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Forty years (or thereabouts) Riding Rotorua

I took this photo because I want to share the significance to this signpost to me, and the bike leaning against it is part of the story. My first mountain bike came into my life a long time ago - my mate who got one from the same batch reckons it was 1983, but it could have been earlier. Prehistoric, anyway. I didn’t meet that mate until some years later, and I didn’t know anybody else who had a mountain bike. There were no magazines available here, and the internet was still an undeveloped ...

Mountain biking has a big impact on Rotorua's economy

$139.8 million spent in Rotorua by mountain bikers who visited in 2021 A new report commissioned by RotoruaNZ that assesses the contribution of mountain biking to the Rotorua Lakes Economy shows that $103.4m was spent in Rotorua last year by visitors who visited for the sole purpose of mountain biking. Other visitors who mountain biked while staying in Rotorua for other reasons spent a further $36.4m, a total contribution of $139.8m to the local economy. RotoruaNZ Chief Executive Andrew Wilson s...

Turkish Delight is BACK ON the menu!

The block at the top of the Nursery Road hill between Katore Road and Tokorangi Pa Road has been logged. That area contained Turkish Delight, Soakhole, and the finish of Corridor, Eastern Spice, North face and Tokorangi.Re-construction is already underway, and so far a nice little Grade 3 trail leads from Katore Road just below the settlement ponds, up over a small hill and down to Tokorangi Road not far from the intersection with Nursery Road.There is a lot of terrain uncovered by logging ...

A Grade 3 Ride from Putake-O-Tawa

We recently got an enquiry from a visitor planning to stay at the Blue Lake Holiday Park, and looking to do a 3-4 hour ride.  We pointed him at The Forest Loop - that is a simple solution - but then we banged this loop out for him. I realised I had never actually done this exact lap, so i went and did it. If you want a decent 30 kilometres of flowy trail with no real awkward bits, here you go! Starting at the carpark called Putake-O-Tawa o Tarawera Road, head out through the gate ...

Five Great Ways to Upgrade Your Forest Loop!

The Forest Loop is a fantastic introduction to Whakarewarewa Forest, and the amazing environment it occupies. It is also a great way to gently get yourself into mountain biking. The Forest Loop is a great ride, but we reckon there is more to it - here are five ways to modify the Loop in entertaining ways....

The RideRotorua Trail Survey is complete!

Thanks very much if you took the time to respond to our Whaka Trails Survey! We received a lot of opinions, with some great comments to back them up. What really surprised us was not so much the result - the most popular trails we could have guessed - but the clear lead those trails had. The most popular pick in all three sections (favourite, next most favourite, third choice) was Eagle vs Shark, by a decent margin. In the absolute favourite column EvsS got an amazing 20% of the vote. ...

Ma Te Wa

Last night I even went for the season’s first after-work ride. Unlike some of my after-work efforts, this one started outside of what normal people consider to be working hours. The goal was to ride a few new trails, one of which is called Ma Te Wa. That broadly translates as See You Later, which is a good attitude to adopt as you drop in. It can also be read as Time Will Tell, which it turns out is equally pertinent. When we decided to move to Rotorua to kick off the Nzo project, we rented a ...

Four New Trails in Whaka Forest!

Spring is here, and with it come four new trails in the ever-expanding Rotorua trail system. Two are on the east facing slopes above the new Forest Hub carpark at Te Putake O Tawa. There is the new Grade 4 hand-built Black House Down. Created by Velosolutions it is a quick run from the road near the picnic table and lookout halfway down Eagle vs Shark, to finish at the carpark. Heaps of fun, lots of off-camber and steeps coming at you the whole way.  Much mellower is the Rotorua Trails Trus...

"Illegal" Trails in Whaka Forest

We need to talk about illegal trail building. Illegal trails, community trails, unsanctioned trails… whatever you want to call them, they are something we all know about, and regardless of your personal view, here’s what you need to know. Part of why the Rotorua MTB Club was originally formed and why the Rotorua Trails Trust exists today, is to facilitate building trails with full landowner consent and a long-term strategy for keeping them open and maintained to the correct standard. T...

RideRotorua Map Updated for 2021!

We live in Rotorua. We have been here since the little network of trails that sprung up in the nearby forest looked likely to make Rotorua a bike town. To be honest, we had been heading down to Rotorua for bike rides long before there were any trails. The forest in those days had seen very little logging in decades and the forestry roads were often so overgrown and little used they were more or less single track. Not long after we made the move, I undertook a ride that strung every bit of trail ...

Go fast, not slow!

