachment onto both valve types is secure and strong, with a good, airtight connection. There was never any hissing or air leakage. Because the pump has a reasonable (but not excessive) volume, tyres inflate efficiently and quickly. In use it feels solid and strong, and it’s rated to 90psi. The pump is nice and compact: it should fit quite easily into your backpack of choice. However, this comes with a downside. If you’re larger-of-hand, you can find optimum pumpage compromised by the compactness of the pump – it’s quite easy to nick your palm if you get too carried away. Should sir or madam wish to display the pump as a frame adornment instead, then the plastic and O-ring bracket is straightforward – and the pump’s function as bike jewellery is enhanced by the range of shiny anodized colours available. Jorji. Blackburn Mammoth AnyValve. Price: £19.99 From: Zyro, zyro.co.uk Length: 29cm. Weight: 168g When the Blackburn Mammoth appeared in the office, one tester picked it up and said ‘That’s a design classic, that is’. That’s as may be, but it’s got some stiff competition. Does it still sit at the top of the heap? Our test pump’s barrel is red. Not some fancy anodised colour, just straightforward, painted, bright red – although the internal shaft is anodized (red) – I guess this might make it easier to see in the confines of a dark pack. It’s also available in black. The barrel is aluminium, and it’s topped and tailed by a rubberised plastic handle at one end and a plastic valve adapter at the other. The whole thing is a substantial but not excessive 29cm long. The handle swings out to form an L-bar for easier gripping. The valve adapter is a clever piece of kit: there’s no fiddling with bits of plastic, or turning switches. You just press the valve – Presta or 110 Schrader – onto the adapter, flip up the lever and proceed to pump. It’s extremely straightforward, and beautifully elegant. The lack of hose means it’s perhaps not as ergonomic as some, but this wasn’t really an issue as there are still plenty of comfy positions to pump in. The relative simplicity of the internal gubbins means that there’s a pretty decent volume of air available when you pump (the outside of the pump proudly proclaims 83cm3 and there’s a satisfyingly long stroke length. There are no mechanisms for high or low volumes, but getting to pressure was achieved with minimal fuss. When you’re done, there’s a plastic flap that fits securely over the valve adapter to keep muck out, and it even comes with an adapter for Dunlop valves – not that I’ve ever met anyone who uses those. An excellent, good value and simple to use pump. Barney. Cannondale Airspeed Max. Price: £29.99 From: CSG, cyclingsportgroup.co.uk Length: 27cm. Weight: 238g Most mini trackpumps have a sort of lock, or click, which encourages the foot plate to stay at 90° to the rest of the pump when extended; the Airspeed Max’s foot plate lacks this and the pump can wobble around a bit. This means you have to wedge your heel and calf right up against the barrel to try to maintain stability, which limits room to manoeuvre when pumping away. It’s not a deal breaker, but it’s a bit irritating. Use with both Presta and Schrader valves is super easy: a double-sided, screw-on chuck at the end of a generous length of hose means access to even tightly-placed valves is fine and there’s no dis/re-assembly required. In common with other screw-on chucks, though, care is needed not to remove the valve core along with the chuck when you’re done. Tiny rubber caps to stop grit getting in are firmly attached to the hose (for now at least), though I can foresee them getting lost at some point due to the wear and tear of rattling around in a bag for ride after ride. The handle is a fold-out version: once out, it stays out and avoids trapped fingers, though folk with large hands might want it to be an inch or so longer as it’s on the stubby side. Air transfer is perfectly acceptable, with high and low-pressure modes available via a switch at the bottom of the body; it’s undeniably easier inflating large-volume tyres with a pump like this than it is with a hand-held version, though as everything folds away neatly in line it’ll work like that too. It’s a functional and ordinary mini-track pump, only needing a sturdier footplate and perhaps an extra inch on the top. Jenn. Crank Brothers Gem Long. Price: £24.99 From: 2pure, 2pure.co.uk Length: 20.5cm. Weight: 153g Like most products from Crank Bros, the Gem is a strikingly attractive bit of design. Available in shiny red, green or silver, it’s definitely one for the magpies – why make it black when you can just as easily make it any other colour you fancy? There’s nothing groundbreaking about the design, though, and it’s got all the recognisable features of your average mini-pump. Switching between Schrader and Presta valves involves the usual faff with a screw-on nylon collar and two plastic washers; so much, so normal. A band of knurling around the barrel’s generous girth means that a slippery grip is never an issue. A ridged knob on the base of the barrel flips between low (0-40psi) and high (40-100psi) pressure modes with a reassuring click. The low pressure mode shifts a surprising volume of air for such a compact design but I found that switching to the high pressure mode well before the 40psi boundary greatly reduced ‘pumper’s arm’. Otherwise it’s a tidy design that