Highway to hell: Free-ride mountain bikers push the limits at Darkfest

Darkfest Safari shuttle.Photo:Ryan Franklin

By Steve Pike

23 Apr 2023

The minutiae of physics dictate whether you land up in the emergency room or not – and are essential in the deranged world of free-ride mountain biking.

Austrian trail builder and free rider Clemens Kaudela (32), otherwise known as C-Dog, should know. He has been building a vertiginous 900m jump line down a mountain in the Banhoek Valley near Stellenbosch, where one degree of angle could mean make or break ... literally. He knows because he rides the courses he builds.

If you are a spectator on the sidelines, you will see riders hurtling past at speeds of 80km/h to hit takeoff ramps of all shapes, sizes and angles, some of which see them soar up to 15 metres off the ground over mind boggling distances of up to 33 metres - about one third the length of your average rugby field.

The same goes for wind. As Kaudela says, with Teutonic under-statement, it is important that there is no wind up there when you attempt such jumps. The slightest puff of breeze can derail your “flight path”, as he calls it, causing rider and bike to come crashing down off course onto solid soil.

A hellish course

The name that this close-knit crew of crazies have given their heavenly playground? Hellsend Dirt Compound. And on this hellish course, we come to the other appropriate word in the free-ride nomenclature: Darkfest.

It all began in 2016 with a video project called ‘Pure Darkness’ by UK big air rider Sam Reynolds and friends that has slowly evolved into an event exclusive to South Africa and to this venue, which attracts the world’s best women and men free-ride specialists to indulge in this feast of flight, and some sightseeing and partying on the side.

As a result of the huge reach of their individual fame in their various countries, Hellsend is whispered in hushed tones across the globe as we enter the sixth iteration of Darkfest.

There is a unique camaraderie among this lot. All 23 men and seven women stay in the same house during Darkfest week. This bond grows in direct proportion to the mental fortitude they will need to land the biggest jumps in the world during a two-day “jam” – a format driven by the riders.

Darkfest is a breakaway from the contest structures of downhill riding. There is no impartial judging. Prizes are rider-voted. They’re given to the winners after they finish riding. Some accept their accolades in a plaster cast.

To the outsider, Hellsend is a terrifying course where mad young people appear on a James Dean trajectory to live fast and die young, hellbent on finding ways to hurt themselves. But trail builders, and the riders themselves, are way cooler than that. They are far deeper into it than some sort of insane death wish.

With a deadpan face, Kaudela, who is the calmest, most non-manic fellow you could imagine, says nonchalantly: “We just want to make the best jump possible by providing a nice clean flow into the jump so it’s easy to trick, and easy to land because it’s … well, really, really, big.”

They speak of flow and use words like “easy”, but to us mortals Darkfest is a visceral experience not dissimilar to the gut-curdling weightlessness you feel in empathetic fear of failure when the trapeze artist gropes for the legs of her partner in mid-air.

Only here, after you strain your neck upwards in a bid to compute another mid-air contortion three storeys above you, three seconds later you hear a spine-tingling crashing sound as 90kg of rider and beefed-up bike make a gravelled impact – all set to ecstatic screams and hoots from onlookers that reverberate down the Banhoek Valley.

In the tradition of the event to push for never-seen-before tricks on even more massive jumps, with improvements in height and distance year on year, Kaudela has extended an existing 28m “road gap” to 33m, the longest jump at Darkfest 2023, and they say perhaps the longest in the world.

Any small to medium road gap can be dangerous. But when your air time – about three to four seconds – must propel you 33m? Apart from the height and distance, there happens to be a huge hole between the takeoff and the landing. If you’re not going fast enough? Ouch.

Tom Isted’s 33.5-metre backflip at Darkfest. (Photo: Ryan Franklin)

Canadian female rider Vaea Verbeeck pulls off a no-hander at Darkfest. (Photo: Ryan Franklin)

Lines in the sand

The reason Kaudela and his team extended this jump is quite bizarre. For a few years now, the riders have noticed a curious phenomenon. After a typical late summer day, as the sun goes down, the air cools and begins to shift down the mountain at Hellsend, which gives the riders a tail “wind” for the late-afternoon session.

“We were landing the [28m] gap okay in the morning, but overjumping it in the late afternoon, so we simply extended it to cater for where we were landing!” he explained.

“That’s why mornings run slower and evenings run faster. During the day, the warm air is moving up the mountain. It wouldn’t feel windy; it is just that an entire air mass shifts from bottom up in the morning, and top down in the evening.”

The jump, which has two takeoff points, about 6m apart, has already achieved almost mythical status as the “morning line” and the “evening line”.

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The geometry is “super critical”, says the Austrian, “but we had a good reference. We used a photo to examine the trajectory. We made the takeoff angle one degree lower – a tiny bit more mellow – so you take off very neutral to ensure a safe flight path.”

Copied a photo to build a death-defying leap of faith? Flight path? Oh my hat.

But Kaudela does carry a laser tool for measurements, and is very careful. Each tweak comes after hours of debate and testing. He spends two weeks before Darkfest with a front-end digger and a team of shovel-bearing riders who tweak and pat down and spray water and fiddle with slope angles, trajectories and launchpads. Each year, they attempt to extend the “air time” for the riders.

Darkfest safari shuttle. (Photo: Ryan Franklin)

Most spectacular location

Kaudela is complimentary about this little patch of Western Cape dirt.

“Yeah, I have to say that I think that this is the best location. The way the valley is shaped, the quality of the dirt. It is unique. You have this layer of topsoil for one metre, which is dark and brown but with rocks, and then you get this clay with no rocks that makes for perfect moulding. Hellsend has literally everything that you dream about as a course builder. For me, this is the most spectacular location on Earth.” DM168

Steve Pike was part of the Darkfest 2023 media team.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R25.

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A hellish course

Lines in the sand

Most spectacular location