I Tried Putting The ‘Mountain’ Back Into ‘Mountain Biking’

Rich Payne heads into the wild Scottish Highlands to take on one of the UK’s biggest mountain loops. Summiting not one, but three peaks, including the mighty Ben Macdui. Riding from Glenmore Forest Park, through the stunning Cairngorm National Park, Rich puts the brand-new Propain Hugene trail bike to the ultimate test on rugged climbs and thrilling descents!

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If you want to ride big mountains in the United Kingdom, Scotland is the place to be. [Music] That’s why I’ve traveled up from GMBBN HQ in the southwest of England to here, the Ken National Park. The Kayen Gorns are home to five of the six biggest mountains in the UK. And today I’m planning on summiting the park’s highest peak, Ben McDoui. Not only is it the highest peak in the Kang Gorns, it’s arguably the highest ridable peak in the UK. And a special ride requires a special bike. Meet my brand new propane hug. Lovely bit of kit. Here I am then the edge of lock Mik up there that’s Ken Gorm mountain station the peak of Kang Gorm is about 1,200 m and then beyond that is Ben Mukdwi 1,300 m. I’ve been weather watching for the last couple days and it’s been looking iffy but the time has come. We’ve run out of time and I have to do it today if I want to do this ride and summit that peak. It looks iffy up there at the moment, but we’ve got a couple hours until we get there, and hopefully it will have cleared, so it only means one thing for it. Let’s get cracking. [Music] The route I’m following today sets off from Glenmore Forest Park up over Ken Gorm, the mountain that gives this area its name, and onto Ben McDoui. It then loops back around past what’s known as the green lock before getting back to the forest park. There are plenty of different route options for summiting Ben McDoui. So, I really hope I’ve chosen wisely. This is it then. We’re leaving the road and finally heading into the bushes. Oh, it’s a little overgrown. We’re currently at an altitude of 400 m, just so you And like I said, we’re climbing up to 1321, I think it was. It’s a long old way, isn’t it? And then we’re staying kind of almost at that height for about 10k basically riding this epic ridge line. So yeah, I can’t complain on that. This a lovely purple Scottish heather. It’s blowing amazing. [Music] This is why I love mountain biking. It is in the mountains. You know, we’re still on the road, so it’s not proper middle of nowhere yet, but that is coming. You can’t start in the middle of nowhere in the middle of nowhere. So, we got to get there first. And uh I’m excited about that. I’m excited about having to think about what I pack, think about what’s stored in the bike, think about what bike I use, and think about my route. It kind of gives that sense of uh I don’t know, freedom and jeopardy at the same time, intrepidation. But I mean, look at this. It’s beautiful. It truly is stunning up here. Oh, this is the UK’s highest railway, the Kangorn Mountain Railway. That is currently going to the UK’s highest restaurant and bar. The train gets you from the base station to the top in under 10 minutes, which is certainly quicker than what I’ll do. But once you’re at the top, you are restricted to the station, which is why I’m doing it the hard way. [Music] We are at 876 m. I’ve climbed 554 basically straight up from the bottom. And I’m just on one of the drag lifts. It’s lally where they drag you up. Could do the drag lift. Eiker over there just passed me. Up there is where we’re going. Ooh, heck of a climb. [Music] The first peak is nearly in sight. The Cam Gorm Mountain Station or the top of it. Let’s go for a cup of tea before we do head into the unknown. The track is kicking up a bit now. So, I thought it seems like a good time to quickly have a chat about the bike a bit. Revised geometry, steepen seat tube means actually climbing is in a delightful position. My weight’s not sliding off the back or anything. And obviously the bike is lighter than the previous one depending upon your build kit of course which is certainly grateful for that going up here. Oh my god. I don’t know if you can see the Garmin altitude 720 m temperature. Oh, was that 19 tropical the main thing on there? That big red climb that means exceedingly steep. [Music] Oh wow. This is the perfect cup of tea spot. Behold the Kang Gorms. I mean this place is so you can actually see the lock down