Down the hill, into the pub!

John, among many others, have made it happen and have stayed behind the riding and driving force of MTB. MTB Mountainbike downhill that is. Depending on where you live, you might have a small hill or if you are lucky a small mountain, but as you will soon find out the extreme scene of Sweden collects in a place called re, Jmtland in Sweden. re is Sweden's most respected mountain biking destination. Most people are familiar with it from the Downhill World Championships in '99. First off, 're Mountain Mayhem' is a rider's event. It is a freeride festival that is a week long.

Apart from buying your lift pass, the festival is free to enter and take part in. There are a great variety of downhill trails, everything from technical rocky sections to fast rolling singletrack. There are numerous downhill loops and we are continually building on these. There are plenty of jumps and drops and even a north shore section to keep the most extreme of riders happy.

There are two lifts which are continually running for the week of the festival. Therefore there is no time waiting in ques for getting up on the mountain. The emphasis is on having a good time, hanging out with other riders from all over northern Europe, partying at night, gorging on a great mix of local food and BBQ's, shaking your booty to some

kickin' music, and soaking up the beautiful mountain scenery. Combine all this and roll it together with the chilled re vibe, and you have got the line up for one amazing week. What more could a mountain biker ask for?

In a nutshell, its for people who love challenging terrain, like pushing their limits, and like to have as much fun as possible in what is considered the best mountain bike terrain Sweden has to offer. 15 Minutes by car towards the west and you are in Norway. Just like in Norway the prices are expensive, so it is best to buy your food about 200 km away if you are going to stay. The local grocery store has a 20-30% above average prices!!

The guys on the mountianbikes take it seriously and they stay for weeks at the time. That means some have to save and then head straight back to there jobs. Most of them are actually the owners of bike stores or other retail establishments.
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Now back to John, not the superstar but still unique. The producer and maker of the first mountain bike downhill video ever in the world.

John: "About ten days prior to Mayhem 2003, a bunch of us arrived to start a project which was to build re a North Shore section. Well, the first thing we had to do was check out the area which was designated for us to build on. It turned out be a jungle of overgrown everything, and it was way steeper than we expected.

After walking up and down it a couple of times, the same question kept popping up 'so how the f**k are we going to build it.....? 'Man with the plan', Tobias (Frost) set the line, and picked the route we would take and then what north shore bits we could build and what natural obstacles we could use."

The Course:

The entry point was off one of the main trails down from the mountain, and we had a huge Red Bull Arch to use as the gateway. First you have to contend with a steep rooty section before you get to the start of the north shore, which is a long, steep ladder about 25m, that hooks you around into an S-bend. As soon as you are out of that, you have to ride the teeter-totter, which leads you quickly onto a ramp. This gives you the option of hucking it straight onto a berm, or you can take the chicken run on your

left. Following the berm around, you can get a few pedal strokes in and then set yourself up on the log ladder, at the end of which you can either huck off to the right, or take the natural path that brings you on to a couple more ladders and then a steep embankment.

At the end of the embankment, the north shore forks off into two separate sections (that eventually fork off again). To the left (Vnga Freeriders route), you drop into a laddered berm and then log, at the end of which is a wide but steep and quite tricky transition onto a skinny thats about 12m. You can ride this straight through and onto a large rock which you drop off, or take a left at the end of the skinny, onto another platform, with a near vertical ladder to exit on.
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Going back to the embankment, if you take the route to the right (Frost / Huckfest), you ride a ladder that brings you onto the root end of a fallen tree. With the top shaved off, you ride the tree length (approx 12/13m). It isn't high off the ground, but the slope on your left is well steep. If you mess up your balance

here, you are going to roll, and well, keep rolling!! At the end of the tree, you simply glide or slide down some S-bends that bring you onto a long ramp, which hass a sweet 4.5m drop off over a gully. This is the north shore exit point, but the path continues down the mountain with a couple more jumps and a road gap (5m) to keep the hucksters happy. All in all, for those who like to push their limits, this is one ride guaranteed to kick your adrenalin into high gear.

I would like to thank all those who put in a huge effort building the north shore and getting it finished on time for the festival. Tobias, Erik & Mange (Frost); Chride, Pontus & Casi (Huckfest.org); Angus, Robert & Roger (Vnga reeriders), Dave and myself (MTB Freerider). We were banging away (ahem, and I mean building of course!!) from 9am in the morning up to 10pm at night, or later. Nobody will forget the swarms of 'knot' eating us all day long, and the almost tropical weather we were enduring that week (30 - 31 degrees). It almost resembled working in the jungle, as the sweat constantly dripped off us. All we were missing were the sounds of crickets, cockatoos squawking and the tribal drums beating in the background.

The final result of that week was a north shore re could be proud of. Indeed, we had Wade Simmons, Kyle Strait, Vanderham and Cedric Gracia give it the thumbs up. Not bad, eh!! "

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