will take up little room in your pack/pocket. There are no extra sticky-out bits to snag on clothing and barely a third of an inch of shaft is exposed when in stowage mode, so it should all stay nice and clean. The downside of all this compactness is that there’s very little space between the various moving parts of the pump. Getting purchase on the lock-lever is fiddly when wearing gloves; it’s easy to painfully pinch the heel of your hand between barrel and shaft when pumping, and equally easy to trap thumb under lock-lever when returning it after use. How can something so small be so irritating to use? Streamlined and pocket-sized, then, but ergonomically flawed. Jenn. 111 Lezyne Alloy Drive. Price: £24.99 From: Upgrade, upgradebikes.co.uk Length: 23.5cm. Weight: 132g The Lezyne Alloy Drive is a chunky aluminium pump with screwin rubber hose that reminds one of the fluorescent Mt Zefal pumps of yore, before pumps got smaller, lighter and (often) less effective. It’s a very solid-feeling pump that’s still compact enough to fit in the smallest of packs. To deploy, you just pop off the protective rubber caps, unscrew the ABS rubber hose that lives in the handle and, flipping it depending on the valve needed, screw it into the body of the pump. The other end screws onto the valve for a secure fit. The 150mm hose is long enough to allow you to get perpendicular with the valve while pumping, though a little more length would have made things more comfortable. If you want to frame-fit the Alloy Drive, it comes with a bottle boss holder that holds it securely with a clip and velcro strap. It features a long 170mm stroke that shifts enough air to get you going again in short time. The Presta valve now features an airbleed button to release pressure in the hose and allow unscrewing without taking the valve core with it, as used to happen. The handle is a tiny bit short and can pinch the unwary palm, but it’s way better than some. A solid, dependable pump that should last years while it develops a nice patina of use. Chipps. Lezyne Sport Drive HV. Price: £14.99 From: Upgrade, upgradebikes.co.uk Length: 19cm. Weight: 98g The Sport Drive HV is a stubby, but conventional-looking hand pump, with the only apparent difference over the Alloy Drive being a composite handle and a lower state of shininess. And a tenner saved. The pump is shorter overall although the included hose is almost the same, but it doesn’t have a Presta bleed valve. The hose is double ended – Presta at one end and Schrader at the other – so it’s a cinch to swap over if needed. Each end is a slightly different shape, so it’s fairly straightforward to tell which end is which in failing light without having to squint. The pump then functions exactly like the one you had on that old racer when you were a kid. The one minor issue, in these ultra-convenience times, is disengaging the pump after you’ve filled your tyre: you’ve got to disengage the hose 112 from the pump, then release the hose. But it’s easy enough, and if you ever used a frame-mount pump as a kid – it’s quite a lot like that. The simplicity of the design means that the stroke is fairly long for such a stumpy pump without having to stick any fancy valve gubbins at one end. However, care must be taken for the larger of hand: it’s all too easy to nip painful fleshy bits when you’re vigorously pumping, as I can attest. But it’s a pump I’d be happy to keep in my pack, and at a good price. Richard. Park Tools PMP4. Price: £22.99 From: Madison, madison.co.uk Length: 26.5cm. Weight: 133g The Park Tools PMP4 is probably very similar to what many of us think of when we think of the modern pump. It’s fairly short, with a plastic handle and valve adapter, it has an aluminium barrel, an anodised shaft (I’m not sure why), and it feels very solidly made. The lever that locks the valve onto the pump is also made from aluminium, which is a nice touch: plastic ones can often flex. When not in use, the handle is kept locked onto the barrel by a simple friction catch and a simple pull activates it. The handle then pivots at the top to form an L-bar for easier pumping; those of us with large hands will be pleased to note that there’s a catch to prevent crushed knuckles. The Presta/Schrader adapter is of the usual remove-bits-of- plastic-and-invert design; in my experience one swaps valve bits around so infrequently that it’s rarely a problem. Push the pump head onto the valve, lift up the lever and start to pump: no problem. The pump head is at 90° to the valve, which isn’t ergonomically ideal, but was easy enough to work around. The stroke length was perfectly acceptable, and the pump inflated my test tyre with the minimum of fuss. It also comes with a mount that lets you put it anywhere with a couple of rubber rings. This is a back-to-basics pump. It’s nothing exceptional, but it’s good value, small and well made, it performs admirably and shouldn’t let you down. Barney. Pro Performance Two-Way. Price: £24.99 From: Madison, madison.co.uk Length: 29.5cm. Weight: 147g The Pro Performance Two-Way is perhaps the slimmest pump on test – it’s a foot of slim black aluminium elegance, with a plastic handle and valve adapter. It can get away with being so slim – and hence delivering a smaller volume of air with each pump – by containing cunning internal trickery which means it pushes air out with both up and down strokes, so the amount