there where we started from and we’ve literally climbed from there to here. Quick pit stop and then it is onto the actual summit of Kangor. [Music] All right, round to the right here that is the summit up top. And I don’t know if you can see that viewers, that is the clouds starting to come in. Never a good sign. There it is, everyone. The the summit’s in sight. First of three today. What looks like a little weather station and the actual summit over there. That pile of rocks. Not short of rocks around here. A weather’s closed in as well. It is grim. Garmin telling me climb complete. I can tell you that’s true. There we go. The top of Ken Gour. Let’s give it a little pink. And there she is. 1,246 m. It’s a long old way up here. And as you can see, it’s grim. If you’re wondering where the name Ken Gorm came from, well, basically it’s down to the way the mountain looks from the bottom. And to get a little bit sciency, it’s down to a thing also called RA scattering. Basically, as sunlight passes through the atmosphere, shorter wavelengths of light blue light get scattered. But hang on, there literally is no sunlight up here. It is foggy as anything. So, I’m going to let you Google the rest of that one and we’re going to crack on, I think. [Music] Okay, the weather’s just closed in. If you can hear me or I sound like I’m shouting, I can only apologize cuz it’s very noisy up here. We’re heading up that ridge line there to our second peak and then onto Ben McDoui. Look at what’s blowing in. If Lou just pans. Go ahead that way, Lou. Have a look at that. Yeah, exactly. That’s what’s about to blow in. So, I think let’s not fanny around and crack on, shall we? Cuz it’s uh it’s turning grim. [Music] [Music] Well, it wouldn’t be a true rich pain adventure into the unknown. Well, sort of unknown without some proper hiker bike. I don’t think I’d be hiker biking already, but this is quite literally unridable and way too steep. The rocks seem to be just far enough apart all the time for your wheels to fall in them. But this is obviously way too steep that you can’t even get up here on an ebike. But I wouldn’t like to ride down it to be fair. It’s pretty wild. And in between those massive wheel grabbing rocks, you’ve also got pea gravel. The loosest thing known to man. It’s hell of a condition. [Music] Things like this are really what make mountain biking mountain biking I feel and what give me like a solid we’ll call it sense of accomplishment like you’ve been out on a solid ride right I’ve summited three mountains hopefully by the end of this video and I’ve done it all I will do it all because I know I will positive thoughts and all that on this new little trail bike that propaneed made. But it’s more than that really. It’s kind of like the sense of accomplishment. It’s sort of the sense of adventure. It’s very hard to get that nowadays. We’re always connected to our phones, aren’t we? We always got a camera in hand. The irony. So that feeling of being completely sort of disconnected from the world is much harder feeling to get. So I feel very lucky that look not another human in sight. And that I think is a pretty rare thing to come across and a special feeling to have. Anyway, enough sort of getting deep. Flipping rocks to go. [Applause] Almost looks like a proper trail ahead. Gri, as we head into the clouds, the weather has taken a turn for the worse. So, let’s go somewhere a little bit nicer and check out this new propane hugene a little bit more. Long gone are the days when a mountain bike was just a mountain bike. Nowadays, we’ve got genres left, right, and center. There’s cross country, down country, trail, enduro, super enduro, free ride, downhill, gravel. The marketing departments have been busy over the years. Ideas about geometry, travel, suspension, kinematics have all changed, and the distinctions between these categories has ended up blurring. And this is no more present than in the category of the trail bike. As suspension kept increasing, bikes that were previously nimble, lightweight 120, 130 ms became more akin to that of an enduro bike. What were they were gaining in comfort and rowdiness? They were losing an all day kind of adventure and epicness. And that is why this the new Hugene seemed like the perfect bike for me to put the mountain back into mountain biking. Now unlike the previous Hugene, this one has had a change in travel amongst other things, but this is now a 130 140 mil travel