The 2024 MegaVolt Experience

WTF is MegaVolt?

I'm glad you asked. It's an eMTB festival. Well then, I guess I should tell you WTF an eMTB festival is then. Or at least this one.

The first thing you need to know about MegaVolt is that it's an electrified mountain bike festival. Unlike a drag race or mud bog, you can't roll up in just any axle-twisting over-powered rig. MV is limited to class 3 eMTBs that are pedal-assisted and restricted to 20 mph/32 kmh. I guess you could call that a level playing field, which might begin to explain why it's so much fun.

The MegaVolt Experience

One of the first things you notice about getting a group of mountain bikers together on eMTBs is that there's a little less bravado. The difference between the fastest rider and the slowest rider shrinks on eMTBs and that melts egos and breaks down invisible barriers. Cliques tend to soften and everyone feels pretty comfortable talking to anyone they meet. So the baseline is already more fun than your average bike race, and then everything ramps up a notch at a time. There are some actual winners, but nobody takes it very seriously, and there are seemingly no losers. There is a lot of laughing and smiling and very little consternation or angst. And no mud bogs.

Another thing you should know is that the event is run by the cool folks behind B.C. Bike Race, and man, do they know how to put on an event. Five on bike events made up MegaVolt (and lots of post-ride social gatherings). A couple were like races and the other three were not.

Consistency Challenge

This is an event stolen from moto and it involves riding loops of a designated course and keeping your times as close as possible. The riders with the closest times would be the champs. This was tricky to accomplish because of other racers on course and some technical terrain but some riders managed it.

To give you an idea of how serious this was, there was beer being served at the start line along with a lot of trash talking and socializing. In the absence of Brett Tippie, Cory Leclerc (runner up in RaceFace's Ultimate Freeride Challenge) was hilarious on the mic. It was a fun way to start the weekend and the loop was almost as entertaining as Cory.

didn't take it all that seriously and considered ourselves pre-disqualified. And then we went looking for more of the sweet riding above Naramata.

Hill Climb

This event was a blast. Imagine a Heckler's Rock Crankworx experience but with the riders doing a very tough technical climb. You don't blast through the hecklers in flash, they are all with you for the whole time, leaning in like the drunkest Tour de France fans. Many riders nailed this short steep section and easily as many didn't make it up but none of it mattered because everyone was laughing and cheering and kindly heckling every rider. Unfortunately Tippie hadn't arrived yet (truck trouble) because he was on fire once he arrived.

This was essentially a demonstration event but I think next year it should get full non-medal status, maybe with sections like a trials event where dabs are counted.

eXC Race

Words by Trevor Hansen

'Team' NSMB has a habit of getting ourselves disqualified from races. Somehow our wanderlust deposits us on trails outside the course, enjoying our group ride vibe. The time clock is forsaken in favour of the fun clock. We fit in perfectly at MegaVolt.

The eXC race began in typical NSMB race fashion with a late start while Cam borrowed a bike because he forgot the one thing you need to remember to do at an eMTB event: charge your bike. If there is one thing Team NSMB can count on it's that one of us clowns is going to forget something. I'm just glad it wasn't me. (Ahem. Trevor once forgot his bike at the bottom when we were shuttling and didn't realize it until we reached the top -Note from the Editor who forgot to charge his bike.)

While we waited for Cam to come back from trolling the event grounds for a fully charged loaner bike, our buddy Geoff Gulevich rolled by looking to join our team, which is definitely more non-competitive than your team. When the bike borrowing was sorted, Pete, Gully, Cam and I rolled away from the MegaVolt site about half an hour after the race started. In fact the clock started when we rode into the forest past the marshall. About 10 minutes after that, Cam's demo bike malfunctioned. We tried a number of fixes but after 15 minutes, Cam turned around and rolled back to base while Gully, Pete and I "raced" up the gentle rolling singletrack of the eXC course.

We were following race course tape markings, or so we thought. After several kilometres we crested a hill and carved our way down to a cheering finish line. Somehow, during our puttering, we missed a corner. We immediately regretted because our shortcut cut out the bacon station. After checking his instruments, Pete told us we had only completed 11kms of the 24 km course. We said some hellos to the riders in the finish corral and turned our bikes around to go ride some more. We ran into Wade Simmons and his buddy who had arrived a day late after an early morning drive from North Vancouver. They were on a mission to find the bacon so we joined them in the hunt. Unfortunately, when we got to the bacon stop, the goods had been eaten by all the geniuses who correctly followed the course markings.