of total air moved per pump is almost doubled. There’s a magnetic catch on the handle to prevent unwanted expansion in your backpack, and the handle swivels out into a T-bone to help with vigorous pumping. The mechanism to change from Presta to Schrader valves is the usual one involving swapping bits of plastic around, but it was fairly straightforward to do. In the unlikely event that you’re going to do this in the field (as it were) you’ve got to take care not to drop anything, as the whole pump is rendered inoperable if you do. But so far, so good. In use, the pump fits over the valve perfectly well; the plastic lever locks everything down just so, and then you can start pumping. As with other two-way pumps, pulling is slightly disconcerting initially, with the resistance at the end as the air is compressed into the tyre, but the tyre is soon inflated. It’s not the very best ergonomically, as a lack of hose limits the number of positions you can use with a Presta valve without bending your valve stem, but it’s perfectly good in every other respect. A well made, sturdy pump. Barney. 113 SKS Injex T-Zoom. Price: £24.99 From: Zyro, zyro.co.uk Length: 26cm. Weight: 182g The rather nattily-named Injex T-Zoom on first sight looks to be the ‘right’ size for your trail pump needs. Chunkier than most and reassuringly tactile in all the right places, it’s suitable for even the mightiest of trail warriors and yet, at 25cm long, it’s pert enough to stow in the most modest of ride packs. The weight feels ‘right’ in the hand too, at under 185g. It’s perhaps not the weight weenie’s choice, but it’s well built and sturdy. Even when fully extended, there is very little flex. The barrel is made of aluminium, while the top and tail are lavishly-tooled in plastic and rubber, with rubber seals to keep out the muck. The handle swivels to a T-bar shape to use, with a knuckle guard. Initial inspection yields a disappointingly short stroke – but twist the knurled plastic ring at the top of the barrel for an extender to effectively almost double the volume pumped. The short stroke is great for higher pressures, the longer one for higher volumes. The valve adapters at the far end of the pump are attached solidly at a right angle to the pump, so you have to angle the tyre appropriately, but it keeps things simple. The telescopic extra volume is slightly fiddly to extend, especially with cold hands, but it works very well, and in operation it feels like it is built for the job. As you pump vigorously like a demon in the cold and rain while your riding pals stand around watching, it performs the task efficiently and consistently. Jamie. Specialized Air Tool MTB Flex Pump. Price: £24.99 From: Specialized, specialized.com Length: 20.5cm. Weight: 152g This Specialized pump is another conventional-looking pump; short and squat, it has a pleasing chrome finish with a knurled section on the handle for grip. It’s nicely simple – you don’t need to read the instructions or spend ten minutes reverse-engineering it in your mind to figure out how it works. The valve nozzles are attached (Presta and Schrader are neatly at either end of a small T-bar) to a short inch or so of rubber hose, which extends from the end. The head attachment is very simple and well thought out. If you need to switch from one valve-type to the other, you don’t have to take the end of your pump apart and mess around with rubber things you then end up losing in the grass. And screwing the attachment to the valve is made nicely simple – you just turn the end closest to you. One minor issue is that the hose attaching the valve head to the 114 pump is a little short. I ended up occasionally hitting a spoke and not being able to use the full travel of the pump, which is compromised by the need to store the hose in the barrel. Despite this, the travel felt reasonable, and pumping action is nice and smooth. Another small issue was the barrel lock system: when you turn the handle, it releases so you can then extend the shaft, but when you are madly pumping away it occasionally caught and suddenly locked itself again, which was a little bit annoying. Overall, though, this is a good pump. It’s a nice small size and is easy to chuck in your backpack and forget about. Dan. Topeak Mountain Morph. Price: £24.99 From: Extra UK, extrauk.co.uk Length: 35cm. Weight: 236g The Topeak Mountain Morph is a trackpump-style trail pump, “optimized for MTB”. It’s one of the longer pumps in this test at 348mm long, and it’s also the heaviest at 236g. That said, it should fit neatly into most backpacks. A fairly wide barrel is topped and tailed by a plastic handle at one end and a plastic footplate and hose assembly at the other. The handle disengages from the barrel with a nice tactile feeling, and folds out to a T-shape, which is comfortable to use. Happily there’s just enough of a bumper internally that your knuckles don’t come into contact with the barrel during any particularly vigorous pumping action – my knuckles haven’t thanked me using a few pumps in the past. The fold-out foot stand offers increased stability, and the flexible hose helps to save your valves from any awkwardly angled forces a solid pump might bestow. The valve head doesn’t have an automatic Presta/Schrader adapter – it’s the tried-and-tested internal flip type, but this isn’t really an issue, as most people tend to use one type of tube anyway. The