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Greetings, oh fellow frothers of the Flow! We trust you’re in good spirits, having completely forgotten what it’s like to work a full 5-day week after all of these lovely public holidays we’ve been treated to lately? Our fearless leader, the Marvellous Mick Ross, decided to take full advantage of the Easter break by embarking […]
*Update: Unfortunately with water still leaking out of the ground in South East Queensland, and quite a bit more precipitation on the way the Quad Crown Sunshine Coast has been postponed to 7-9 October. For details on the other Quad Crown stops click here. The Quad Crown MTB Stage Racing Series kicks off with an […]
Among the crocodiles and the cassowaries, Cairns will play host to a Crankworx World Tour stop from October 5-9, 2022. The idea to bring Crankworx to Australia has been bubbling away in the background since just after the World Championships rolled through Cairns in 2017. Matt Hilton from GTR Events — which ran the Cairns […]
Forrest has been attracting mountain bikers to the Otways since the mid-2000s, filling the void left by the logging industry. Since then, Forrest has built a reputation as a family-friendly trail network and hosted the Otway Odyssey for the better part of two decades. With the trails built when 29in wheels were just hitting the […]
A West Coast Odyssey We believe there are few places in the world better to set out on a road trip than the Apple Isle and its criminally underrated West Coast. So, Lucy, Ryan and Chris loaded up their ute with bikes and snacks to provide you with tasting notes on the best trails and […]
Wil reviews the 2022 Canyon Strive The all-new 4th generation Canyon Strive has arrived, bringing with it some hefty changes that are designed to turn up the dial on the enduro race track. You might recall that when the last generation Strive arrived back in 2019, it was actually Canyon’s first long travel 29er. As […]
It must have been a pretty successful Easter egg hunt over the weekend because not only did you find enough chocolate to make Willy Wonka jealous, but hidden behind the bird feeder was a new edition of Flow’s Fresh Produce! It was only last week that we pressed play on a jam-packed edition of Flow’s […]
Isolated, gnarly and picturesque, the West Coast of Tasmania is wild. Comprised of mostly small communities, until the 1930s, there were no serviceable roads, and the only way in or out was by rail or sea. Make your screen full size – watch this one! When Tasmania was known as Van Dieman’s Land, the West […]
A’hoy there fellow Flow Frothers! Well we don’t know about you, but we are still reeling from a thrilling weekend of XCO racing action from the opening round of the World Cup in Brazil. Yep, racing is back, and it’s back in a BIG way! For the three people on the planet who hadn’t heard […]
Georgie Staley and her husband Dave were out in the Bodalla State Forest working on the trails near their home in Narooma, and they kept seeing a van parked in odd places out in the bush and a scruffy looking guy with long hair. “I said I just can live with myself if this poor […]
We’ve got some exciting news for all you electric mountain bike enthusiasts, because today sees the arrival of the all-new 2023 Canyon Spectral:ON. Representing the 4th generation of Canyon’s popular e-MTB platform, the new Spectral:ON brings further refinement to the chassis to broaden its capabilities, while offering greater range thanks to the arrival of two […]
We’re back again with a farm-fresh edition of Flow’s Fresh Produce, packed to the gills with the latest gear to make its way to the mothership. Since the last time we spoke, Team Flow has been feverishly tapping away at our keyboards as it’s been a fast-paced couple of weeks in the world of mountain […]
The Dragon Trail took to northeast Tassie for its sophomore running. The three-day stage race roughly follows The Trail of the Tin Dragon, a route followed by Chinese miners searching for precious metals in the 1870s. This route just so happens to pass through Blue Derby, the Bay of Fires descent and St Helens. Over […]
Wil ponders; what happened to all the high-end alloy bikes? Carbon fibre is everywhere these days. Handlebars, cranks, rims, derailleur cages, saddle rails, brake levers, spokes — there are few components on the modern mountain bike that haven’t been touched by the magic carbon wand. It’s not just components either. When it comes to mid-to-high-end […]
Oli races the Trans Tas I remember reading a Dirt Magazine article about multi-day enduros at least a decade ago. I liked the idea of a multi-day gravity race. Still, at the time, they were primarily held in galaxies far, far away, in a language I didn’t speak, by riders wearing skin suits with built-in […]