One of the joys (and sources of exhaustion) of parenting is the constant change as your kidlet grows. So they slept for 6 hours straight three nights in a row? Ho, ho, ho, good luck for the next 1.5 years when you’ll be up to them four times every night between the hours of 1-4am. Cute outfit! Hope they enjoy it the one and only time it will fit them. One minute they have a vocabulary of 4 words (one of which is “moo”), and the next moment they’re telling you “Gazpa came over yesterday...

The Photographer's Day Off

The man behind most of the decent photos in the RideRotorua story is Graeme Murray.We met on a mountain bike ride, shortly after we moved to Rotorua, the town we chose as a base to start Nzo. Graeme is a local, and was barely out of his teens. He had already decided his goal was to become a professional photographer. He told me that on our first meeting, after I told him what we planned to do.He became a professional photographer a long time ago, and we count ourselves very lucky to ha...

The Split Enz Link trail is complete.

One of the first trails to be built "out the back", Pondy New was a handcrafted line through a block of mature Douglas Fir, and a nice little grove of California Redwoods and Cypress to finish. Built by Murray Avery, the master of the handbuilt flow trail, Pondy was a gently downhill run, tight, sinuous and fast, that deposited happy punters at the start of Rollercoaster. Lately the block was felled, and that left riders who had descended Spilt Enz with nowhere to go beside down a foresty road.&...

Baby Bikepackers!

BBP, you say? That sounds exciting. Is it PPE but for bikes? Or something related to blood pressure whilst riding up Hill Road? Perhaps a new kind of burger to be enjoyed after a day of thrashing the magical Whaka trails? BBP is in fact more fun than PPE, perhaps less fun than burgers after a shred, and almost certainly tougher than riding up Hill Road. BBP stands for Baby Bike Packing. That’s right, undertaking an overnight (or even multi-night) adventure on two wheels, with a small human alo...

RIP Pondy New

Around here, the trails are in what is officially a ‘production’ forest, where trees grow until they are big enough to sell to somebody. Depending how you look at it, you could argue about that definition all day, and we frequently do. Pine trees on the volcanic plateau grow pretty fast. A plot that gets mowed down can be a sort of forest within half a decade. It is a constant source of amazement how soon a cut-over bomb site can turn into a shadowy glade. The real forest vibe doesn’t kick...

Do you Ride Rotorua?

Whakarewarewa Forest in Rotorua is an amazing place to ride, for sure, and is arguably the most popular park-like facility in New Zealand for mountain biking. It has a long back story as a mountain biking destination, and about the only constant besides the hero dirt and the trees (well, some of them) is the Rotorua Mountain Bike Club. The forest trail system these days is ably developed and maintained by the Rotorua Trails Trust, and they do a great job. Various commercial trail building outfit...

Eagle vs Shark - the people's favourite?

Ever since Casey King and Southstar Trails created it, E vs S has been a popular run. Diving straight out of the shuttle's top turning circle, or the top of the Frontal Lobotomy climb (if you're that way inclined), the speed and flow of Eagle attracts a torrent of riders. That it delivers punters to the wrong side of the hill from the shuttle run doesn't dissuade many. The new Te Putaka O Tawa forest hub is situated at the trail's exit, so a well planned ride can include a high velocity gallop t...

Intergenerational Bike Shorts

E-bikes! Love them or hate them.Or both. For me, it depends whether I am riding one at the time. When I am doing that, I love them.When I am clawing my way up the far side of the accurately named Hill Road in the local patch, out of gears and on the pointy bit of my saddle, and I get passed my a midlife mother and her lovely teenage daughter, I have to admit to a bitter hatred of anything that plugs in.Especially if one of them is halfway down her cassette and doing about fifty rpm because ...

Three will do, thank you

Summer is still the flavour down here. We have been getting out on the bikes even more than usual, and I am really hoping that things do come in threes.Two dumb crashes while I slowly adapted to dry and dusty conditions were followed yesterday by a really dumb one which hurt more than the first two combined but also made me laugh out loud.Strava tells me I have ridden my favourite trail 84 times, but I reckon that is about half my total goes at it. So I should be getting the hang of it...

No School like the Old School

The other day we went for an unorchestrated spin in the woods.We had a plan, it went out the window. Our mate had actual written instructions, also rolled into a ball and binned.We followed our noses, if the not the path of least resistance, and ended up doing a lap of some old-school trails.After the ride we commented on how a mountain bike patch full of the trails we enjoy around here can lead to some being bypassed more often than not.The list of trails we rode included some that are hug...