bike over the 140 150 that it used to be. And this was a conscious decision by Propane to differentiate basically between their lineup and make it more of a trail focused bike. They’ve steepened the seat tube angle for better climbing position and they’ve slackened the head angle as well for better confidence and control when going back down. And as a guy who likes to travel light, internal frame storage is a bonus these days, which the Hugene now has over the previous. Internal bags as well made by propane help you stash away any bars, zip ties, gels, tools, god knows whatever you might want to put in there. And lastly, you can absolutely customize your huge gene build and pretty much any of the propane lineup over on their website when you’re specking it. But anyway, that’s enough. Let’s get back to the riding. [Music] We’ve just come down from our second summit and I’m not even going to butcher the name of that one. So, it is on screen now and uh you can decide how that one’s pronounced but it’s another great one done. It’s the second of three just refueling. It’s been going for a fair while now and that’s just below 1,200 m still. So we basically follow this kind of height or this altitude for quite a while all the way to Ben Mcdoui and then it’s a big descent quick refuel and then onto the summit and let’s really kind of uh yeah let’s get up nice and high up there and really hit that highest peak in Kangorns weather could be iffy up there. Uh the cloud kind of blows through all the time. Like literally just up there. You can see it’s kind of foggy, cloudy, and back up that way. But we’re in this little dip at the moment where we’ve just come down to to film. But I think I think at 1300 it’s going to be uh a different story. [Music] Sorry if this is a bit shaky. Trying to push up or what can only be described as rocky hell at the same time. This has really slowed our progress and made things slightly concerning timewise. Still a massive loop to do after this, which I’m a little bit worried about. I think we’ll be all right. But, you know, it’s a lot to do, isn’t it? And this is physically very tough. There it is. What I’m claiming to be the UK’s highest ridable peak. Ben McDoui, everybody. Oh my god. We need to properly summit it, don’t we? Wow. 1,39 m. Oh, okay. Or if you speak another money, 4,295 ft. Now, whilst Ben Nevice is 1,345 m, to get to the top of that is an absolute mission. Wow. All right. Well, yeah, we’ve summited it. But the adventure doesn’t stop there. We’ve got 28k more of this ride to do. It’s 3:00 in the afternoon, so we’ve had a few setbacks. The weather has been a killer, I think. Let’s get a brew on cuz I bought supplies. And then let’s get off this mountain and below this cloud line and warm up. It’s currently 9°. It’s dropped uh quite a bit. And in fact, there’s a really good shelter over here. I’ll see you in there. [Music] This is literally the dream, isn’t it? Really? I did forget to bring biscuits, annoyingly, but you can’t win them all. I’ve got other snacks. Nice. [Music] Okay, we’ve done it. We’ve, like I said, we made it to the summit. We’re relaxing at the moment, but there is a massive descent off the top of here. Now, there are various options on which way you can descend off the top of here. It doesn’t look like it, but there are, I promise. We’re going to head sort of further southeast cuz we want to continue the loop. And we got a long way to go, but you know, there is always time for tea and a snack. But there’s a nice sense of accomplishment being here. No one around. No sign of life at the moment, apart from a few little birds tweeting around. But um yeah, refuel, stock up on tea. Excuse me. Pack up and I think head on. [Music] Yes. Downhill, everyone. I feel like I’ve been going up for flip a Oh, for flipping ages. It’s nice to finally turn it around. [Music] At this point, you might be thinking, “Oh, Bridge, I’m not sure a trail bike’s quite the one for me.” You’re wrong. Look at what it just came down from up there and absolutely ate it up. 131 140 mil proper mountain bike. That’s a proper mountain. And it just went down it on that proper mountain bike. It’s the little bike that can, that’s for sure. Yeah, big love for it. All right, so we’re not out of the woods yet or even in them. We have got to go down the edge of this waterfall here, loop round that big mountain you can see there. Not the one in the distance. Lovely this rockier one in