Hannah heads to the birthplace of mountain biking to meet a company that is part of mountain biking’s origin story.

WORDS HANNAH

PHOTOGRAPHY HANNAH & FAHZURE FREERIDE.

California’s coastal redwoods may be known for their height, but once you get over craning your neck to look up at them you start to notice what’s going on nearer the roots.

They sprout in curious clusters, like mushrooms, giving the impression that perhaps they’re not individual trees, but instead some sort of single living organism, sprouting, spreading and re-sprouting, trunks reaching towards the sky from a hidden life form creeping below the needle-strewn surface. The truth is perhaps more curious still. The clusters of trees – often called ‘fairy rings’ – can be formed as seeds from the trees above grow and tap into the root systems of their parents to give them extra strength and nutrients. A multigenerational family, snuggled together. Alternatively, they may be shoots that have sprouted from the roots of a neighbouring tree – in some cases these shoots will be clones, and in others they’re a whole new tree. Whichever genetic path these trees take from forest floor to sky, their roots remain entwined with the other trees of the forest, individual but co-dependent, and sensitive to the events that occur around them.

Roots of innovation

Heather McFadden -Director of Marketing, chief tree appreciator

Nestled at the bottom of Mount Tamalpais and merging into the redwood forest is Mill Valley, California, a small town with a population about the size of Singletrack’s home town of Todmorden. Here lies the long-standing headquarters of Wilderness Trail Bikes – or WTB, as you’ll likely know it. The company has been based in Mill Valley for nearly 40 years and was founded by cycling pioneers Steve Potts, Charlie Cunningham and Mark Slate. When I visit the entire office is undergoing refurbishment, so the collection of frames that has hung from the ceiling since the building was being used for framebuilding has been carefully packed away, their dusty forms taken down from the rafters for the first time ever. I know there is a treasure trove of mountain bike history tucked away in storage, but for now I have to make do with their original heavy wooden sign for my history fix. But I’m here to get the story of the brand and do so, along with extensive local knowledge from our host for the day, Heather McFadden, WTB’s Director of Marketing.

In the area around Mount Tamalpais – affectionately known as Mount Tam to most mountain bikers – the redwoods are relatively small and young, much of the old growth having been felled to rebuild neighbouring San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake, with many of the remaining trees being given protection as the Muir Woods National Monument in 1908. As we pedal from the office, leaving the bike paths of town behind and heading into the woods, it’s my first real-life encounter with the redwoods, and without Heather’s historical explanation it would never have occurred to me that these trees were, relatively, small.