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Happy Freedom Day/Week/Month to all you Flow Frothers! Since we last caught up, a big chunk of the Aussie population has emerged from lockdown to smell the fresh air of the outdoors, just in time for the warming spring weather. The flowers are out, the dirt is fresh, the braking bumps are non-existent, and the […]
Since the trail network opened in 2016, Blue Derby has made a name for itself as one of Australia’s premier riding destinations, and hosted the Enduro World Series twice, taking out the Specialized Trail of the Year award following each visit. While there are plenty of trails to keep more experienced riders entertained for days […]
Building on the success of the new Canyon Spectral 29 that was launched last year, Canyon is expanding the Spectral lineup for 2022 with the introduction of new alloy bikes and a high-end CFR model. Covering a huge range of price points, the new Spectrals will be available in both 27.5in and 29in wheelsize options, […]
Wil reviews the Canyon Spectral CF 8 CLLCTV For 2022 the Canyon Spectral lineup is rapidly expanding with the arrival of new alloy bikes, a top-end CFR model, and both 27.5in and 29in wheelsize options throughout the range. Additionally, Canyon will be introducing a specific model with a trendy mullet setup and a coil shock. […]
Nestled on the Coffs Coast, is the idyllic little town of Woolgoolga. With two spectacular beaches that attract seasonal tourism, a newly sanctioned trail network has put the coastal town on the map of mountain bikers from all over northern NSW. “From a topographic standpoint, the Coffs Coast — which we (Woolgoolga) are a part […]
Hello Flow family, and welcome to another edition of Flow’s Fresh Produce. We hope you managed to stay dry through this week of exceptionally wet weather on the east coast. Since the last time we caught up, it has been full gas here at Flow HQ, and we have been plugging away to bring you […]
Glenworth Valley Bike Park was supposed to be the end-all-be-all of bike parks in NSW. Set to be constructed at the Glenworth Valley Adventure Park by Synergy Trails, the proposed network was looking at 120km of singletrack, ranging from DH runs and a Crankworx style jump line, to beginner-friendly trails and everything in between, all […]
For the past year, local event organisers have lived and died by the 10am press conference. They had to become experts in outdoor viral spread, and learned how to put on Covid Safe events that didn’t feel weird or overly compromised. We caught up with AusCycling, Rapid Ascent, Rocky Trail Entertainment, the folks behind Sea […]
Six months aboard the Specialized Levo Earlier this year we found ourselves blasting around the Victorian High Country aboard the (then) brand new Specialized Levo. Having received the bike before its official launch to the public, we chose Mt Buller as an ideal testing location to put this high-performance e-MTB through its paces. We had […]
Ah, Buller, home to some of our favourite trails, like Stonefly, Misty Twist, Copperhead and of course, the Alpine Epic. With some of the network being over a decade old, the 100km+ of alpine trails are getting a refresh, thanks to $1.25-million from the Victorian Government’s Regional Tourism Investment Fund. Buller has had a rough […]
Spring has sprung, the weather is warming up, the days are getting longer and the magpies have begun their annual aerial bombardment. Have you been swooped yet? Since we last checked in, the team at Flow has been busy pecking away at our keyboards, and we’ve brought you the inside scoop on Lake Mountain Resort, […]
Wil reviews the 2022 Canyon Lux Trail The Canyon Lux Trail is the newest mountain bike to come from those fastidious frothers out of Germany. Strictly speaking though, this isn’t actually a whole new bike. That’s because the Lux Trail actually employs the same back end as the regular Lux. The front triangle is new […]
Orbea has been dropping absolute fire this month, with news of the all-new Rallon enduro bike last week, and today the Basque brand has unveiled the all-new Occam and Occam LT. The last Occam was launched for the 2020 model year. It was the first time we’d seen Orbea employ the asymmetrical chassis and it […]
About an hour southeast of Perth lays the town of Dwellingup, and another hour or so down the road is Collie. Both of these towns were founded on the back of resource extraction, and are transitioning from digging up coal and bauxite, to digging trails and epic descents. With hundreds of kilometres of singletrack on […]
Mick & Wil review the new Specialized tyre range Choosing the best mountain bike tyre for your needs can be an absolute quagmire. Not only do you need to pick a brand and a tread pattern that you like the look of, riders will also need to decipher a stack of numbers, logos and marketing […]
