Mountain Biking: Forest riders of the night

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

In a shaft of light they appear like coalminers blasting through the dark.

But they are gone in a blur - thrillseekers dodging possums and the odd deer, whizzing perilously close to thickset trees.

This is the fad sweeping our forests - mountain-bike riding by night.

Every Wednesday night, more than 100 bikers religiously hit the sand tracks through Woodhill Forest, northwest of Auckland.

They are shown the way by powerful lights often mounted on top of their helmets.

Phil Plunkett, a technician by day, has been riding through the forest at night for more than five years.

"It was hairy at first - we were riding with pretty poor lighting," he says.

But a lot of serious riders build their own lights now.

Mr Plunkett has 120 watts of illumination, which puts out a strong beam of light for 20m.

"We ride during the night in winter because the daylight runs out too soon," he says.

"But you get much more of an adrenalin rush in the dark. You come off a jump and sometimes you have no idea where you're landing."

Yet veterans say there are a lot fewer accidents on the trails at night than by the light of day.

Brett Cronin is a guide for Bikepark, which manages the mountain-bike tracks through Woodhill and nearby Riverhead Forest.

"There are a lot less crashes at night because you are concentrating a lot more," he says. "It certainly makes your brain hurt at the end of a ride."

And people tend to show off more during the day, too, when everyone can see them.

Riders pay a $40 annual fee to use the forest trails. Mr Cronin reckons the number of bikers through Woodhill on a Wednesday night - the only night the forest gates are open - has doubled in the past 12 months as the craze explodes.

Farther south, night riding has become a serious pursuit. In Taupo and Rotorua, there are annual 12-hour races in the dark.

The Rotorua Moonride from 8 pm to 8 am attracts more than 1000 riders in the Whakarewarewa Forest, and will be raced in August. The Taupo day-night thriller relay is in October.

The 15km of trails through Riverhead Forest are virtually closed in winter, because the clay makes it too slippery and bikes get bogged down.

Woodhill's sandy terrain makes it perfect for winter riding.

The mountain-bikers have to share the forest with the local inhabitants. Every now and then, riders hear pigs snuffling through the undergrowth deep in the Riverhead plantation.

"There are always heaps of possums and rabbits around, and sometimes you see the odd deer near the tracks in the Woodhill Forest," says Mr Plunkett. "Cattle often wander across but they're a bit stupid."

But by 10 pm, when the headlights are extinguished and the gates closed, the forest belongs to the animals once more.