valve lock lever also includes a little Schrader air-release tool – a nice touch for those of us who don’t have the fingernails otherwise required. That long barrel means that it moves quite a lot of air at once, but the mini-trackpump design means that you can achieve a nicely efficient pumping pose should you feel the need to put some effort in and ramp the pressure up. Downsides? Well, the valve-lock lever is quite stiff to activate, and the hinge for the footplate could be more solid-feeling, but neither of these is enough to detract from a good pump at a good price. James. Truflo Mountain CNC. Price: £29.99 From: Madison, madison.co.uk Length: 24cm. Weight: 135g The Truflo Mountain CNC resembles a traditional pump when it’s not deployed: it’s got a slim black aluminium barrel, and the handle has a hole in the top into which the hose and valve adapter fits – but appearances can be deceiving. The hose pulls out of the handle six inches or so, and then stops. On the end is the same Flexihead Presta or Schrader adapter as the Axiom Exterminateair HV: a simple twist of the adapter and you should be good to go with either. The pump, then, actually works upside down – you screw the adapter onto your valve of choice, keep the ‘handle’ steady, and pump with the barrel. The whole thing seems very well constructed: there’s lots of nice machining, there’s little play in the shaft, and it’s slightly (but not excessively) weighty. There’s a little rubberised logo on the end, and lots of snazzy laser-etched graphics around the handle. But I had some issues, which are unfortunately concerning the heart of the pump – or more specifically the valve adapter. It was perfect with Schrader valves: just push in, screw on, and pump away – but I couldn’t get it to work at all with Presta valves. I’d push it on OK, but I couldn’t get it to screw on, and I ended up losing more air than I put in. Several of us attempted to get it to work to no avail. It’s possible that ours was a flawed sample, but there was another issue: in use, the inverted design meant that holding the pump without pinching the palm of my hand was rather tricky, and some rather contrived hand positions had to be adopted. Nicely made and well constructed, but with one or two fatal flaws. Barney. 115 Overall. Blackburn Mammoth AnyValve. SKS Injex T-Zoom. Topeak Mountain Morph.  There are many ways in which designers have tried to improve upon the basic pump. The original design of hose, adapter, barrel, shaft, leather washer and handle have all been refined; every pump designer is looking for a way to improve on something which is in essence amazingly simple. Mountain bikes need lower pressures than road bikes, and higher volumes. They need an ability to flip between Presta and Schrader, although in my experience this isn’t done often enough to warrant the enormous time and effort that’s thrown at the issue. And reliability is key above all. Different manufacturers have gone about the process of squaring the wheel in a variety of different ways, and you’ll find little to grumble about with the majority of the pumps we’ve looked at here. But which ones get the hallowed Singletrack Recommended seal of approval? The SKS Injex is a well-made telescoping pump – the extra telescoping bit you can either activate or deactivate to give you a 116 bit of extra volume or pressure as you see fit, and the head has two mounts for Presta and Schrader, keeping things nice and simple. If you’re after something a little more track-pumpesque we really liked the Topeak Mountain Morph – it’s longer than anything else on test, it’s very sturdily constructed, and again pumps plenty of air. A floppy footplate and a stiff valve lock lever weren’t enough to detract from a very well-made pump. Finally the Blackburn Mammoth gains plaudits in several areas. It’s simple, light, well designed, the Presta/Schrader interface is completely brainless to use (there’s one hole, and you jam it onto whichever valve you have) and it pumps a reasonable quantity of air. There’s even a Dunlop valve adapter, if you’ve got a wheelbarrow that needs some attention. Day 6 Riding in solitude, day's end draws ever closer. Ill equipped to deal with the approaching darkness, I recall a trick from a book I once found in a hotel drawer, a simple command: LET THERE BE LIGHT It doesn't work and now I'm stuck on this hillside. Like an idiot. 10% OFF LIGHTS clothing & accessories online with the code - SINGLETRACK10 * B U RY • C H E LT E N H A M • D AV E N T RY • L A N C A S T E R • N E W P O R T • N O T T I N G H A M • P R E S T O N / S O U T H P O R T • W O LV E R H A M P T O N W W W. L E I S U R E L A K E S B I K E S . C O M * Can not be used against the VIP price. Excludes bikes, forks, frames, GPS, gift vouchers, cameras, VIP membership, Specialized, Fox & sale items. Expires - 01/11/14 Image © Trek Bicycle Corporation Why £850? Because it’s an outfit less than a grand… Barney and the Grinder Team get stuck into three hardtails that hit the sweet spot. Words by Barney, pictures by Chipps and Mark. 118 It’s not a lot of money, is it – £850? It’s a nice stereo; a week’s holiday somewhere warm. And when it comes to a bike purchase, it’s just about entering into the realms of ‘you could buy a car for that’ territory – although to be fair I’m not sure the car would work for long. But it’s around the point at which bikes begin to be