the in the foreground. and all the way around kind of where the cloud is over there. Still a heck of a way to go and it is 4:00 in the afternoon. Mildly concerning, but I’m loving it. So, uh yeah, let’s let’s just crack on and do mountain biking it. [Music] So, who is this bike for? What’s it for? Well, it’s kind of it’s the do it all bike. It’s the adventure bike. And I suppose propane in their thinking we’re going for the less stroke, more stoke kind of approach. It sits between obviously a an XC bike and a trail bike. You know, they’ve shortened or lessened that travel on it, but they have made it lighter, more capable in a way at downhill, certainly in the stability sense when it comes to geometry. So, do you know what it is kind of the Swiss Army knife? I’ve said this before on Woo on tracks or on trails, sorry, when riding trail bikes that trail bikes literally do it all. And well, look, this is this is proving it. Oh, that’s narrow. [Music] Update then. We have just come down from well the very very top Ben McDoui. Uh we got 20k to go though. It’s quite a long way. And whilst we’ve said this is the UK’s highest ridable peak, take it with a pinch of salt people cuz it’s quite tech’s riding. There is hiker bike involved and you know it’s it’s it’s challenging stuff. I mean we’ve got this big climb ahead of us now to get up and over the next sort of peak if you like or the next uh piece of headland and it’s a really rocky really loose climb. So slow progress is what it is. But I mean you know when you’re surrounded by this still it’s um it’s beautiful in it. But you know 10 to 5 in the afternoon time’s a little concern of mine. So I’lluh I’ll see you at the top or something. [Music] Oh, criy. Right, we got a river crossing tactic. Well, after what we’ve just come through, walk straight across it. Normally, I’d try and ride, but there’s kind of a a zero FS given at this point. That looks slippery. That looks slippery. That looks slippery. That looks slippery. Oh yeah, we’ve run out of stepping stones. [Applause] Oh god, got the coldest, wetest thing out as well. Tada. It’s an adventure. Let’s talk about prep in that a moment because this highlights the importance of having a backpack full of the right sort of the necessary kit coat, spare parts, you know, tubes, all the spare tools to fix things with, enough water, enough food, potentially a way of obviously contacting the outside world, especially if you’re solo. I I would never really recommend doing these things kind of solo unless you’re very experienced. So you if I broke a mech now, I’ve got a very long walk in the dark and actually that raised a good question. Sometimes it’s worth chucking a very small lighting or something just even as backup. Yeah, I can’t really sort of uh stress the importance of prep on something like this really because you just don’t know how long you might be and what adversity you might go into. The adversity we’re facing now, midgetes, doodles. Oh, dude. I’m spent. [Music] The final descent back to the van. Behind me, I leave behind Bernak Moore and Buck Beg. 2,000 m, or I should say two separate 1,000 or so meter peaks. And we’re on the way down now. [Music] Oh, this is wicked. It’s on trails like this that the sort of poppy, playful nature, woo, of trail bikes really shine through. Just hopping all these bits, weaving through a heather. Those really quick changes in directions are just made a lot easier by sort of wa light nimble bikes. Look at that. [Music] What a day. We are done back at Lock Mik. It is 8:09 10 8 basically. We set off at 10 to 9 this morning. 45K, 1,632 m of climbing. And well, we summited three mountains. Ken Gorm, one other I can’t say, and the big one, Ben McDoui. They are now absolutely engulfed in the clouds up there. But it’s been an absolute hell of a day. There’s been hiker bike, sunshine, like blasting winds. We’ve been in the clouds. We’ve been riding epic landscapes. We’ve been past lakes in the mountains, crossed rivers, and all on the brand new Propane Huge Jean. That truly did put the mountain back into mountain biking today. So, um, thank you for Propane for sending this one through. It’s been an absolute pleasure to ride, but I’m going to need to take a bit of a rest now and uh maybe a wee drum of whiskey. Also, let’s not forget Louis behind the camera there, who obviously had to troop it round with me. Thank you very much for watching everyone. Until the next rich epic.