Hollanic

Tombebeej just described one of the best rides you can have here - we call it the sneak,. Assuming you get dropped at our furthest point, It opens up the escarpment and about 17 km of steady downhill (following the Umhlali river) for those who normally dont like to ride further than 50 odd km. Visitors: please remember to collect a valid day permit for the day on the way up or the day before to contribute your bit to our hard work. Remember: helping yourself to any trails without paying your dues is the same as shoplifting. Do the sneak if you can find anyone to drive you up there. It really is a great adventure.

I hope you all don't mind me putting updates for Holla here cause here is the latest: Yellow route back in the mix again. All bridges up bar one shorty - give it a go, your mum will never know! Therefore we have everything back in business again. Only some small detours around where the water is ruining the fun. When you're having fun...Holla!

Maroon bridge is now back up. Route is good to go but is needing some brushcutting to tidy it up properly so you may encoutner some long grass for some short stretches. Let us know what you think

Yellow and Maroon are closed till the Umhlali River can go down enough for us to rebuild the bridges. We have put a detour on Black at the sub station to connect you with yellow to come home on (that part of yellow is fine). Thanks tombeej. Had some challenges lately so its always appreciated to receive a comment like that - makes it worthwhile. Weather looks good for the next week so enough dry weather to get some proper riding in.

Tomjee: respect dude. I rode those valleys when training for epic and they can challenge an epic day easily. Tough hilly riding and by now you've obviously noticed that Google earth does not give enough warning about the size of those hills. A great day out!

Hey Guys Nic here from Holla. I am writing this while wearing my snorkel and handing out hammers and nails. We not sure how many bridges are not washed away but any left were very lonely on Wednesday. The crew is out there working overtime trying to get everything back as fast as possible. We started on red and will move onto the maroon/black bridge over the Umhlali as soon as it is low enough to do so.Yellow will be tackled after that. Just had an update from Ben and he hopes Red should be completed by end of today (Thurs 13/12). Luckily the trails themselves dry out quickly thanks to our Umgeni sand referred to above so its just dodging puddles and wading the odd swollen stream. Roadies wont be happy here cause you wont come back clean but true mtb'ers should leave with at worst a small smile (we hope). I suggest avoiding yellow (unless you are really adventurous) until the weekend cause the Umhlali is a big river and takes longer to go down. It will be a swim not a wade. Check for updates on our facebook site. Thanks to the guys telling everyone that we are the best place to ride (they are right by the way ). Fact is we are totally spoilt for choice in this awesome province. Choose what kind of riding you like and hit it. Another tip is if you find a trail you like, ride it more than once or twice- once you know the layout, you can hit it harder and faster. I'm finally riding Virginia trails this weekend after hearing so much about it. Giba is an excellent ride and Karkloof and Howick are the bomb. If you from JHB, best thing you can do is chuck it in and imigrate. KZN has the best and is only getting better and better! Suck the marrow boys!

Ooooh, I was intending to let things be on this forum as I felt we had taken this thing as far as we could.....(aside from us improving the markings ) BUT I have to point something out here: our blue route is probably the most well marked of the whole lot and having had the feedback from this forum, I have been quizzing almost every rider who I see to find out our problem areas. NOT ONE person I questioned got lost on blue - in fact, most told me the markings were excellent. Why? It's very simple: Some people miss markers, some people don't. we see it all the time here. I have gone out to to fix arrows in the past where someone got lost only to find the arrow still there. It goes with the territory. But hey. No excuses, I am not saying we can't do better markings on our trails. I'm just saying that often us trail operators get slated for bad markings when the its the rider who has missed a marker. Every marker is a link. If you miss one you can miss the trail. The rule to remember for anyone visiting trails anywhere in the country. Go back to the last known marker and start again. Another tip to improve the experience: If you're visiting a new trail, accept that your first ride will always be an exploration. If you like speed, go back and do the same trail again or try hook in with a local who knows the route.It will always be more fun when you have learnt the trail and can go full tilt. Use the trail venues facebook site or leave an ad at the front desk asking to join up with other riders and when doing so, try and indicate your level of riding as people are cautious about hooking up with riders of different skills to them. Explore and enjoy.

Thanks to everyone who has posted on this topic and those that have supported our efforts at Holla trails. As I said, I appreciate the support and even the criticism as that information motivates us to get better and better. The comments here have prompted me to look into our markings and I will be setting up systems to ensure less riders get lost. When we started, it was really to mark and maintain some trails for the locals who quickly learnt their way around and the markers were more of a guide. We are finding now that more and more people are coming on holiday with their bikes and as they are new to the area the marking becomes more and more important. Our goal is to make Holla Trails the best all round mountain biking venue in the country. Watch this space.

