Towering berms with near-vertical walls flowed into tabletop jumps as I whipped through the low light filtering through the towering pine trees. After enjoying some perfectly manicured flow, I took a hard left and opted for a rooty, steep tech trail filled with blind drops, root webs, and steep fall-away corners. As I rounded a right turn, I broke out of the pine trees into a clearcut, my position on the hillside providing a beautiful view over the forest, with the city of Rotorua and the lake visible in the distance. I skidded to a halt before the next steep corner — this was the perfect spot for a sandwich stop.
It was the end of my two-week stay in the famed destination of Rotorua, New Zealand. Despite juggling regular hours behind the computer, I had managed to pedal about two hundred miles in the expansive Whakarewarewa Forest that’s home to Rotorua’s renowned mountain bike trails. As I sat eating my sandwich, I had a hard time coming to grips with the fact that I’d soon be leaving not just Rotorua, but New Zealand after two months spent exploring the country’s endless singletrack trails.
While many people asked me what my favorite destination was in New Zealand, it’s so tough to pit one place against another when each is so astonishingly different and unique. Even though Rotorua doesn’t have the vaulted mountains found on the South Island, with 205km (127mi) of bike-specific singletrack lacing the rolling ridges of Whaka Forest, there’s an astonishing variety of trails for all difficulty levels. Pair the superbly-built trails with unique natural beauty like Redwood groves, bubbling pits of boiling mud, and sections of native bush, and I found Rotorua to be worthy of every bit of breathless exclamation that I’d heard over the years.
A brief history of mountain biking in Rotorua
The town of Rotorua is synonymous with mountain biking in New Zealand. Locals began riding in the Whakarewarewa Forest in the 1980s, and the first mountain bike trails were built in 1993. Around the same time, the Rotorua Mountain Bike Club (RMBC) was officially established.
The region was put on the international mountain bike map in 2006 when they hosted the UCI Mountain Bike & Trials World Championships. The word was officially out. Rotorua has continued to host world-class events in the intervening years. Crankworx first came to town in 2015, and Rotorua is currently an annual stop on the worldwide bike festival tour.
In 2015, the RMBC helped form the Rotorua Trails Trust, which was tasked with managing all of the trails in the forest — not just mountain bike trails. In the same year, the RMBC formed the First Response Unit to address rider injuries in the forest, which it continues to run to this day.
Through my conversations with the Rotorua Trails Trust and the Rotorua Mountain Bike Club, I learned about the unique path that Whaka Forest has charted over the years. Through the hard work and dedication of local residents in partnership with a multitude of stakeholders, not only have the local mountain bike trails stayed in great condition, but the expansive network has morphed and changed over the years to stay relevant as the sport of mountain biking has evolved.
How the Rotorua Trails Trust works with the logging company
The dynamics at play in Whaka Forest are complex, and the stakeholders are many. Today, the landowners are the local iwi, since the land was returned to the Māori through the Treaty of Waitangi in 2008. However, Timberlands, a forestry company, has a permit to log the 5,600-hectare (13,840-acre) forest. Timberlands must pay the iwi fees for this use of the land.
The Rotorua District Council oversees recreational trail development in the forest and helps fund the Rotorua Trails Trust, which manages the trails. In addition, there are other community and user interest group stakeholders, but the aforementioned are the main parties working in the forest.
Though on the surface, it might seem like recreation and resource extraction would be at odds in the forest, the Trails Trust has a “very, very harmonious relationship with the logging company,” according to Mark Upshall, Operations Manager at the Rotorua Trails Trust. “They will do their best to keep as many trails open as possible.”
To keep the trails open even in the midst of logging, Timberlands compartmentalizes their logging operations so that unaffected parts of the forest can remain open. After work hours and on the weekends, many of the trails through the active logging areas remain open to riders as well.
This is a dramatically different policy than is practiced even in nearby forests on New Zealand’s north island. “There are some forestry blocks around New Zealand where, instead of managing recreation, they’ll just exclude recreation whilst activities are happening, just on health and safety grounds,” said Upshall.
When logging impacts to an area will be severe or protracted over the course of a year (or more), the Trust sometimes gets permission to build trails around the affected area to maintain connectivity and usability of that part of the network. This is the case for an upcoming project: Timberlands is preparing to log the top of the shuttle hill, where the most popular mountain bike shuttles drop off. To help keep the shuttles running (an extremely popular operation that runs for about six hours per day, year-round), the Trust is planning to build a few new trails to help move the traffic elsewhere.
Logging provides a unique opportunity to improve the trail system, keeping it relevant as trends change
Ongoing logging operations mean that the forest is constantly changing and evolving. Again, while some people might view this as a negative, the Trust has realized that the need to rebuild trails that have been destroyed by logging gives them the opportunity to improve and enhance the trail system bit by bit.