At this point the phones came out, Trailforks was scoped and we had a high speed ride with our group of 5 led by Wade and Gully. It is such a treat to ride with these pros who have biked all over the world for years; they were high fiving, laughing and stoking at the end of all the fast flowy sections of Naramata's Three Blind Mice trails.

After a few hours on the bikes, Pete and I realized we had done it again: we'd had an amazing group ride vibe sort of on course but mostly off course. Kinda like all of our rides... And we loved it.

I spoke to many of the race participants. Most of them rode the course at a casual pace while the rest charged as fast as they could. NSMB contributor Karin Grubb (second place finish) said,"I was riding a lightweight e-bike so I had to work pretty hard to keep pace with the full-powered folks, but I wasn't red-lining." Pretty impressive pulling off a fast time on a bike with half the power of the big bikes on course. Steve Mitchell (first place finish) said, "myself, Shaun Rivers, Andrew McKay and Dave Watson all rode into the trail together, but as soon as we were told the timing started we put 'er in boost and dropped the hammer. I heard a bobble behind me on a climb and those guys never caught me again. But I knew I was only one mistake away from them catching me. I just rode at a slightly uncomfortable pace and was very pleasantly surprised I took the win. It was a race to cold beverages."

Trailforks Adventure Ride aka Scavenger Hunt

Words by Trevor Hansen

This was my favourite event of the weekend. We had 5 checkpoints to ride to. At each checkpoint we impaled our cards with a distinctive punch. The goal was to use our navigational skills to find the fastest route to all five checkpoints. Our group had veteran Naramata rider James Wilson and our sort-of-local buddy Craig Cameron bouncing navigation ideas off each other while they scoured the Trailforks maps. The rest of us just followed along in what was a fast, varied and fun ride. To get to each checkpoint our routes gave us a mix of climbing, side hilling and high speed down hilling. The focus was planning a route that had fewer ups than downs. We did not compare routes with other groups because we knew ours had the best down to up ratio; or so James and Craig told us.

In total we accessed over a dozen trails. The hunt was a group ride/race/trail exploration all rolled in one. Riding so many sweet trails searching for checkpoints, while sort of riding as fast as we could, was a great combo. We'd run into other groups on the hunt, compare course notes, and passive aggressively suggest our route was the most efficient. There was no timing for the event but we all had an internal clock, pushing us to claim the checkpoints as fast as possible.

Our group liked the speed but we were always up for some rock slab sessioning, view appreciating, and gear tinkering. In the end if you got all 5 checkpoints your name went into a draw for prizes at the awards ceremony. Our prize was provided on course after we claimed all 5: cold Old Milwaukees pulled out of the pack of our fearless leader; James Wilson.

I have participated in many bike events over the years but the Megavolt Trailforks Adventure Ride was my favourite experience of all of them and my highlight of a stellar weekend of electric festivities.

E-Enduro Race

Words - Cam McRae

I was the only one of the three of us to get my ass out of bed for this event Sunday morning event. That probably made me take it too seriously, which was ill-advised. The day before I had flatted in epic fashion and destroyed a tire after we'd visited all of our checkpoints. The riding around Naramata is very rocky in places. I hadn't brought an extra tire so I engaged the services of the good people from Freedom Bike Shop to swap in new rubber for me. I wasn't feeling full of piss and vinegar but I was looking forward to riding against the clock. Unfortunately, shortly after dropping in, it became apparent that I had a slow leak in the front, and later in the rear. I could keep riding, and I had inserts and some pressure, and I added some before one of the timed stages, but my bike felt imprecise and dodgy at speed, and this was a fast course. It was also physical with quite a lot of pedalling. At least it felt like that to me.

Luckily I was riding with my old buddy Jonny Rockall who turns up the fun meter on everything so for the last section I parked my compete gen and began to enjoy the descent.

Wait, descent? I forgot to mention that the day started with a huge climb. We pedalled at a good clip for over an hour to get to the start line (where more bacon was served) which was about 880 metres (2800') higher than where we started. It seems like a weird way to start an enduro but this was some of the most fun of the day, charging up singletrack wheel to wheel, laughing and chirping all the while.

My deflated tires taught me something I already knew; riding bikes is often way more fun when you aren't concerned about a result.

Something else I learned this year was that I should move heaven and earth to avoid missing next year's MegaVolt. It's honestly some of the most fun you can have on a bike - well on an eMTB that is. In fact, call it an e-moto if you like. I don't mind and it doesn't make it any less fun.

MegaVolt