Forget the Year Of The Tiger, because as far as the bike industry is concerned, 2022 is officially the Year Of The High Pivot. A frenzied release of new models featuring high pivot suspension designs have poured into the market, with marketing departments and loyal disciples claiming those bikes to be the second coming of […]
Warburton is poised to become home to one of Australia’s best mountain bike trail networks, depending on the outcome of an Environment Effects Statement. This process is well underway, with a decision projected mid-2022. In the meantime, the local mountain bike community has banded together to clean up the forests around where the trails are […]
It’s been barely a week since we last caught up, but already we have another freshly baked edition of Flow’s Fresh Produce ready for you to sink your teeth into! Don’t say we never spoil you ok? As we come in at full speed, two-wheel drifting into the new product season, the bike launches and […]
When you combine a bunch of high energy people and high-risk activities, there is bound to be a bit of carnage and a hell of a lot of fun. So the Polygon team descended on Thredbo for the 2022 Cannonball Festival in February. Five days of going fast on bikes with lift-assisted ‘up track’ to […]
Aiight Flow homies? We write to you in the early throngs of Autumn as we say goodbye to a Summer that was memorable for all the right and wrong reasons. But friends, we must look forward. And thankfully there is a’plenty to look forward to! Everyone seems to be going events-mad at the moment, with […]
The 2022 Otway Odyssey has been run and won, notching up the 16th edition of this now-iconic mountain bike race. Just shy of 1,200 riders turned up to take on the infamous course, which made for a frankly remarkable sight given the summer of Covid we’ve had here in Australia. You wouldn’t have been able […]
Jack reviews the 2022 RockShox Domain Completely overhauled for 2022, the RockShox Domain is the newest big-hitting suspension fork from RockShox. It follows closely in the footsteps of the brilliant ZEB, with the aim of bringing similar levels of performance down to a significantly cheaper price point. Just like the ZEB, the Domain features a […]
Situated on the doorstep of Devonport, Wild Mersey is one of Tassie’s newest trail networks. Well, it’s actually three networks. Spanning across Latrobe, Railton and Sheffield, the first two stages have been rolling out singletrack over the past three years, and we’re well into stage three. The original plan was to have everything tied up […]
New trail construction in Australia’s mountain bike nirvana has been relatively quiet since World Trail finished the Valley Ponds trail to Branxholm and gave Dam Busters a makeover. But, starting this year, World Trail will be back cutting new singletrack in the network, working on everything from a new green flow trail to having something […]
Standing 1,390m above sea level, Mount Canobolas is an extinct volcano near Orange, NSW, with a paved road to the summit and as much a 500m of usable vertical drop — sounds like a no brainer for a mountain bike trail network, right? The potential for something special is precisely why Rodney Farrell has been […]
The Dragon Trail three day stage race is back for 2022, sending riders onto the trails around Derby and St Helens from 17-19 March. This should have been the third edition of the race; however, the first event was scheduled for March 2020, and well, you all know what happened. We caught up with Race […]
Wil reviews the Rocky Mountain Altitude Powerplay Four long years after the Canadian brand introduced its very first electric mountain bike, the 2nd generation Rocky Mountain Altitude Powerplay has finally arrived. There have been some small rolling changes to the Altitude Powerplay in that time, but the 2022 model sees the platforms biggest overhaul yet […]
Back in the golden days of 2019, we published our list of bikes pushing the $10k envelope, and it turned out to be alarmingly easy. There we discussed the many factors contributing to price increases, ranging from the proliferation of e-MTBs to the introduction of techy electronic suspension systems. Unfortunately, those days of ‘normalcy’ are […]
The new gateway to Derby When most people fly into Launceston, they load their bike bags into a rental car and set sail for Derby. Now there is a pretty darn good reason to point your car north, and make a pitstop in the coastal settlement of George Town on your way towards the east […]
The 2022 Giant Trance X E+ was first rolled out at the tail-end of 2021, though only in a full-carbon ‘Advanced’ version to begin with. Equipped with Fox Live Valve suspension, an integrated display and the latest generation motor, the new models are no doubt very high tech, but they’re also at the premium end […]