Hold on a moment, haven’t we already hung out this week? Did we not already gather around the Flow’s Fresh Produce sack mere days ago? No, you haven’t suffered a severe case of déjà vu. And as far as we’re aware, it’s unlikely that you’re sprawling uncontrollably through the space-time continuum. Possible, but unlikely. So […]
Happy World Championships! We won’t post any spoilers here in case you haven’t caught up on all the action, but the rough and tumble courses at Val Di Sole make for some ripper viewing and showed the value of ‘experience’ when it comes to winning big races. It’s been a big couple of weeks for […]
At the beginning of June, the Enduro World Series lifted the veil on its 2022 race calendar, kicking off with a doubleheader in Tasmania and a new stop in Nelson, New Zealand. Unfortunately, we’ve just had word that the first three rounds of the 2022 series will not go ahead as scheduled. This announcement from […]
Carbon is notoriously difficult to recycle, energy-intensive to produce, and does not biodegrade. Looking in our bike shed, there is a lot of carbon; frames, wheels, rigid forks, handlebars, stems, shoes, bottle cages, and even helmets are made using composites. That’s because carbon fibre is strong, lightweight, and can be tuned to dampen vibration, while […]
The hills around Victoria’s Latrobe Valley are spooky. There are stories of cattle suddenly stampeding as they crest the rise overlooking Lake Narracan, and tales of strange sounds and rhythmic thumping coming from the ground beneath your feet. There’s lore of an ethereal stockman roaming these hills searching for his herd, and before white settlers […]
SRAM XPLR brings MTB tech to gravel Seeking to capitalise on the explosion of growth within the gravel bike segment, SRAM XPLR (pronounced ‘explore’) is a brand new purpose-built gravel groupset. The range consists of fresh 1×12 drivetrain options, a short-travel RockShox suspension fork, a fully air-sprung Reverb dropper post, and a bump-soothing carbon wheelset […]
With the meteoric rise of mountain biking in Tasmania’s northeast, the ears of riders across the country pricked up when the words ‘native logging’ and ‘Derby’ found their way into the same sentence. We have lost count of how many readers have reached out to us expressing concern about what’s happening around Blue Derby and […]
The Giant Reign E+ first arrived on the scene back in 2019 as Giant’s biggest electric mountain bike to date. We tested the Giant Reign E+ 1 last year, and came away impressed with its freight train descending qualities, the unshakeable build kit and ultra-sensitive motor performance. It certainly wasn’t the prettiest e-MTB though, and […]
Bridge Road Brewery’s Ben Kraus grew up in Beechworth and has watched the mountain bike culture in town take hold. With Beechworth just around the corner from Yackandandah, these towns have become a hub for mountain biking in the Victorian High Country; however, they have never been officially connected with singletrack beyond a series of […]
Before there was Derby or Mount Buller and even before Melrose, Forrest was the place where mountain bikers travelled from far and wide to ride. Nestled in the Otways, the trails opened in the mid-2000s and have hosted events like the Otway Odyssey for going on two decades. In that time, a lot of things […]
Perched in the Port Hills on the outskirts of New Zealand’s second-largest city is the Christchurch Adventure Park. Opening in December 2016 as Christchurch was recovering from the earthquakes that devastated the area a few years prior, the bike park got off to a tumultuous start at the hands of another natural disaster. “We were […]
With the World Championships to be held in Val Di Sole, Italy, from 25-29 August 2021, AusCycling has now confirmed athlete selections for Junior, U23 and Elite XC, and Junior and Elite DH. There have also been tweaks to the wording of AusCycling’s position statement on riders racing abroad, which means more of the selected […]
While Norco wasn’t exactly early to the electric mountain bike party, the Canadian brand has since established itself as a legitimate player in the e-MTB market, thanks to strong performances by the original Sight VLT 27.5 in 2019 and the sophomore Sight VLT 29 barely a year later. For 2022, given that both the Sight […]
As one of our lovely followers on Facebook let us know, we are past the winter solstice, which means longer days and warmer weather are moving ever closer — woohoo! Welcome to a brand-spankin’ new edition of Flow’s Fresh Produce. With spring just over the horizon, there has been a steady stream of new bikes […]
Josh Carlson awoke to his phone ringing in an unfamiliar, dark hotel room. At the other end of the line was a nurse inquiring what countries he had visited. “I had no idea where I was, or what countries I had been in, because I had slept in four hotel rooms, in four different countries, […]
