KTM NEW ZEALAND ADVENTURE RALLYE
P76
Feature
tographer, Danny Wilkinson. I was quickly
impressed with Chris's mad skills on the
adventure bike and it was really cool to see
someone pushing the boundaries of what is
thought to be capable on the v-twins!
After dinner riders had the two options
of uploading the day routes to their GPS or
downloading the GPX files to their phones
through the Rever phone app. I had both
Rever running and my Trail Tech Voyager Pro
updated with all the breakout routes.
Day 1 (211 miles)
Our jet lag was minimal, despite transporting
16 hours into the future. The unprecedented
amount of rain leading up to this week had
conditions expected to be slick at the lightest. I
would be riding midsweep to help with mechan-
icals and bogged riders on any technical bits.
Within a few miles we turned off tarmac and
onto a well-graded gravel road. They are called
metal roads here and they were the perfect
consistency for getting your drift on. The
gravel ended and changed into some familiar
clay. However, the rain had done its job mak-
ing the ground feel like a sealed concrete floor
covered in Motorex grease.
The first breakout we reached had a
stacked field in a bottleneck. Nothing too
crazy, just insanely slick conditions and
enough peanut butter that turned any loss of
momentum into a complete fail. Birchy was
there riding bikes up and I helped push a few
dedicated riders up before riding a few more.
After getting the crew back rolling again, we
came to our second breakout, which turned
to actual single track. This had been what
I was looking forward to—taking this bike in
places you don't think it should necessarily go.
Vibrant green fern trees and tons of tropical
foliage made you feel far away from home. The
kauri trees were incredible to see too, some of
the oldest trees in the country were located on
the tracks we were riding.
tech inspection. The 1190 was the most
popular model making up 34 percent of
the group, while the 690 was second with
24 percent. Three pillion riders (two up)
signed up and an incredible 13 countries
were represented!!
During registration I was introduced
to professional rider and KTM ambassa-
dor Chris Birch, who is local to the area
and an absolute legend! We had some
free time that afternoon, so we went and
played around on a local farm and got to
take some pictures with the event pho-
(Above)
Bobbitt rode
the six-day
KTM New
Zealand
Adventure
Rallye and
had fun every
minute.