Last year when we took a deep dive into what native logging means for Blue Derby, we learned that there was a plan in the works to encapsulate the footprint of Blue Derby into a reserve that would protect the trail network from logging. As recently as January 21, 2022, Sustainable Timber Tasmania has confirmed […]
The new gateway to Derby When most people fly into Launceston, they load their bike bags into a rental car and set sail for Derby. Now there is a pretty darn good reason to point your car north, and make a pitstop in the coastal settlement of George Town on your way towards the east […]
Four years ago, Rocky Mountain unveiled its first e-Bike, the Altitude Powerplay, and followed up a year later with the Instinct Powerplay and Growler Powerplay. Instead of building a bike around an off the shelf e-Bike system, the Canadian brand developed its own. Given the role the motor itself plays in the ride characteristics of […]
The Flow team reviews the GT Force Receiving a wholesale redesign for 2022, the GT Force is one of the newest bikes on the market to go down the high pivot rabbit hole. It’s an exciting and very on-trend move for a brand that has been treading water for the past few years with relatively […]
Melrose is one of Australia’s oldest riding destinations. Constructed in 2005, the trails sit at the foot of Mount Remarkable on private land owned by the McCallum family. Restricted by property lines, there hasn’t been room to expand in the nearly two decades these trails have been around — until now. “We always have people […]
A big Happy New Year to all you frothers out there, and welcome to the first edition of Flow’s Fresh Produce for 2022! We’re still scratching our heads as to how the holidays came and went so quickly, but moaning aside, we hope you’ve all had a splendid break over the festive period, with many […]
Tasmania’s West Coast is rugged and remote. The landscapes are raw, untamed and look more like what you would expect to find in the Rocky Mountains in North America, or even across the Tasman Sea in New Zealand’s Southern Alps. Queenstown (not the one in New Zealand) is the biggest population centre in Western Tasmania […]
According to Glen Jacobs from World Trail, “growing up in Northern Queensland, every second uncle and cousin always use to say, ‘ah, Cardwell is going to explode, it’s gonna go off — it’s an amazing place, this beautiful little town on the beach.’ But it never has, and I don’t know why.” Located about equidistant […]
In 2019 most of Australia was on fire, and Fox Creek Bike Park in the Adelaide Hills was at the epicentre of the Cudlee Creek Fire, which would consume nearly 25,000-hectares. The bike park is on Forestry SA land in the midst of a pine plantation, and just as the landscape around it was reduced […]
Get ready for some high-flying freeride action because the Australian Slopestyle Tour is confirmed for 2022, with four stops across three states. Slopestyle and freeride have lagged behind other disciplines of mountain biking in Australia, due to limited riding venues, and even fewer opportunities to compete. Fortunately that is all changing, with more freeride parks […]
Regardless of where you are in Australia, it’s pretty common to find rusted out old cars, tyres, appliances, couches and other random refuse dumped in greenspaces and trail networks across the country. A group of mountain bikers from Wollongong are taking on this problem, and have removed more than seven-tonnes of litter from the Illawarra […]
Mountain bikers first took to Falls Creek in 2013, debuting with two XC trails and two descending trails. Three subsequent development stages have seen the network balloon to 40km, all set against an epic alpine background. The team at Falls have just announced a further 11km, set to open for the 2022/2023 riding season, but […]
Wil reviews the Specialized Levo SL Expert Carbon When the Specialized Levo SL first launched back in early 2020, its incredibly low weight captured media headlines around the world. Breaking through the 17kg barrier in its premium S-Works form, the Levo SL debuted as a lightweight full suspension electric mountain bike that came incredibly close […]
Greetings fellow Flow Frothers, and welcome to the final edition of Flow’s Fresh Produce of the year! Yes, we’ve now officially entered it’s-nearly-Christmas-and-we’re-starting-to-panic-a-bit mode. But summer holidays are so close that we can almost touch them, and we cannot wait to get out there and get amongst it! For those desperately in need of some […]
Jono reviews the 2022 Norco Range Grabbing attention with its low-slung chassis and high virtual pivot suspension design, the new Norco Range arrived on the scene this year as a burly enduro race machine designed with a very specific purpose in mind. With its coil shock and downhill-adjacent geometry, it’s undoubtedly got a menacing look […]
