Leave it to champion enduro rider and globally famous adventure bike advocate and skills instructor Chris Birch to ride whatever motorcycle he’s on right to the perceived limit, and then take it beyond. This is the metaphor brought to life in a recent video “The Lost Bridge – Search for Slab Hut” presented by luggage and accessory maker Kriega.

Birch and two frequent trail-shredding cohorts from past videos, Charlie Brown and Liam Ellis haul a pair of KTM 300 EXCs and one 450 EXC-F, to the end of the Waitotara Valley 4WD road, New Zealand’s longest dead end road, known as a “no exit road” in Kiwi-speak. Once the official road runs out, the guys cut across rarely seen countryside in search of a historic hut built in the late 1800s. 

Much of the fun of watching the many adventure riding videos made by some of the world’s most skilled enduro and rally raid riders, is the fantasy factor of seeing what can be done with bikes we can own, on trails we can ride. For Chris Birch, it’s typically gnarly adventures on KTM’s 890 and 1290 Adventure R machines, though this time around we’re seeing him ride his 300 EXC enduro bike, often cutting fresh tracks, a distinctly rare opportunity indeed. 

This is all thanks to “Farmer Snow,” the landowner guest star and guy we immediately want to have a beer with as he erupts onto the scene wearing a rain jacket, motorcycle boots and short shorts as he warns the crew it was probably too wet where they were headed.

And it is definitely too wet and too muddy for anyone sound of mind, but that’s just the kind of challenge these guys are looking for, not to mention what a thrill it would be to bushwhack across so much untrodden terrain in the Taranaki region of New Zealand’s North Island, an area Birch became familiar with during last year’s KTM New Zealand Adventure. Ever since, he says he’s wanted to return to the area and explore further with “little bikes.” 

So what we get at first is just a bunch of messy fun, as we try to keep track of these guys, Birch in a black Leatt 4.5 HydraDri jacket and pants and orange and black Kriega Trail9 Backpack, while Ellis sports a black on black Trail 18 and chest Trail Pockets and Brown, who rides the 450 EXC-F, wears a black Hydro3 hydration pack and R3 waist pack. Birch and Brown’s bikes also carry Kriega OS Base Dirt Bike rackless panniers. 

The terrain is what Birch had expected, “greasy” steeps with lots of narrow ridge lines, in other words “plenty of opportunities to cartwheel a motorcycle down a hill.” The slippery part is illustrated straight away as Ellis spins out on an otherwise easy ascent, stopping Brown in his tracks as he slides back for a nasty get off, the first of many the guys endure shooting the video over several days. 

It’s already evident that the Kriega product to star in this episode of the company’s recurring ride video series on YouTube are the front fender Haul Loops on the bikes, which allow the guys to more easily tug their buddies out of slick spots. 

The landscape the guys are riding across is verdant, with the mountains grazed by sheep while the lush valleys are farmed by families who Birch says welcomed him and his friends to film in the area. In fact, we find that Farmer Snow is actually a highly skilled off-road rider himself, having scouted the routes with the guys ahead of filming. 

But the biggest talent of this film and many other productions starring Birch might be the man behind the camera and flying the drone, John Colthorpe, who rides all the same terrain as his subjects, this time “on the heaviest bike [KTM 500 EXC-F] with the oldest tire.” Not only is the footage Colthorpe captures always top shelf, his company Outhouse Productions edits the finished product to Hollywood standards. 

More thrills and spills ensue on the treacherous slicks, which “went from 100 percent traction to zero percent in an instant,” and even Birch isn’t immune to a tumble, picking up his bike and noting “at least it isn’t a 1290.” 

Then out of nowhere Ellis, running fast ahead of the others, flies his KTM over a steel gate, a stunt that is the physical highlight of the film and everyone agrees was extremely dangerous, with Birch saying behind the scenes it was a “hard no” for him. 

Post successful gate jump there’s still loads of exciting flights across existing tracks and also some gnarly bush whacking as the friends take a “pretty spicy” shortcut recommended by Snow on the way to their historic hut destination. There’s a lot of bike tosses and Brown entertains us with a round of tumbles as he tries to cut a switchback, scenes that make you feel exhausted just watching. 

The coolest location shot is when the friends encounter a DIY suspension bridge left over from the late 1800s era when the hut would have been built. It’s the kind of thing that would have been torn down or gated off years ago in America, for fear of liability. They test it out, at first walking, then proceed to push their bikes across the noteworthy precipice one at a time. 

After the trio buck and snort across some more hills and meadowy bogs they finally arrive at the shack, “a hut built by hand by the people that pioneered this area and carved a living out of this harsh terrain,” says Birch. 

It’s a simple structure, a remnant of the trying times before you could fly an orange dirt bike across this vast and rugged terrain. It’s here the Kriega video ends, leaving us only to hope Birch, Brown and Ellis rode straight back to Snow’s farmhouse for some well-deserved brews and barbie. 

Author: Jamie Elvidge

Jamie has been a motorcycle journalist for more than 30 years, testing the entire range of bikes for the major print magazines and specializing in adventure-travel related stories. To date she’s written and supplied photography for articles describing what it’s like to ride in all 50 states and 43 foreign countries, receiving two Lowell Thomas Society of American Travel Writer’s Awards along the way. Her most-challenging adventure yet has been riding in the 2018 GS Trophy in Mongolia as Team AusAmerica’s embedded journalist.