With more pro mountain bikers posting their workouts on social media, you probably have noticed many aren’t just sharing riding sessions but also their strength training. Riders like Nino Schurter, Kate Courtney and Remy Metailler regularly post Instagram stories and highly polished YouTube videos about pumping iron. But do us average Janes and Joes need […]
The Santa Cruz Blur was first introduced in 2002; it had 115mm of rear travel and used the brand’s VPP (Virtual Pivot Point) rear suspension. VPP has become a defining feature of bikes from the California-based brand over the years, but Santa Cruz actually purchased the design from an obscure mountain bike brand called Outlander. […]
Just twenty minutes from Ballarat sits the sleepy little town of Creswick, where chef Paul Williams has just spent the night prepping delicious pastries that are headed for the display case in his French bakery, Le Péché Gourmand. Situated on the main drag, Williams’ patisserie is about 400m from Hammond Park, the trailhead for the […]
G’day or Dobry den as they say in the Czech Republic, where the XC World Cup stopped in over the weekend, in Nove Mesto for its second stop. How great is it to have racing back on for the season? So far, Mick’s predictions aren’t as sharp as Colin’s, falling just behind in the PinkBike […]
After a week of dry and dusty conditions, the clouds began to gather above Abbotts Peak at the 2021 XC nationals in Maydena, and Tasman Nankervis knew he’d made a mistake. “The week before I left for nationals, I was talking to the guys at Michelin, and they asked if I wanted mud tires. They […]
Over the weekend, the Seaworks Williamstown in Melbourne hosted 25 small local brands and bespoke bike builders for the third annual Handmade Bicycle Show. There was a staggering array of shiny things with exquisite modern road bikes lining up next to hardcore hardtails, backroad adventure machines, penny farthings and high pivot long travel beasts. Need […]
“Meet me at Birdie Beach at 5:30,” the text message said. Birdie Beach is over an hour away from Mick’s Flow HQ; it will be a long day. Mick spends a day with Jack Moir. An early start and an odd venue to meet up with professional mountain biker, but Jack Moir isn’t your typical […]
Update: The project team at the Yarra Ranges Council submitted its 3,500-page EES to the Victorian Minister for Planning on Friday 22 October 2021. This is a big step forward for this project, but there is still a long way to go. We’re resharing this piece to give you an idea of what it took […]
It’s no secret that electric mountain bikes can throw a helluva beatdown on your drivetrain. Of course mid-drive motors add a whole lot more torque into the equation, though they can also add that torque at a less-than-ideal time partway through a shift. As a result, e-MTB drivetrains tend to be more susceptible to a […]
Getting your mini-shredders out riding with you is a marvellous way to convince them to put their screens down and enjoy some sunshine and fresh air. The key to keeping your groms begging you to take them to the trailhead every weekend is to make sure they are having fun. Christa Capel from Rideo gives […]
Just one year after the tremendous disappointment of cancelling the inaugural Dragon Trail MTB due to the Covid19 pandemic, 300+ eager riders lined up in just east of Derby, ready to take on three days of racing in Tasmania’s North East. The team’s determination at Geocentric Outdoors paid off, and the race got underway, in […]
About 30km north-east of Katherine is Nitmiluk National park, an oasis in the outback. The traditional land of the Jawoyn people, Nitmiluk National park is home to the famous Nitmiluk (Katherine) Gorge, and now thanks to a $5-million’ Turbocharging tourism’ package from the government, brand spanking new mountain bike trails. The network, which was completed […]
A’hoy to all you Frisky Frothers out there, and welcome to this shiny new edition of Flow’s Fresh Produce! We bring this big booty of shwag to you following a trip to the mighty Victorian High Country, where we put the the brand new Specialized Levo to the test on the rugged backcountry trails around […]
The intense cool flash of a helmet light pierces the fading evening glow as a group of riders return from a late afternoon social ride. Pulling up to a pub, a sign ‘Reserved – Bikers’ secures their usual table. And after a feed and a beer, friendly banter and a few tall stories, the Park […]
Greetings fellow Froth-a-trons! Hard to believe, but this is actually the first edition of Flow’s Fresh Produce for 2021. We promise you that we haven’t been dragging our heels since the last time we caught up though. Sure, a 7-week post-Xmas hangover seems entirely plausible, but we won’t attempt to use that as an excuse. […]