Get your calendars out folks, because Derby Fest is slated for 23-24 April 2022! This isn’t a race weekend or an event-based around competition. Instead, Derby Fest celebrates everything we love about this special corner of Tassie, bringing riders of all ages together to eat, drink and be merry in a mountain bike dreamland. Event […]
St Helens has a lot to offer, and now there is mountain biking; you’d be crazy not to check it out. With beaches, bays and mountain bike trails just out of town, it’s a must-do when you cross the Bass Strait. You’ve probably heard all about the Bay of Fires Trail; if not click here […]
*Update: The EES Inquiry and Advisory Committee Hearings are now complete, click here for a summary and some highlights of what turned out to be action-packed proceedings. The Warburton Mountain Bike Destination has just completed the most in-depth impact assessment a trail network has ever had to undertake. With over 170km of singletrack proposed in […]
Is it just us, or does the space-time continuum seem to warp in November? You know that sensation of how time accelerates during the last few weeks of the year? How every day seems shorter and you can’t seem to fit anything in? Christmas work parties, family catchups, mid-week evening social rides, racing on the […]
Surrounded by a sea of reds, oranges and greens (if it’s been raining), Alice Springs has a vibrant local riding community and a sprawling network of trails weaving their way through the extraordinary landscapes of Central Australia. You could be forgiven for thinking the terrain around Alice Springs is an endless sunburned wasteland, but this […]
On the back of receiving UCI Bike City status, Wollongong is finally delivering legal trails for mountain bikers. Ahead of the UCI Road World Championships rolling into town in September next year, the city is doubling down on everything bike. In addition to improvements to infrastructure around the city for road riders and commuters alike, […]
Renowned as the game fishing capital of Tasmania, St Helens is Tassie’s answer to the place that has it all. Epic wilderness trail including a 14km descent? Check. Trail network with stacked loops and shuttle runs? Check, check. White sand beaches complete with crystal clear water, lichen-covered rocks and surf breaks? Yep, St Helens has […]
Wil reviews the 2022 Scott Spark There are no doubts that the arrival of the new Scott Spark has been one of the biggest and most eagerly anticipated launches of the year. The latest Spark follows a long lineage of wildly popular race bikes from the Swiss brand, dating all the way back to the […]
En-route to the Victorian High Country from 24-27 February 2022, The GOAT is a brand new four-day stage race, boasting the best trails at Bright, Yackandandah and Mount Beauty. With multiple categories, an expo village and events for the kids, it’s clear the team behind this one aim to include everyone in this inaugural event. […]
People have been riding mountain bikes on the slopes of kunanyi/Mount Wellington just outside Hobart for years. However, of the extensive network of trails that traverse the lower slopes, including the storied North-South descent, there are only 4km of purpose-built mountain bike trails, with riders permitted a few of walking trails — in addition to […]
Home to some of Australia’s most challenging gravity trails, Maydena has built up quite a reputation, and for a good reason. Many of the trails running down the 820m tall Abbotts Peak are built to push the rider and bike to their limit, with steep technical lines and jumps that loft riders into the stratosphere. […]
With the snowy mountains not so snowy anymore, the lifts at Thredbo are firing back up as the 2021/2022 riding season kicks off. Delayed a week thanks to a blanket of fresh snow, the trails open on 26 November 2021, and will stay open until 25 April 2022. Through mud season, the trail crews have […]
Standing high above the Darling Downs in South East Queensland are the Bunya Mountains. These remnants of an old shield volcano are home to the world’s largest forest of bunya pines, also housing a dense sub-tropical rain forest and a brand new 30km trail network. Right up against the Bunya Mountains National Park, in an […]
Good timing, Jigsaw Jumps are here to save a lawn near you Precious dirt dug from shallow graves to build shonky jumps on pristine lawns are popping up around every locked down neighbourhood this year, you know the type. Kids and big kids are spending more time than ever carefully curating their own sets of […]
For the population of mountain bikers who live and ride in Sydney, there is a woefully inadequate amount of legal places to ride, which has led to folks taking matters into their own hands, creating facilities that land managers can’t or won’t. But, it’s not just shadowy individuals cutting trails under the dark of night; […]