Midweek Mini Movies

The sun is shining, the weather is sweet. Seeing as you’re trapped indoors for the time being, here’s some video escapism that’ll hopefully inspire you to find bit of time to turn the pedals this evening.

First up we have a rather epic and beautifully shot tour of Alaska’s coastline from Yakutat to Glacier Bay. Four riders took their fat-wheeled bikes on the kind of adventure they were made for and travelled along the beaches, carrying all their own supplies and using driftwood for fires. When they reached impassable stretches they popped their bikes in the rafts they carried and paddled across. Yup, bikepacking is dead, all hail bikerafting.

Away from the coast and back to the mountains. Here’s a rather cool little edit of the new Commencal Meta AM trail bike being thrashed in the woods. It shares a similar layout to the new Supreme downhill bike that the Athertons have been campaigning on. Coincidentally, Rémy Absalon just took this bike to first place at the Mega Avalanche last weekend…

In case you missed it somehow, last weekend saw the Shimano Singletrack Classic Weekender take place at Lee Quarry – and a bloody good time was had by all. Nick Kane sent us this short edit of how his weekend went…

MTBCut.tv rider Joe Barnes and his Orange Patriot have been getting about a fair bit. Here he is riding Ben A’an in Scotland, a proper bonkers steep and technical bit of trail. Sadly there’s no mullet styles or super sweet Hall & Oates soundtrack this time but there’s more shredding than an extra large box of wheaty breakfast cereal.

Our ex-work experience lad Dom John has being moving on to great things, obviously down to the things he learnt in the office (or not). He’s just won the Howies ‘Summer Shorts’ video comp with this short and sweet vid, which shows that a perfect day should always include riding your bike…

The West Highland Way In A Day challenge has been going on for a while now – on June 2nd 2011 Rab Wardell of the Kinesis Morvelo Project managed to ride the 95 miles from Milngavie in the north of Glasgow to Fort William in 12 hours and 10 minutes. This short edit is made from footage his parents gathered when supporting him. It’s really rather lovely and only gives a small idea of the suffering involved. You can read more about the ride here.

If you were in a racing mood then you were spoilt for choice last weekend. Obviously there was our Weekender, but the No Fuss 10 @ Kirroughtree also went off, with great weather, a brilliant course and loads of fun riding. Here’s Alpine Bikes’ edit from the event…

Of course, you don’t have to go racing to have fun – just riding your bike is good enough. Here’s what Steve had to say about his little edit:

“Seeing as I live 400-odd miles from Lee Quarry and I work Saturdays, I was never going to make it this weekend. So instead, I set up a loop around the local woods and killed a happy couple of hours with the camera.

I’m not sure if there’s a term for the exact opposite of “Rad-core”, but that’s the vibe. Just some sunshine, some saturated colours, some offensively inoffensive tunes and a bit of pootling. Not something to watch if you’re feeling twee-averse…!”

So there you are. It’s really rather pleasant.

We’ll finish off with a bit of adventure further from home. Quite a way from home in fact – Steve from Mountain Bike Kerala descends down from Pindari Glacier in the Himalayas. It’s stunning. To follow a popular office meme at the moment, it’s like Rodwell End, but much longer. And with better views. So basically nothing like it at all.

If you’ve seen or made anything that should be up here then fire it over to newsdesk@singletrackworld.com…