photographer: Callum wood ride: Ben hildred Location: Queenstown Bike Park Year: 2020 Ben Skyline road. Photo / Callum Wood
After years chasing trails in Whistler and Moab, Scotland and the Alps, world-famous mountain bike photographer Sven Martin said Aotearoa ultimately stole his heart. In a foreword for Nick Stevenson’s new book ‘Eden’, Martin reveals how the country is a biking mecca unlike any other.
If you could choose to live anywhere in the world, where would you go? What would your criteria be and how would you even begin to make that decision? This is the life-changing crossroads my wife and I found ourselves at after weathering yet another cold winter in Bend, Oregon.
From April until October each year I’m on the road working, photographing the action at World Cup downhill and enduro events across the world. Because of this I was unable to enjoy the good spring and summer weather and riding conditions.
For our sanity something drastic had to change, we needed to find a place where we could enjoy year-round riding with like-minded people.
We had already sampled areas and countries with fabled and famous trails. Whistler, California, Vermont, North Carolina, Moab, Fruita, Sedona, Colorado, Scotland, Wales and all the usual European hotspots in the Alps and along the Mediterranean. But none of them felt like they could be ‘home’.
There was a place that had been on our radars though. Ever since an early whirlwind visit to Rotorua to race the 2006 Downhill World Champs, there had been a nagging itch to return to New Zealand. Over the subsequent years, enough magazine articles and video parts popped up to keep our interest piqued.
We already had a Commonwealth kinship with all the Aussie and Kiwi racers abroad. Their carefree, down-to-earth, fun-loving and welcoming attitudes were refreshing in the pits and at the races. The opposite Southern Hemisphere summer season matched perfectly with my work schedule.
A return visit was long overdue; we needed to see if the grass was truly greener under that long white cloud on the other side of the world.
Now, bear in mind this was 2010, pre-social media, not everything was laid out ready to consume on the internet as it is today. Good old-fashioned research was needed, advice and recommendations from knowledgeable and trustworthy real people were key.
Much to our luck and fortune, one of the few Kiwis I knew through work, Caleb Smith, then publisher of Spoke Magazine, took it upon himself to create a multi-island road trip, taking in the very best of New Zealand’s many iconic and varied trails and bike towns.
Accompanying this stacked itinerary was a list of ‘must ride with locals’ and their personal contact numbers.
We never realised then that our little exploratory ‘riding holiday’ would quickly morph into a seven-week-long hellride that sometimes could more accurately be described as a death march. Imagine visiting a friend who only has a day or two but wants to show you their longest, most technical and best collection of trails in their hometown.
Now imagine your friend is also the fittest and fastest person you’ve met and someone who can ride all day. This was what we endured for nearly two months. It was a baptism of fire.
Respite was often sought by choosing to tackle some of the more remote trails on Caleb’s list riding solo, but even then we’d end up finding ourselves pushing and often carrying our bikes up unrideable ‘trails’ for hours on end, aiming for that ever-elusive peak and subsequent fabled, magical, never-ending pot-of-gold descent — which thankfully, there always was.
Travelling in our little camper van over those seven weeks we learnt a lot about New Zealand. Its nature, fauna and flora; its microclimates with four seasons in a day. The native forests, stunning landscapes, the beauty of the Southern Alps and its passes, its long unspoilt coastlines and tucked away uncrowded surf spots — not to even mention the allure of its unique mix of natural, purpose-built and dual-use mountain bike trails and networks with unmatched flow and hero dirt.
More importantly, we learnt a lot about ourselves and how wrong our pre-conceived ideas of what it meant to be a mountain biker was, or even what a simple bike ride entailed. New Zealand gave us a new perspective and for this I am forever grateful — it changed the way I view and ride bikes.
Before our visit, an all-day bike ride or even one over two hours long meant you were at a bike park or doing an afternoon of shuttles. Trail rides were relatively short, and quick thrills were earned on short downhills you often lapped a couple of times.
However, here in New Zealand the bike became a set of wings for all-day adventures via long, point-to-point backcountry trails or epic loops traversing multiple ecosystems, ridges and ranges. Pushing up the unclimbable or hike-a-biking into the native forests became the daily norm.
To cap it off, every ride seemed to end with a swim, beer or ice cream — sometimes all three.
Simply put, we had discovered Eden and what real mountain biking was meant to be all along.
I could wax on for ages about the beauty of the country and the nature of the trails — the mind-bending technical native beech forest challenges, the vistas and views, rhythm and flow — but at the end of the day, if you are really going to consider moving to somewhere completely new, it is also community and the people that matter most.
The Kiwis we met on this rambling expedition were some of the most welcoming, salt-of-the-earth, unassuming and modest people anywhere. They were often riding older model bikes with worn tires, no-logo T-shirts and flat pedals, yet had no problem dropping you on both the ups and downs.
It seems everyone can ride here and most had a helicopter pilot set up for speed dial on their phones. The average rider’s skill set is far, far higher than any other place we had thus far visited. There is a distinct feeling of stewardship and sense of pride towards the land and trails.
Everyone we met seemed to ride with trail building tools and saws of some sort, and we soon learned that most of them played active roles in building and maintaining the trails we rode.
This trail building culture runs deep and strong across the whole of New Zealand, which explains the size and quality of the various trail networks — especially evident in certain hotspots like Rotorua, Wellington, Christchurch, Arthur’s Pass, Queenstown and Nelson.
After this successful scouting visit, we still had to make a quick trip to Australia, just to be sure we had all our bases covered and that we weren’t making a rash decision.
But just two rides and six snake encounters later we confirmed what we already knew: New Zealand was to be our new home.
Eight months later we returned with a shipping container and began a new chapter of our lives in Nelson, New Zealand with its beautiful beaches, mountains and beech forests. As both a bike rider and photographer I had found my Nirvana.
Amazingly, we made this life-changing move almost fifteen years ago. Since then I can’t even begin to count the amount of world-class trails, parks and networks that have sprung up across both islands. From the amazing purpose-built must-ride wonders like Old Ghost Road and Paparoa Tracks to every new volunteer, club or privately built trail.
All tastes, styles and skill levels are catered for. It doesn’t matter if you are a visiting pro downhiller or weekend warrior, New Zealand is well and truly the place to visit every summer for anyone that calls themselves a mountain biker.
Eden by Nick Stevenson (Thames & Hudson Australia, RRP $90.00) will be available via major or independent book retailers and online via Amazon or the Thames and Hudson Australia website from July 29.