In most other mountain bike destinations, once a trail system is built, it’s generally set for life. It’s hard to change how a trail network flows once it’s been built. In some regions, we’re hearing about trails being rebuilt and upgraded, but generally, the way the trails connect together remains the same.
In Rotorua, after an area is logged, the Trust has the chance to completely reevaluate the trails in that zone, asking, “Is that a track that we want to reinstate? Can we make it better? Would it be better from a network connection if it started nearer the exit of this track over here? Sometimes tracks go straight back in, and other tracks are like, ‘well, could we do something better?'”
This process allows the Trust to improve the connectivity between trails by changing where they begin and end. They can also improve the trails by rebuilding them better than they were to begin with. The trail character can even change: if there’s demand for a new type of riding — say, flow trails with big jumps — they can choose to build an entirely new type of trail that didn’t exist before.
It is precisely this dynamic metamorphosis over many years that has allowed Rotorua’s expansive trail system to remain relevant to mountain bikers as trends and riding styles have evolved over time. The trails in Whaka Forest have evolved with mountain biking, which is one of the reasons that so many top-tier athletes come out of Rotorua. From gnarly downhill runs to manicured jump trails and natural enduro tracks, the Trails Trust has been able to build mountain bike trails at the highest level for all types of mountain bikers.
Maintenance is key to keeping riders coming back to Rotorua
Maintenance is the un-sexy part of mountain bike trail building, but blown-out berms, flattened jump lips, and rutted-up trails are a turn-off to riders. If you don’t take care of trails, they can quickly fall into disrepair — and riders will go elsewhere to ride the new shiny thing.
That hasn’t happened in Rotorua, because Tony Knauf, Operation Support and Volunteer Liaison, has created a custom database that allows the Trust to manage, track, and even predict needed repairs and maintenance.
“We have all of the tracks in the database,” said Upshall “When the staff works on the track, they log their hours. The hours get recorded in the database… and it generates a cyclical, predictive tool for when the tracks need maintenance.”
Essentially, after tracking maintenance on each trail for so many years, the database then creates a maintenance schedule for the upcoming year, which then notifies the team of what maintenance needs to be done to which trail at which time. Examples of recurring maintenance include cutting back vegetation, blowing debris off the trail, cleaning drains, and resurfacing.
Through their extensive data-tracking process, “We can predict how much it’s going to cost to maintain the forest per year,” said Knauf. “Basically $2 (NZD) a meter a year to maintain a trail across the board.”
Yes, some trails cost more to maintain than others. Trails that pass through an open area are more expensive to maintain, as the trail tread dries out and needs to be repaired more often. Trails with big jumps require more maintenance. But it still amazingly averages out to $2 per meter year after year.
“No one was more shocked than I was that even when we sanity check these things, that the database makes some really, really good predictions,” said Upshall. “I was very skeptical, because I’m very skeptical of averages, in that they often hide the detail of one extreme to another… but over time, it does completely average out.”
Maintenance costs limit trail development
With 127 miles of purpose-built mountain bike trails, and another 100km (62mi) of hiking and equestrian-specific trails, the Trust has a lot of ground to maintain. Even though this trail system is already absolutely massive, the local riders always want more. And when you look at the map of the forest, it’s easy to see places where more trails could be added.
But at this point, securing the funding to maintain a trail limits new trail builds. “We could get funding to build it, but then who’s going to maintain it?” asked Upshall.
The Trust has numbers to point to — if a new 2km trail is built, they can confidently say that it will cost $4,000 NZD per year to maintain that trail in perpetuity. So ongoing maintenance costs need to be factored in, not just the upfront cost of funding a new trail.
That’s not to say that the Trust isn’t addressing trail needs within the forest when they’re identified. In addition to the new trails planned due to the logging on the shuttle hill, the Trust will soon be building a new professional-level XC track, which will add two new downhill and two new uphill sections to the existing network.
Even still, “I’m certain that the desire for [new trails], whether it be a beginner track or a tech track, exceeds anything that we are going to be able to supply,” said Upshall. “We need to have more resources to do more.”
Parting thoughts
While the desire to do more and build more trails may never fully be satisfied, the diverse and expansive trail system found in Whaka forest is undoubtedly world-class. Thanks to professional organizations like the Rotorua Trails Trust, Rotorua has adapted to changing mountain biking trends by rebuilding trails with new flavors and styles and constantly improving connectivity and flow.
No mountain bike trip to New Zealand is complete without a stop in Rotorua. Whether you’re grinding out epic all-day rides or sending it on gravity-fed shuttle laps, Rotorua’s world-class trails will leave you grinning from ear to ear.
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