www.pinkbike.com

Kona’s new Bass with adjustable drop outs and even giro tabs making it perfect for the Dirt Jumpers and slopestylers. With 4″ of travel it will be a good bike taking the big hits whilst being relatively stiff helping you flow through Dirt jump trails. It’s suspected to retail around £1500.

www.pinkbike.com

This is Kona’s new budget fully rigid, singlespeed dirt/street bike. The Kona Shonky is thought to retail at around £450 and perfect for anyone wanting to get into dirt jumping whilst hitting the local skatepark.

www.giant-bicycles.com

This is the new Giant Glory for 09 with a very cool and slick paint job. Also its slightly slimmed down so may well be lighter. The cranks on the Glory are the brand new Shimano saints which are a fair bit lighter than last years and have a cooler paint job, though shoe rub will soon get rid of it. These cranks should be out in Early September so expect to see a pair near you soon !

www.gewichtsfetischisten.de

The new Ns Surburban looks like a well thought out dirt jump rig being available in 24″ specific along with 26″. It also has an Integrated seat post clamp. The 24″ frame weighs 2.4kg and the 26″ weighs 2.5kg.

www.vvcforce.com

The Ns capital frames have received a new paint job,along with a diet seeing the frame ways just 2.09kg !

www.pinkbike.com

Norco’s new Team Dh certainly has seen big improvements along with stunning colour co-ordinated looks. The Team Dh has a lower centre of gravity making sure that it corners like it has rails. Also having adjustable shock positions from 8-9″ along with adjustable BB heights and head tube angles. Retail should be around £3800.

www.pinkbike.com

Here is Norco’s all mountain rig the Six 1 with 6″ of travel. It certainly looks to be a good all round rig that can climb whilst keeping up with the downhillers.

www.singletrackworld.com

The Specialized Sx trail has also gone with some hydroformed tubing for 2009. Also having a very lower standover height perfect for those No foot can’s!.

www.dropmachine.com

The new Intense Uzzi is certainly a stunner ! Certainly a great all round bike with amazing looks ! Though it will come at a cost.

www.boardx.de

Troy lee has a brand new range for 09 ! The looks have certainly improved over last years models as Troy lee has incorporated some of the publics favorite previous designs and re designed them!

www.boardx.de

This is troy lee’s D2 history featuring every troy lee sticker since they started all on one cool helmet ! Alone looking at it will keep you amused for ages !

photo by kiwihardtail's

It features top level New Zealand riders like Kelly McGarry, Cameron Cole, Amy Laird, Sean Kennedy, Eddy Parker and many more. Shot on location all over New Zealand from Wellington to Wanaka and everywhere in between, it features unique locations like an indoor bike park, the impressive Southern Alps and secret trails all over the country.

Enjoy Local dirt jump downhill and freeride accompanied by a unique collection of New Zealand artists, also watch out for hand drawn animations and stop motion. This is New Zealand mountain biking at its finest.

watch the film in  its six parts here at: pinkbike.com

Details are still thin on the ground, but the events set to take place in Fall 2008. After Red Bull launched a global search to find the perfect venue, the spot was found only 20 miles away from the original site near Virgin, Utah. With 1000 vertical feet and only defined start and finish points, the new event that Red Bull have labelled ‘The Evolution’, looks set to continue in the original spirit of the event, as riders find the most spectacular way down the mountain.

The Atherton family are already in Utah, sessioning the old site, so you can be sure that they’ll be at the event showing the rest of the world that the Brits can tackle the big stuff too!

Another great issue of Wideopen magazine is available to download for free now at www.wideopenmag.co.uk.

I haven’t read through the monster 180 page issue yet, but it all looks up to the normal top standard. Here’s some highlights:

- NPS, Pearce, Fort Bill World Cup, World Champs race repos
- Bionicon bike test
- Commencal 09 and 2Stage first look
- Heaps of products including the Gamut P40, E13 LG1 and ‘09 Saint Cranks
- Interviews with the Chicksands young guns, photographer Roo Fowler and NPS4X Champ Scott Beaumont
- Dan Stanbridge/Mojo skin suit interview

Highly recommended!

If you want some shorts that look as good off the trail as on, then check out the Fox Sergeant shorts. I’ve been testing these shorts and for a while now and I really like them. The inner liner features Fox’s ‘Ride’ chamois which make them perfect for long trail days, but is also detachable for when you don’t need the padding.

Although the shorts are casual in appearance, they also have a rear stretch yoke for pedalling mobility. The digital camo design is subtle and available in black or desert. Fox have packed a lot of features into the Sergeant short, but they still cost only £65.00.