assembled a little more for purpose, rather than exclusively for budget. Allow me to explain. In many ways – OK, one or two, carefully selected ways – bicycles are like wine. Intoxicating, thrilling, amusingly complex (especially if you spend lots of money); increasing one’s knowledge sometimes feels like gaining entry into a secret clique; going too fast rarely ends well; doesn’t often combine well with driving cars; goes excellently with cheese. But it’s a truism that if you buy a £4 bottle of wine you’re actually buying £3.50 of glass bottle, some label printing, quite a lot of marketing, and only 50p’s worth of wine. Buying an £8 bottle gets you the same levels of marketing, packaging and so forth, but you also get £4.50 worth of sweet, sweet wine. Yum. And the same goes for bikes. If you spend say, £500, you’re getting a lot of marketing and graphic design mixed in with the actual bike spend. For the bike company to make good on its investment, corners have to be cut. Spend more – say £850 to £900 – you’re getting much more bike mixed in with all the fancy graphics and moodily-lit photographs. I’m not trying to claim that if you buy a decent bike, you should leave it in your cellar to mature (although some classified prices on Retrobike would seem to suggest that might be true), nor that if you ride it too much it’ll be bad for your head – although that might be fairly accurate depending on how much you crash. But once you’ve taken away the marketing budget, the graphic design, transportation to your favourite bicycle emporium and the other costs which remain the same no matter what bike you’re buying, you’ve got the point at which bikes are designed more with the rider in mind, rather than the bottom line. So why this particular price point? Well, if you decided to get a bike through the Government’s Green Transport Initiative (via Cyclescheme, Bike2Work or similar), buying a bike at this price point would get you a decent machine you can do some serious riding on, plus enough cash left over to buy a helmet, some shorts, gloves and perhaps a waterproof. You could get yourself completely kitted out without overspending. And that’s a powerful incentive. No wonder this price point is quite keenly contested. So, the bikes we’re testing here are all sold for £850 to £900. At £900, Ragley’s Marley is actually a smidge more than the other two; both it and the GT Zaskar Sport (£850) are brand spanking new models from 2015. The Specialized Rockhopper Comp (also £850) is a 2014 model – so if you shop around, you may well be able to find it for less. Quite a few of the manufacturers we’ve spoken to recently have mentioned an increase in specification or a reduction in price for 2015 as the costs of buying or shipping from the US, Europe or Japan fluctuate. So do the new model year bikes have an advantage? Let’s see… GT Zaskar Sport 2015. Price: £850.00 From: CSG, cyclingsportsgroup.co.uk Frame: GT Triple Triangle, hydroformed, tapered headtube Fork: RockShox XC30 w/remote lockout Hubs: All Terra Centrelock Rims: Alex GXD22 Tyres: Continental Race King 27.5 x 2.2in Chainset: Shimano Deore 36/22T Front Mech: Shimano Deore Rear Mech: Shimano Deore 2x10 Shifters: Shimano Deore 2x10 Brakes: Shimano BRM396 hydraulic Stem: All Terra Bars: All Terra 710mm Grips: GT Statement Seatpost: All Terra 6061 with forged head Saddle: All Terra Colorado Size Tested: M Sizes available: XS, S, M, L, XL Weight: 28lbs (without pedals) When I first became obsessed with mountain bikes, some 20-odd years ago, I remember going into my local bike shop and drooling over the chi-chi bikes they had to offer. One of those at the very pinnacle, metaphorically covered in schoolboy drool, was the Zaskar. This extraordinary machine was the bike that did everything – it was raced at the highest level by race whippets, it was built up as a gnarly (for the time) jump bike, it was hurtled around the local trails. In recent years, the Zaskar has dabbled with 29in wheels, with some success. But for 2015, GT has decreed that pretty much every mountain bike it does (apart from one budget ladies’ model) will come in nothing but 27.5in wheel sizes. With this determination comes a desire to see the Zaskar reclaim its crown as the bike that can do it all. This is the cheapest version of the Zaskar: it’s a bike only, in contrast to those frame-only nineties glory days. The frame is very tidily hydroformed, with a tapered headtube and a forged bottom bracket. The welds look neat, and it’s finished in a decent thickness of white paint with snazzy black decals. The GT Triple Triangle is present and correct. In short, it looks how it should. The head angle is 69.5°, and the seat angle is 72.7°. The Zaskar Comp comes with a white RockShox XC30 fork, which uses an air spring, and includes a neat cable-activated remote lockout. The bike, impressively, uses an entire Shimano Deore 2x10 drivetrain, complete with a clutch rear mech, and with Shimano brakes too. The wheels are relatively lightweight, and use Shimano Centrelock rotors. The tyres are Continental Race Kings, which are very fast and work extremely well in dry conditions or anywhere with well-drained trails, but they show their limitations when things get properly muddy. The saddle is a good, comfy mattefinished number, attached to an All Terra – GT’s own brand – seatpost. A word here – should you buy a Zaskar, ask your bike