Mountain Biking Capital: How Rotorua Did It

I did not come to Rotorua for the trees. I came for the mud pools and the geysers, and the mountain biking was something I added to the itinerary almost as an afterthought, because three separate people had told me the Redwoods were worth a morning. By the second lap I understood why they’d insisted, and by the third I was asking the guy renting me a bike how a forest planted for timber had ended up hosting a world championship circuit.

The short answer, which he gave me while adjusting my seat height, is that nobody planned this. It happened because a handful of people kept showing up with shovels.

A forestry experiment, not a park

The redwoods themselves are the first surprise. They are not native — Whakarewarewa Forest is a stand of Californian coast redwoods, Sequoia sempervirens, planted in 1901 as part of an early 20th-century forestry trial. New Zealand’s colonial-era foresters were testing whether fast-growing overseas species could outperform native timber on rotation, and the volcanic soil around Rotorua, warm and free-draining thanks to the geothermal ground beneath it, turned out to suit redwoods extremely well. For most of the century that followed, this was a working plantation, not a destination. People drove past it on the way to somewhere else.

What changed the forest’s fate wasn’t tourism policy or a council grant. It was a group of local riders in the late 1980s and early 1990s who started cutting narrow lines through the undergrowth between the trunks, because the flat, soft-floored, well-drained forest made unusually good riding terrain and nobody was stopping them. This was the Rotorua Mountain Bike Club, and for a long time it was just that: a club, doing it themselves, on their own time.

Built by volunteers, one trail at a time

I want to be honest about what this actually looked like, because “grassroots” undersells it. There was no masterplan handed down from a tourism board. There was no construction firm. There were people with hand tools, weekends, and an opinion about where a trail should go, digging berms and building line after line through a working forest that technically belonged to the Crown and, later, to local iwi and a forestry company under lease arrangements. Riders would find a natural feature — a ridge, a drop, a stretch of loam — and build toward it. When one trail got crowded, someone built an alternative. When a section washed out, someone rebuilt it, usually better than before.

The forest’s own geography helped. Redwoods don’t need much light at ground level, so the plantation floor stayed relatively clear of the dense native undergrowth that makes bush elsewhere in New Zealand nearly impossible to ride through. Add volcanic soil that sheds rain fast instead of turning into a bog, and you have close to ideal conditions for building and maintaining singletrack without heavy machinery. That combination — an unusually rideable forest floor plus a community stubborn enough to keep digging — is the whole story, more or less.

By the 2000s the network had grown dense enough, and the trail quality was good enough, that it stopped being a local secret. International riders who came through New Zealand started detouring to Rotorua specifically for the Redwoods. Eventually the forest hosted rounds of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup — elite international racing, run on trails that the same volunteer club had built and that ordinary visitors ride every day of the week. I asked around and couldn’t find another World Cup-calibre venue anywhere that works quite like that: most World Cup courses are purpose-built for the event and inaccessible the rest of the year. The Redwoods trails are open to anyone with a bike, before the race and long after it.

What riding it actually feels like

None of this history matters much once you’re on the bike, but it changes how you look at the trail names and the grading system, which is set up like a ski field — green through to double-black — because that is genuinely the clearest way to communicate what decades of ad hoc building have produced. I am not an aggressive rider and I stuck to green and blue lines for most of the morning, weaving between trunks that are, by New Zealand standards, genuinely enormous, with a soft dark floor underneath that never turned to sludge even though it had rained the night before. If you want more detail on which lines suit which ability, our Redwoods riding guide breaks the network down properly; I am only reporting how one unremarkable rider spent a morning.

What struck me most was how quiet it is. You hear other riders’ tyres on packed earth before you see them, and then nothing but wind through several hundred fifty-metre-tall trees. It does not feel like a tourist attraction. It feels like a forest that some people happen to ride bikes through, which is close to the truth.

You do not need a bike to get something out of this place. There’s a raised canopy walkway through the same redwoods, worth doing separately and covered in our treewalk guide, and a set of free walking tracks that share the forest floor at a comfortable distance from the trail network — see our free walking tracks guide if biking isn’t your thing. On a day when I gave my legs a rest, I found the forest still worth the trip on foot alone, and honestly one of the better free things to do in the whole Rotorua area.

Volunteers still run this

The thing I keep coming back to is that this isn’t a finished project with a ribbon-cutting date. The Rotorua Mountain Bike Club still builds and maintains a large share of the network, largely on donations and volunteer labour, the same way it started. Entry to the forest is free, which is unusual for something this good, and a donation box near the main car park goes straight back into trail work. If you ride here and enjoy it, the honest thing to do is drop something in it — you are, in a very direct sense, riding on other people’s unpaid weekends.

If the weather turns and you want a change from dirt for an afternoon, zipline and rafting combos run nearby and pair reasonably well with a bike-heavy trip — a combined zipline and rafting day with a free sauna afterwards covers two activities without eating your whole itinerary, and the version that swaps in a hot pool session is a decent way to soothe legs that spent the morning gripping handlebars.

For something less physical, an eco thermal afternoon tour covers geothermal ground without any pedalling at all, and the nearby buried village of Te Wairoa makes a good half-day if you want history rather than more dirt underfoot.

For planning the rest of the visit, our honest verdict on Rotorua and notes on whether Rotorua feels too touristy cover the wider trip, our best time to visit and winter guides help with timing, and getting around without a car and where to stay cover logistics. If you’re travelling with children, our Rotorua with kids guide flags which parts of the forest suit families. Whichever way you visit, the things to do category page for mountain biking is the place to compare trail operators and hire options before you go.

Frequently Asked Questions About Rotorua’s Mountain Biking History

Is the Redwoods forest natural or planted?

It is planted. The Californian redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) at Whakarewarewa were put in the ground in 1901 as a forestry trial to see whether the species would grow well in New Zealand soil. The mountain bike trails came almost a century later.

Who actually built the mountain bike trails?

Volunteers from the Rotorua Mountain Bike Club, largely working on their own time with hand tools and, later, small grants and machinery. There was no single funded masterplan; the network grew trail by trail as riders identified gaps and dug them in.

Has Rotorua really hosted World Cup mountain biking?

Yes. The Redwoods trail network has hosted international UCI Mountain Bike World Cup rounds, on courses built into the same forest that locals ride every weekend. That is unusual — most World Cup venues are purpose-built and closed to the public the rest of the year.

Do I need to be an expert to ride the Redwoods?

No. The network is graded like a ski field, from green flow trails through to double-black technical lines, and a lot of it links together so you can build a ride to your level and bail out onto an easier trail if a section feels like too much.

Can I walk in the Redwoods if I don’t ride?

Yes, and I would still go. Walking tracks and the raised canopy walkway share the same forest floor, at a distance from the bike trails, so the redwoods themselves are worth the visit on foot.

Is the forest free to visit?

Entry to the forest and its walking tracks is free. Some facilities, guided rides, bike hire, and the treewalk are paid, and a donation box supports the volunteer trail-building work — it is not council-funded in the way you might expect.

What is the best time of year to ride the Redwoods?

The trails run year-round because the volcanic soil drains fast, so even a wet Rotorua day rarely closes them for long. Summer gives longer daylight; winter afternoons are shorter but the forest is quieter.