Reefton revival - small town sniffs gold fever
13 minutes to read The rock face is a dripping mask of greywacke and argillite, illuminated by the lights of the jumbo , as the rock drilling machine is known in mining jargon. The diamond drills extend toward the tunnel s end, manipulated by twin booms. Once the drilling is complete, explosives finish the job and the tunnel advances at a rate of about 8 metres a day.
The drills are silent for the moment but despite the damp, the air is dusty. And the tunnel is filled with the thrum of the ventilation system and the low rumble of a huge front-end loader. Back and forth it travels between the rubble in the tunnel s depths and the surface, a length of some 300m.
Now THAT Was a Bike: 2004 Lahar M8 - DH Bike Week Feb 15, 2021
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Welcome to DH Bike Week
This blast from the past kicks off a whole week of downhill bike content, including reviews of the 2021 Specialized Demo, Cube TWO15, Canyon Sender, and the Commencal Supreme, plus a look a closer look at this year s World Cup race teams, and at the winningest bikes of all time. For now, let s dig into the details of one of the most distinctive looking bikes ever created.
There are few countries that could stake a claim to driving forward the idea of a gearbox bike quite like New Zealand, per capita at least. The island with a population of under five million in the South Pacific seems to brim with tinkerers and engineers alike that are happy to take on the problem with genuine imagination and, more often than not, they seem to contribute something very meaningful to the discussion. For other notable e