shop to check the seat tube. Ours had a little swarf in it which scored the seatpost quite badly. It’s by no means a deal breaker, however, and it’s not uncommon on a bike at this price. Trail notes. The position on this Zaskar is quite long and low. It came to the office with an inch or so of spacers, and an inverted 6° stem. So there’s the potential to raise the front 120 end by simply flipping the stem if you find it a little low. But out of the box, it had a somewhat racy position, which I rather liked. The frame felt very stiff, and it accelerated extremely well. I found myself riding my test trails a gear or two higher than I would normally, and then suffering for it afterwards. The fork, too, contributes to the feeling of speed: whether it’s the decreased wheel size or increased stanchion diameter compared to the Specialized (more likely a bit of both), the front end felt very direct, and coupled with the head angle, the bike felt joyously thoughtcontrolled. Not twitchy, exactly, but certainly lively. Riding technical rocky sections was a joy, as the bike went exactly where it was pointed, although as speed picked up I noticed the stiff rear end a lot more and my arse took a pounding. Cornering, too, was a pleasure; the fork was capable enough that I could really work the front, as long as my nerve held out – the low front end meant I was rather closer to the front wheel than I normally am. The bottom bracket, at 312mm, is low; curiously I noticed more pedal strikes with the Zaskar than the Rockhopper, but certainly no more than is usual in the rock-infested badlands [Halifax? Really? – Ed.] in which I usually ride. So has GT reclaimed for the Zaskar the mantle of do-it-all bike? The set-up here seems to be very much a head-down speed machine, and at this the bike works very, very well. Raise the front end a little, perhaps by flipping the stem, and you have a capable trail bike. It’s also a competent enough package, with good enough individual components, that upgrades are worthwhile – should you want a little more travel from the fork, for example. The rest of the bike would be more than worth it. There’s a lot to live up to. It’s not a proper GT without it. Full Deore kit. Outer cables run under the BB. 121 Ragley Marley 2015. Price: £900.00 From: Hotlines, hotlines-uk.com Frame: 6061-T6 aluminium frame Fork: Manitou Minute 140mm Hubs: Formula Rims: WTB SX19 Tyres: WTB Trail Boss 27.5 x 2.2in/Vigilante 27.5 x 2.3in Chainset: FSA 36/24T Front Mech: Shimano Deore Rear Mech: Shimano Deore 2x10 Shifters: Shimano Deore 2x10 Brakes: Shimano BRM355 hydraulic Stem: Ragley Bars: Ragley 740mm Grips: Ragley lock on Seatpost: Ragley alloy Saddle: Ragley motif Size Tested: 18in Sizes available: 14, 16, 18, 20in Weight: 28lbs (without pedals) The Ragley Marley has been completely redesigned for 2015. The previous bike had a 7005 aluminium frame based on the Ragley Piglet and ran on 26in wheels, but the 2015 model has an all-new frame and runs 27.5in wheels. There’s more standover, with a dropped top tube leading into dropped seat stays. There is a brace that accommodates the extra length of seatpost. The whole thing looks very good indeed. The top tube is long, as is the front centre; the head angle is shallow – 66° – and the seat angle is steep (73°). Chainstays are a short 425mm, and the whole frame looks bombproof. That long front centre and slack head angle should in theory give the bike stability at speed and when riding steepness; the steep seat angle is to ensure that the rider’s weight is a little more forward than usual to keep the front planted and to help on climbs, while the short chainstays should ensure that the back end is chuckable into corners with aplomb. The bike runs a Manitou Minute fork with 140mm of travel. It’s got 32mm stanchions, a rearwards brace and an air spring that yields plenty of nicely balanced and damped travel; compression and rebound damping are adjustable. The front wheel, a Formula hub and WTB rim clothed with a WTB Vigilante tyre, fits with a 15mm axle. There’s a 2x10 drivetrain, with an FSA crank, and Deore mechs (with clutch) and shifters. Stopping is assisted by the excellent, and catchily named, Shimano BRM355 brakes. There’s a WTB Trail Boss tyre on the rear wheel, and the whole package, topped off with a decently wide 740mm bar and nattily patterned saddle, shouts ‘fun’. This, it screams, is not a bike for racing, or long distances. This is a bike for hooning about in the woods – and so it proved to be. Trail Notes. It’s immediately obvious when you first climb aboard the Marley that it’s not like the other two bikes in the test. The riding position is much more upright; despite the long top tube, you’re still able to look around and enjoy the view, and the bars are noticeably wider. The bottom bracket height on this pre-production frame, at about 320mm measured with my shonky tape measure, is broadly similar to the other bikes on test, although I’ve been told that this will be dropped by 5mm on production models. While the Ragley took more time getting up the hills, it was an absolute 122 blast down the other side. Those wide bars and the short stem gave a great feeling of control, and you feel as if you can muscle the front around more readily than with a longer stem. You can also run a little less air and make the fork a bit more responsive. Speaking of which, the fork worked impeccably