Rode Purple last night and found the problem: ONE confirmation arrow is missing on the whole route (that I could find). There is a right turn arrow (at the split with Yellow), than an intersection and beyond the intersection is the pole but no arrow (been removed by someone.) The road beyond has been graded so the bike path that help show the route is gone. The result is riders are turning at the intersection instead of going straight past the pole. I already saw this problem up on Saturday morning and instructed Ben to go and replace the arrow. Unfortunately he misunderstood me and thought I meant the problem was on yellow. I was disappointed to see it was the same arrow missing yesterday Ben is on his way there now to replace arrow. I don't have a problem with criticism/feedback guys. We rely heavily on feedback to know where we have problems to attend to (trees down, bridges damaged, arrows down etc etc). I don't like a forum like this giving the impression that our marking is crap everywhere cause that is not the case. We must have 1000 odd arrows out there. We get tons of feedback from riders who don't get lost and who love coming to the trails. Hopefully readers of this forum will realise that we have mroe happy experiences than bad ones. We will however improve our methods of inspecting and improving the marking of our trails all the time. Nic

If I can add one more comment: we have often found people missing markers which are actually there. A golden rule when riding extensive trail areas like ours is if you don't see a marker for more than a km, go back to confirm you are on the right track. Cheers Nic

Hi Guys I am the founder of Holla Trails and I am very disappointed to hear the bad experiences some of you have had at Holla. We try really hard to provide an awesome riding experience and the last thing we want to do is have riders coming back unhappy - we obviously want to give you the opposite experience. We have challenges in maintaining and ensuring our markers are well maintained. Some of these are tractors, vehicles, weather and people knocking over signs. We also cannot go beserk putting up huge markers all over the place as the lands we ride over are private farm land and we have a balancing act to keep our trails as low key as possible, The farmers don't want our trails to be too invasive. Strangely, the biggest challenge we have is that when we ride our own trails, It is difficult to consciously check all the markers while riding as we obviously do not use them to navigate with and therefore we often don't notice when a couple are missing unless we specifically look for them. It may seem strange but it is really easy for us to miss seeing a marker that is knocked down. I rode yellow on Saturday and did notice only one marker which was missing, yet by Monday I received a report of a rider who got lost there. therefore I must have missed something else. However these are our challenges and we clearly need to do better. Getting lost is crap - especially in the heat of summer. My crew will be sent out onto all the trails immediately to confirm that every single marker is there. It will take us a couple of days to complete this (we do have 340 km's of trails to cover) but it is probably the most important part of managing the trails so it is now our biggest priority. Unfortunately, King crispy's experience on Monday was a series of errors. We are normally closed on Mondays out of season and its my managers day off. He unfortunately took the trail phone home with him which he is not supposed to do. I did receive Crispy's comments from the comment book and did not get to phone him back as I am a farmer in the real world and we were flat out closing down for Christmas break. My error. I hope you guys will give us another go. I am a mtber and reckon we have some of the nicest riding in the country here on the North coast which is why I started Holla. Ultimately my goal is to provide an awesome mtb experience. Give us a couple of days to get our route markers back up to standard and I am confident that you will get the experience we all want you to have.

Thanks guys! Nic here from Holla Trails Just came across the great compliment at the top and gotta say a thanks for putting that sort of comment up. We do work hard at providing great trails and while we are overwhelmed by the other duties that go along with this (memberships, admin, advertising, websites, managing staff, liasing with riders etc etc etc), we are proud of our trails. I also forget how great the trails are until I bring friends here from elsewhere in the country and get comments like those above. That sort of feedback is fuel for our fires. (by the way I am finalising the final route for the John Dory's Golovane on 10 July 2011. The track is riding awesomely and you gonna love it. Based largely on yellow but with some new stuff thrown in. Don't forget it has the biggest prize money for a 50 km race in the country so there are going to be some big names there.)

All the riding around Umhlanga is on land owned by Tongaat Hulett and they have a licence system run by EMBA. Its really hard to get a licenece although i dont know how you do it - if you can at all, I realise that you say that you dont want to drive but your best bet is to take a half hour drive to Holla Trails for some real riding. You will see it is worth the drive and you can take your family for a days outing where kids and novice riders are catered for. Check out the website for more info if you are interested www.hollatrails.co.za Enjoy!

Could this be your dream job? Holla Trails is looking for a hard working, experienced mountain biker with good computer skills, an understanding and experience managing and administering a business and who is highly motivated to be the sole manager of Holla Trails. The position is a challenging one as it involves all aspects of managing and controlling the business from trail building and administration to marketing and website management. The succesful candidate must definately be a people person with a passion for promoting the sport . Holla Trails is based in Ballito and the Trailmaster would need to be located here. Interested or know someone who is ideal for this job? contact Nic through the website at www.hollatrails.co.za or comment here.

Could this be your dream job? Holla Trails is looking for a hard working, experienced mountain biker with good computer skills, an understanding and experience managing and administering a business and who is highly motivated to be the sole manager of Holla Trails. The position is a challenging one as it involves all aspects of managing and controlling the business from trail building and administration to marketing and website management. The succesful candidate must defintely be a people person with a passion for promoting the sport. Holla Trails is based in Ballito and the Trailmaster would need to be located here. Interested or know someone who is ideal for this job? contact Nic through the website at www.hollatrails.co.za or comment here.