Rotorua Mountain Bike Club celebrates 20 successful years

Carl Jones at the Rotorua Mountain Bike Club's Triple Crown. Photo/Cameron Mackenzie

The Rotorua Mountain Bike Club Inc is celebrating 20 auspicious and successful years.
Dave Donaldson, who's become synonymous with mountain biking in our town, was there at the very start in 1993.

"There was a rather robust meeting at the Redwoods Visitor Centre theatrette, but at the end of it a committee was chosen and away it went," Dave recalls. "At that time, several of the local police were into mountain biking (still are) and police dog handler Denley Tarplett was voted Club President."

Dave's wife, Shreeve, was on the committee and another police dog handler, Mark Mitchell, was the secretary.

"He left Rotorua part way through the year and I was co-opted on as secretary," Dave continues. "I took over from Denley as president at the subsequent AGM and the same Mark Mitchell is now the Minister of Defence."

Dave and Shreeve stepped down from the committee in 2003. Later, that same year they travelled to Europe to pitch for the UCI Mountain Bike and Trials Championships. It proved third time lucky and at the heart of the 2006 event were the club committee and members.

Dave and Shreeve were made the first life members of the club at the 2003 annual meeting. Since then, former presidents Mike Lee, Jeff Carter and Gary Sullivan have been made lifers along with longstanding committee secretary, Mike Gray and, well, me. A very proud moment.

The story of the committee over the last half a dozen years focused on trail building as the number of kilometres of tracks in the forest exploded. Led by president Gregg Brown, they negotiated with landowners, forest managers and the council and raised the money for trail construction.

With the Rotorua Trails Trust taking over that role in 2016, the club has swung back to events, rider development and the Emergency First Response Unit.

Last weekend, the club ran the low key but very popular Triple Crown with 90 entrants. These events rely entirely on the goodwill of volunteers - they wouldn't happen, otherwise - and really are the backbone of mountain biking in town. Other big contributors to club events are photographers, like Cameron MacKenzie, who donate their time and talents to showcase them on social media.

If you would like to get involved then you can start by joining the club: www.mtbclub.org.nz

On the subject of photographers, Graeme Murray is a local legend who's documented mountain biking in Rotorua and New Zealand since the mid-1990s.

When the weather gets cold, Graeme gets going. Last week, as snow fell over Rotorua and the Whakarewarewa Forest, he packed up his camera gear, made a call to some like-minded and hardy mountain bikers and headed for the trails.

The results were stunning and, for some on social media, a real shock. That's possibly no surprise. This sort of snowfall is rare. It was described as a once-in-a-decade weather event. More correct would be once-in-nine-years. The last time we experienced this was early July 2008. And guess what? Graeme went straight out then as well.

Check out @riderotorua on Instagram for the results of the most recent shoot.