for the duration of the test: it was predictable and well controlled, if a little squelchy at times. It was also surprisingly stiff. And, thanks to that stem and bar combo, the front end was very light, too – not particularly wandery (although it struggled a little more here than the others on test), rather more jump-off-everything light. The Marley is a bike that relishes airtime, popping off the slightest lip and turning every undulation into something to be charged at. While it’ll do long all-day rides if it must, that’s not where it’s happiest. The drivetrain performed impeccably throughout – shifts were direct and instantaneous. As has been said many times before, there really is no need to go any higher in the Shimano pantheon unless you’re after a small weight saving. The clutch mech kept things nicely quiet on everything but the most gnarled of gnarly. The brakes took a little while to bed in, but proved to be reliable stoppers, and the tyres were universally praised – they’re a good deal more aggressive than many found on bikes in this price bracket, and lack of grip wasn’t a problem until things became properly muddy. Even then, it was usually possible to plough through while other bikes were uselessly spinning their tyres. Overall, the Marley was a resounding hit. It’s not an all-day or long distance mountain bike; it would cope perfectly well on a seven-hour cross-country ride, but you and your arse would know you’d been riding it. The position is a little too upright; your weight is a little too far back. But that’s not what it’s about. For playing in the woods with your mates, for jumps and drops, for winching up and razzing down, for giggles and laughs and for generally messing about on: the Marley was an unqualified success. Not a curvy tube in sight. Snazzy headtube. We think Bob would approve. Embossed for your pleasure. 123 Specialized Rockhopper Comp. Price: £850.00 From: Specialized, specialized.com Frame: Specialized A1 Aluminium, butted w/tapered headtube Fork: RockShox XC28 w/lockout Hubs: Specialized Disc Rims: Specialized RH Disc 29 Tyres: Specialized Ground Control Sport 29 x 2.1in Chainset: Samox 38/24T Front Mech: SRAM X5 Rear Mech: SRAM X5 10sp Shifters: SRAM X5 10sp Brakes: Tektro Draco 2 Stem: Specialized Bars: Specialized 710mm Grips: Specialized Body Geometry Seatpost: Alloy, two-bolt Saddle: Specialized Body Geometry Size Tested: 21in Sizes available: 15.5, 17.5, 19, 21, 23in Weight: 29lbs (without pedals) When you’re buying a bike, first impressions count for a lot. And the folk at Specialized have clearly taken this to heart: the Specialized Rockhopper Comp looks great. Lots of metallic grey, lots of black, all nicely offset by blue detailing – not only on the frame, but extending to the fork, the wheels and even the saddle, too. They’ve done their homework: the most important aspect of any bike is the frame, and it’s clear that this is where considerable effort – and presumably expense – has been spent. The fully butted frame is excellent, with elegantly manipulated top and downtubes, forged dropouts and a tapered headtube. It’s a good long reach too: an 80mm stem (on our 21in test bike) complements the 650mm top tube to produce a fine, stretched-out position once you’ve curled your fingers around the ergonomic Specialized Body Geometry grips. The seat tube is ever so slightly bent to accommodate shorter seatstays, and perched on top is a dropper-friendly 30.9mm seatpost underneath a Body Geometry saddle. Head and seat angles are 71° and 73° (effective) respectively; 29in bike head angles are typically steeper than smaller-wheeled bikes to accommodate those bigger hoops, but this is definitely at the cross-country end of things. The fork is RockShox’s basic coil-sprung XC28 29in model, although it does at least see fit to provide a lockout for the 100mm of travel on offer. Wheels are Specialized’s own hubs and rims connected together with 32 stainless spokes per end; they’re perfectly good, lightish hoops, shod with Specialized’s own Ground Control tyres. Going forward duties are taken care of by SRAM X5 mechs and shifters, dragging the chain over a double Samox chainset at the front and a Sunrace 10-speed cassette at the back; stopping is take care of by Tektro’s Draco 2 hydraulic brakes, with 180mm front and 160mm rear rotors. Trail notes. Swinging a leg over the Rockhopper for the first time, two things became apparent. Firstly, that Body Geometry saddle is surprisingly comfy. And secondly, the Body Geometry grips aren’t. No, that’s not quite fair. I move my hands around the bars a lot, I play with the ends of the bars and the grips, and I shift my position all the time: this is not something that these grips make easy. So the position I was in was fine, I just felt a little restricted. It’s a purely personal 124 thing; ergonomic grips just aren’t my cup of tea. Still, they’re easy to change. The length of the bike gives you a great position – you’re forward enough to work the front end, but still upright enough to enjoy the view a little. The wheels and rubber were flawless; wire-bead Ground Control tyres aren’t the lightest, but they’re predictable and reliable in most terrain, and gave a good account of themselves in everything from dry moorland to soaking wet woodland. The drivetrain shifted reliably. The Sanox chainset didn’t, perhaps, provide the smoothest shifts, but as this