Adventure and Travel

Klipberg Enduro 2018

Photos & Report by Ewald Sadie.

· By BikeHubCoreAdmin · 0 comments

During an unsuspecting bachelors weekend away a few months ago, we stumbled upon a location that had a strong resemblance to Ezelfontein, and more specifically EzelEnduro. We were convinced it checked all the boxes for a similar but smaller event, and many beers later, it was the best idea ever.

It wasn’t too far from home, but also far enough to justify camping for the weekend. It was accessible for medics, and all the trails more or less converged to one central location. It had the same vast, open landscapes and not a soul in sight. It had mountains. It had blue skies. But most importantly, it had rocks, all of the rocks. Given the time of year and the current climate, we knew it would be on the cold side. Those campers who came underprepared had a rough couple of nights as temperatures dropped below zero, covering surroundings with a nice layer of frost. Luckily the wind and rain from the previous days stayed away over the weekend and the day warmed up to a perfectly mild day of riding.

Six stages and roughly 30kms of trails awaited the Klipberg Enduro pioneers, with Dingleberries firmly on everyone’s minds. It would be by far the most tricky stage of the day with only a handful of riders doing a clean run from top to bottom. The crux of this stage consisted of a steep gradient with loose boulders that rendered your brakes useless. Riding, or rather surfing, this section required full commitment, skill and perhaps a bit of luck. For the rest, it was an interesting dance down to the bottom, with some OTB’s, a lot of swearing and some precarious footwork.

On the top step, it was Matt Lombardi with a time of 12:34.390 and a gap of 35 seconds over second place man Luke Moir. Third position was claimed by the original rock rider, Dan Dobinson, just under 10 seconds back from Moir. In the ladies division, it was Rachelle de Charmoy taking the honours with a time of 21:19.518. In second position was Kathryn Rennie with Megan van der Helm rounding out the final step on the podium.

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I woke up pretty chilly, so I wasn’t in the best of moods this morning, but things warmed up quite nicely. I wanted to just ease into the day and keep a little extra in the tank for Stage 5. I had a pretty big off on stage 4, so that didn’t help matters going into Dingleberries. I’m glad the event was a success the first time around and I’ll definitely be back next year.
Matt Lombardi

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It was great fun. We arrived really late last night and struggled a bit to find the camp site. The race was really fun – stage 4 was definitely hands down my best. Stage 5 was quite epic – I had to get off my bike and even with that fell two or three times.
Rachelle de Charmoy

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Full results can be found here.

To all the riders that gave this first-time event the benefit of the doubt – we salute you. To Giant Durbanville, thank you for providing E-bikes and mechanical support. Heinrich Stipp and Stellenrust for sponsoring some wine. To Dan, Harry and Michelle for consulting, providing timing and sorting out registration. To Dian and Tolla from Liezelle’s catering for making us an awesome potjie. Janie, Jacques, Jana, Danica, Liandri – thanks for organising and manning our water point. Then lastly to Dayle, Danie, Thomas and Stephan for ultimately putting together all of this.

See you again next year!

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