The Fox Commando jersey’s design matches the Sergeant short, with the same subtle camo and some contrasting designs and embroidered sleeve and neck badges thrown in. The sides have mesh panels for extra ventilation, and the sunglasses wipe inside the bottom hem is a nice touch.

The sizing seems to come up a bit smaller than some of Foxes other jerseys (notably the Blitz jerseywhich we looked at back along, so you may want to buy a size bigger if you want to wear it with body armor. The Commando jersey costs £35.00 and is available from www.foxeurope.com.

The terrain was unbelieveable! Massive rocky outcrops poked from the steep hillside making natural drop offs and the trail contained loads of rocky features. Trail builders in Scotland and Wales spend lots of time trying to emulate these natural features. Luckily I’d switch on my GPS enabled phone and which records the route walked, and I’ve just dropped the route onto Google Earth! The downhill part of the trail is 1.5 kilometres long, over a drop of around 400 feet, and the trails only about a mile and a half away from my house. This could well be the Holy Grail of natural trails; I can’t wait to get the bike up there and find out if it rides as good as it all looks.

You may not have heard of the Red Bull Round Up. It was a two day showdown with a difference. On day one the riders hit a custom built dirt/street course, built in a 1930’s film set in North Vancouver, and on day two a slopestyle course set in Whistler Blackcomb Bike Park.

Mitch Chubey (www.nsmb.com) landed himself in first place, earning himself a place in the Bearclaw Invitational and the $6000 prize purse. Graham Agassiz and Curtis Robinson landed themselves in second and third.

But it turns out that the Red Bull Round Up isn’t just looking for good riders. They’re after top amateur videographers with a flare for filming and editing. Obviously the events now been and gone, and few of us from the UK could have afforded a long weekend in Whistler (as nice as that would be). But, Red Bull are actually providing raw footage of the event so anyone can have a go at putting together an edit! The footage will be downloadable from www.pinkbike.com from Wednesday July 30th.

So fire up your favourite video editing software and see what you can do. Further details on the event can be found here.

Here’s a round up of what we’ve missed in recent weeks.

Firstly, massive congratulations to Steve Peat and Josh Bryceland who are our new National Champions. The final took place recently on the famous Bala track in North Wales, with Peaty taking the win over Marc Beaumont by an impressive 4.5 seconds! It seemed that the only other man who could have taken the title was Gee Atherton, who unfortunately lost it towards the end of the course, forcing him out of the top 10. Check out Steves site for a full report www.stevepeat.com.

If you’re a slave to fashion you can also check out Peatys new Troy Lee design over at Dirt Magazine.

Although its not a mountain bike event, the Red Bull Empire of Dirt is taking place this weekend. After being cancelled last year, it looks like the BMX slopestyle event has had fantastic weather this year. Unfortunately I was unable to go along, but we’ll hopefully have some pictures up very soon. In the meantime check out the site @ www.redbullempireofdirt.com.

After being controversially dropped back along by Kona, Robbie Bourdon is now back on a deal with Intense riding on of their Slopestyle frames. It’ll be interesting to see if the deal will help famed freerider capture the limelight once again. More info @ www.pinkbike.com.

The Mega Avalanche has been and gone for another year. It was won by Scott rider, Rene Wildhaber. Huckmonkey Crew member Chris Seager was also raced; if you missed his report check it out here.

Any set of goggles will protect you from these things, so I guess its down to the little things that make a great product.

Firstly the fit and feel of the goggles is great. The foam has a nice non abrasive material which sits on your face and wicks away moisture. They’re shaped to give you optimum vision and the lense is fog resistant. This is another product I had the pleasure of using last year in France, and I can tell you that they really don’t fog up easily. The strap stays firmly in place on your lid thanks to lines of silicone. I tested these with may Fox Rampage lid, but also tried them with a Troy Lee D2 and they fit just fine.

On top of all the essential details, they also look good with Fox branding on nose bridge and the strap. To check out the full range of colour options head to www.foxeurope.com. At only £29.99, these aren’t going to break the bank, and they get the job done in style.

As it is only an adapter, and not a true fish eye lens it tends to blur slightly at the edges and if zoomed out less that about 30mm then you can see the lens in the picture, but it works as a fish eye none the less.

For those of you that don’t know what a fish eye is, its basically an extremely wide angle lens. (Wikipedia description)

I went out on a big ride today, about twenty of us in total, most people didn’t know each other, only  a few of us knew everyone. Didn’t take many good photos today, just general stuff, wanted to ride before Canada, and play with the new lens.

Check the rest of the photos here

Double drop. One on the left is about 4ft down and 6ft out, one on right 9-12 ft down, depending on speed, and about 10ft out.

Big table at the Baby Maker.

The only fairly good picture (below)