Behind The Veil | 440 Bike Park

We were lucky enough to be invited to an open day at the 440 MTB Park last weekend to get a preview of what’s to come once the park is open to the public.
The brainchild of two dudes, Byron (yes, that Byron) and Aaron, the park boasts one of the largest hills in the Auckland area, with a 440 meter drop (hence the name).

Crews have been working tirelessly over the last few months digging trail in preparation for opening this summer. Trails are a mix of digger built and hand formed, keeping things varied and interesting.

Check out most of a run down Pink Stoat and into High Viz:

A solid crew of riders from around the upper north island rolled into 440 and after a short briefing and a few words from Byron, we headed up to check out the trails. Needless to say they didn’t disappoint! There are not many places in the North Island where you can do runs the length of those on offer here, let alone with trail the quality of this. Our average runs were around 6-8 minutes, this was running form around 100m vertical below the top of the property, where construction has started on a full top to bottom run, even without this open yet there’s no shortage of trail to be ridden!

Although FourFourty is a ‘Bike Park’ the trails aren’t strictly classic groomed bike park style, although it has some of this too, with some trail hand built you get an actual ‘real-world’ mtb experience, nothing to technical at a cruising pace, but add some speed and things take a turn towards the more exciting!

If you’re looking for something nice, flowy, and easier to ride, the Pink Stoat (see video) offers a good way to get your fix. The digger built track with good width, sweet berms, and perfectly formed jumps will have you grinning from ear to ear whether you’re a beginner or a pro. All the jumps are conservative in size and if you don’t want to get any sky between your tyres and the dirt they’re easily rollable. If you’re working your way up, still figuring out the whole jumping thing then you’ll be safe on Pink Stoat with the jumps being built so if you do come up short you shouldn’t have a worry.