isn’t the lightest bike I was grateful for the 22T ring on occasion. The brakes were excellent, with bags of power on tap whenever I needed it. Specialized bikes have a reputation for low bottom brackets and the Rockhopper’s is positioned at 310mm. While I noticed pedal strikes once or twice throughout the duration of the test, this is by no means unusual within the testing location. In fact, the only serious fly in the ointment, I felt, was the fork. I’m quite a substantial fellow, and the 28mm steel stanchions conspired with the additional length needed for a 29in bike to provide quite a flexy experience. It was difficult to keep the front end on track in very fast, rocky sections, and when properly muscling out of the saddle on sharp climbs I felt that the front end wasn’t perhaps as solid as I’d like. That being said, though, it performed perfectly adequately when the terrain (or I) calmed down a bit. Even though the Rockhopper Comp has a drastic price drop lined up for 2015, with a subsequent drop in component specification, it’s worth noting that for 2015 Specialized is specifying a 30mm stanchion, Suntour XCR 29 fork on the Rockhopper Comp; those wider stanchions might hopefully make the front end a little stiffer. Apart from that lone caveat, the bike handled extremely well – in fact more akin to a bike of considerably more worth. The frame is beautifully responsive, the steering very lively, and the bike rode much lighter than its weight would suggest. The angles and geometry perhaps suggest that this is more of a long-distance epic bike than one best for playing in the woods, but it’s no bad machine for all that. Like a battleship-grey limo. With neons. Rather twangy forks not helped by the QR axle. Matt finish does show the scuffs. One of the classic marques. 125 Overall. A few years ago, a test like this would have been much more difficult. Not because bikes at this price point weren’t available, but because the swingeing razor of budgetary constraints would have made speccing bikes for a given niche much harder. But these three bikes demonstrate just how far we’ve come. GT Zaskar Sport 2015. Ragley Marley 2015. The Specialized speaks to me of a great all-day-ride bike. It’s got great, quite lively handling, a good selection of kit, decent wheels and tyres, and the ‘just one more hill’ feel of a bike that climbs extremely well. The only thing letting it down is the fork, which is just too flexy under my heft to let the bike shine properly on the descents. A 2x10 drivetrain is great at the price, and it performs impeccably, as do the brakes, which are solid stoppers once they’ve bedded in. But if you’re after a solid platform for upgrading, with an excellent frame, you could do far, far worse, especially as its 2014 status means you might be able to pick up a bargain. The Zaskar is perhaps more of a nose-down, full-on fast bike than the other two – certainly it would be a capable trail bike enhanced by a couple of minor tweaks, but it’s at its best blatting at full speed along singletrack. It’s blessed with a tight, responsive frame, and the front end was refreshingly direct. The spec is good for the price – the fork in particular is worthy of note, feeling relatively stiff and well controlled, with a welcome ’bar-mounted lock-out lever. If you’re after a bike of many hats, but perhaps with an inclination towards going fast, this would be the one to go for. 126 Specialized Rockhopper Comp. And then there’s the Marley. Not for it the head-down, speed machine styling, the long-distance epic, nor even the cross-country race. But jumping? Larking about in the woods? Will-it-go steeps riding? This is your bike. It’s got an excellent flickable frame, wide bars, short stem, splendid drivetrain, sturdy wheels and a fork that is better than it has any right to be. If these bikes were school kids, the Zaskar would be the one at the front, asking questions and trying to learn as much as it could. It would also be annoyingly good at sport, and would probably get the girl too, damn it. The Specialized would be staring out of the window dreaming of wide-open spaces, and the Ragley would be at the back throwing paper aeroplanes at everyone. They all have their strengths, and they’re all equally worthy in their own way. But if I was really forced to choose just one, I’d be making paper aeroplanes at the back. O EE RY RS FR ELIVOERDE DL UKN A L Spread The Cost With 0% FINANCE s e k i b 5 1 20 able! l i a v a now! t a e n i l n o e l b a l i a v A m o c . s e l cyc s k e e w t . w w w www.tweekscycles.com Call us on: 0844 249 0971 75, Ash Road South, Wrexham Industrial Estate, Wrexham LL13 9UG Part of the group Speak to an expert today! EXPERT ADVICE 8.30 - 5.30, Mon - Sat (SORRY - We’re out riding on Sunday!) Media Code PZ453A Staff Mark Alker – Publisher. (And your favourite cheese is? Crumbly Lancashire.) Chipps Chippendale – Editor. (…Blacksticks Blue.) Jenn Hopkins – Deputy Editor. (…on toast.) Barney Marsh – Staff Writer. (…Stinking Bishop.) Jorji Frederiksen – Art Director. (…Danbo med kommen.) Grace Neal – Designer. (…Cheese String.) Patrick Ward – Website Developer. (…Cashel Bue.) Tom Chippendale – IT and Database Manager. (…Cheddar.) Beate went to great lengths to find just the right shade of Carmine Red. Tom Alker – Developer. (…pie.) Richard Lane – Advertising Sales. 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