Wil reviews the Merida eOne-Sixty When Shimano unveiled its brand new EP8 motor last year, Merida was the first brand to market with a bike built around the Japanese component manufacturer’s latest e-MTB drive unit. And since we already had a load of experience testing the 2020 version, we decided to get our hands on […]
From humble beginnings, Flow has watched Sydney-based MTB apparel brand, DHaRCO develop and grow. Now, this fun-loving mob with their fashionably crisp brand will be displayed on the biggest stage in mountain biking, the World Cup Downhill on the shoulders of one of the most competitive team, Commencal Muc Off. Congratulations team! Press Release DHaRCO […]
Wil reviews the 2021 Polygon Siskiu T8 Updated with a new frame, refreshed geometry and refined suspension kinematics for 2021, the latest Siskiu T continues to carry the torch for Polygon as the brand’s wildly popular trail bike. Sitting in between the Siskiu D (XC) and the Siskiu N (Enduro), the Siskiu T is a […]
Mick reviews the 2021 Commencal Meta TR For 2021, the Andorran trendsetters at Commencal have introduced a new generation Meta AM and the Meta TR. The former is the brand’s 160mm travel enduro rig, while the latter (tested here) is the 140mm travel trail bike. Of course depending on how you eat your Tim Tam […]
Here we are folks – it’s the final Fresh Produce of the year! Does that make you happy? Sad? Excited? Terrified? All of the above? Sure it might be hard to believe, but we are finally on the homestretch of 2020, a year that many would like to forget, and for many different reasons. We’ll […]
Santa Cruz’s big travel brawler, the Nomad, is back for 2021 with its fifth generation platform. Flanked by the latest Bronson on one side and the V10 on the other, the Nomad rolls on 27.5in wheels and is designed around the lower link VPP suspension design with a generous 170mm of suspension travel front and […]
Pivot Cycles is updating the Shuttle for 2021, giving it more range, more power and more capability. Being the Arizona-based brand’s flagship e-MTB, the Shuttle uses a lightweight full carbon fibre frame with a dw-link suspension design. It rolls on 29in wheels, and it delivers 140mm of rear wheel travel, which is paired to a […]
Having already generated a tidal wave of internet buzz with the release of the new Spectral 29 last week, it would appear that Canyon isn’t quite ready to sign off for 2020. Slipping in just before the Xmas rush, the German direct-to-consumer giant is debuting a brand new mountain bike called the Stoic. Built around […]
Flow Tests The 2021 Pivot Mach 6 The end of the calendar year might not be the typical time to launch a new bike, but then 2020 hasn’t exactly been a typical year has it? Looking to sign off on a momentous 12 months with a big-travel bang, Pivot Cycles is ready to unleash its […]
Mick & Wil review the 2021 Canyon Spectral 29 First unveiled to the world back in 2014, the Spectral arrived as Canyon’s aggressive long travel trail bike, slotting in between the Neuron and Strive. It sure didn’t take long for it to become one of the German brand’s most popular models either, thanks to its […]
Having already broken the ice with the Heckler earlier this year, Santa Cruz Bicycles is continuing to expand its e-MTB lineup with the recently announced Heckler MX, and now this bike here; the Bullit. Just like the Heckler, the Bullit reincarnates an iconic name from the earlier days of Santa Cruz’ history, which is likely […]
Blue Dirt Mountain Biking has announced an exciting new seven-day enduro which may sound ambitious, but reading through their event details it is clear to see how much thought and consideration has gone into this one. Capped at 100 riders, the seven-day race takes in trails of some seriously big-name destinations in the Victorian High […]
Alongside the new Specialized Epic, Cannondale Scalpel, Orbea Oiz and Trek Supercaliber, Merida has just announced its (somewhat tardy) arrival to this year’s XC party with the brand new Ninety-Six. Completely overhauled for 2021, the new Merida Ninety-Six replaces the outgoing model, which arrived back in 2015, and went on to become one of the […]
Howzit all you Flow Frothers, and welcome to another politically-distant episode of Flow’s Fresh Produce, where we definitely don’t talk about the results of the US presidential election! It’s mostly out of fear (they’re always listening), but we will say that whatever side of the partisan fence you sit on, we hope you’re doing well. […]
Wil Reviews The 2021 RockShox SID SL Earlier this year, RockShox unveiled a completely re-engineered SID. As the brand’s premium short travel XC fork, the latest version of the SID arrived in March with its sights set on a spectacularly successful year of World Cup and Olympic glory underneath some of the fastest mountain bikers […]