Forgotten Timber Trails with Manon Carpenter in Nesbyen, Norway

Former world champion downhill racer Manon Carpenter travel to Nesbyen, Norway, to learn how modern technology unveils new bike paths – and to ride some of the classic trails that have put Nesbyen on the MTB map. She team up with architect and mountain biking guide Will Gibson. He and other locals use super-detailed maps in search of long-forgotten trails in the hillsides surrounding town. Old logging paths prove to be tailor-made for modern trail biking.

Find out more:
Mountain biking in Nesbyen: https://www.visitnesbyen.com/sykling/
Mountain biking in Hallingdal: https://www.rides.no/

Thanks to Hallingdal Rides, Visit Nesbyen, Any Excuse to Ride Norway, Trailhead Nesbyen, Nesbyen Ski og Sykkel, Nesfjellet, HallingSpranget, Soil Searching and GoPro.

I wonder how many peolpe realized what an amazing – bike destination just sitting here forgotten in the woods. The more we were looking around, the more we found. It’s like searching for gold. Just that our gold is trails. Visiting Norway to ride was always going to be special.

But getting to know the story of Nesbyen in Hallingdal really opened my eyes to how opening up old forgotten paths can create a new energy for locals and bring others here to ride. If you build the whole trail from scratch, it’s insane amount of work by hand.

And then the fact that we have these which have already the hardest work existing. There’s so many that if it is no good we can just go have a look for another one. We’re spoilt with that really. Nesbyen is, like many places in Norway, old timber towns.

They used horses to pull down all the logs The chain of timber could be 60, 70 or 80 meters long. And that was important because the roads for transporting timber Were made in curves. It worked like brakes. These logging paths were built with corners

To control the speed of logs on the way down the mountain. Who knew they would have a use decades later? Shall we just continue on then? Yeah. To show me around, I have Will, a British architect who is settled in Nesbyen. The old logging paths are built with quite nice long turns

And quite nice gradients. So, they are pretty ideal for bikes. When he’s not working as a mountain bike guide he’s out searching for new paths to reopen with local riders. So, of course, we had to try out some of the classics. Our hillsides are so steep that they gathered the logs

In heaps on the top. Then they transported the logs down to the river. Because the long way transport was carried out on rivers. That’s a good road. I have ridden up there. And here’s a new zig zag zig zag. Very often the ground is pretty good and pretty ready to ride

Apart from a few rocks that have rolled in. It’s often just a case of clearing fallen trees, there’s lot of little ones started growing on them. It’s almost as simple as that if it’s in good condition. It’s maps are available which reveal the traces of these paths on the mountainsides.

Ready to be checked out for their potential to open up as a new trail to add to the network, On the map now, on the regular map it looks like, nothing there. It’s just a tractor road up here. And you can turn on this laser scan map,

And suddenly you have maybe four or five old logging paths. There’s a good long, solid line on the laser map. So we go and see what it looks like in real life. And then the next step after that is, you can basically click a pin anywhere you want

And then you can get the document for who owns it. There you go, just go ask them. I know in other countries it’s so difficult to find that information out sometimes, and here it’s so simple. And we found this one and it looks so good in real life.

I haven’t really looked where it goes on the map. What do you see? Because it looks super good. Looks promising on the map. The hard work has already been done by horses and men some hundred years ago. When did you first come to Nesbyen? 2020, right when Covid hit actually.

We were like straight into lookdown. We lived in another spot in Norway before in Hardangerfjorden. We started a guiding company over there, me and my girlfriend. The short version is, we struggled a lot I think Because it was quite remote, and really wet and steep and technical.

We had been here a couple of times just visiting race and the festival and stuff. I worked here for like a month just helping building trails for Trailhead. They are the ones who have set up a lot here. So we just spoke to them and said, like we’re thinking of moving,

Would we be welcome here? Because we kind of did the same thing at the same time. Guiding and stuff. Thank you. And they very much had and still have the attitude of the more people move here the better it is for the bigger picture, and they were really welcoming. I’m living in Nesbyen.

I’m running a company called Trailhead Nesbyen. I moved to Nesbyen in 2008. So I just started walking around in the woods, trying to find some trails, and yeah I definately found some gold. Most of it was kind of overgrown so I just started to clear them, and and ride them, and

Take some of my friends in Oslo to come and ride. And seeing what’s here now, it’s just… kind of unbelievable. It’s become one of the best known spots in Norway. It’s cool. This trail, I saw it on the map. It was just sitting back home after a day of riding.

I’m raised in Nesbyen. I biked since I was maybe ten years old. Everyone ready? Back then there wasn’t any focus on trails at all. So it was just us biking in the mostly the city center. Seeing a growing community of bikers, both young and older, is so good for me to see it,

Because it was like this when I grew up. Seeing energy that’s growing around mountain biking in Nesbyen is so cool. And you can see why. The local bike park, founded on logging paths, has some really fun trails and more and more people trying it out and getting involved.

Building a path from absolutely nothing is a lot of work to dig, and I find it really cool to reuse what’s already there. Bacause it’s probably not that long before they are starting to just be really lost. I think something pretty great about here is the trailhead is the town.

So you think of trail centers they’re often foresty places where they have built a bunch of facilities. Here, there’s lots of trails that pretty much arrives in town. So people use the town, that’s the point at the end of the day in the economic side of it is

Everybody is using this place, and also just creates a nice feel if everyone’s here. At the end of my stay in Hallingdal, we’ve ridden some amazing trails in beautiful forests and mountains. Met the super friendly locals and got to know a side of Nesbyen that I wasn’t really expecting.

Logging paths from a decades old timber industry creating so many new opportunities today.