 When the mist clears a real sense of adventure is driven home. If you could write a dictionary of common misconceptions, then the prerequisites of adventure are: 1. ass-numbingly long flights, and 2. ass-loosening restaurant dishes. But what if adventure can be found closer to home, maybe just behind an EWS race track, just a short budget flight away in a place that has great food and beer, no risk of stomach trouble and has big mountains to boot? You know, somewhere such as Ainsa in Spain?  The Canal del Cinca is a classic long balcony traverse through the steep sided Cinca valley. Ainsa was put on the global mountain bikers’ map by the EWS in 2015 and again in 2018. The popularity of this ancient town—or specifically the enviable 1200 Kilometres of trails that sit on its doorstep and are managed by Zona Zero— have led to a ten-fold rise in mountain biker numbers since that first EWS tape was unrolled down one of its trails. And now some 30,000 riders come to wash down good food with locally brewed Tronzador beer and thrash down descents in the tire-tracks of their EWS heroes.
But there is more to Ainsa than beer, EWS tape and its fast, dusty tracks. Look beyond its stone ramparts and you’ll find even more riding and diverse experiences to be mined from the rugged, steep mountains that harbour this Medieval town.  Rafa and Pablo lost in a sea of rocks in the Sierra y Canones de Guara. In June I teamed up with guiding outfit Blacktown Trails for a taste of the adventure potential to be found in the mountains around Ainsa, going way beyond the race tape. On a road trip between the Pyrenees’ highest summit Pico Arneto to the north East, and Huesca to the south West, a tumbling landscape of unforgiving peaks and steep river canyons became the backdrop for six days of exploration and hard-earned descents.
With Blacktown’s guides Pablo Irigoyan Claver, Rafa Molina and Emilio Garcia leading the charge, we dipped into a diverse spectrum of landscapes and a year's variety of trails, from the fast, loose shale of the barren mountains above Benasque to the twisting, tormented rock gardens of the Sierra y Canons de Guara.  Rafa drops into the abyss on Comodoto.  The region is not short of climbs, but the scenery will help take your mind off the pain. And when it doesnt, there is beer.  Mid summer snow just adds traction to the otherwise dry and loose Sierra Negra descent.  Rafa and Pablo wait for the rain to ease before a 700 metre push up to the Sierra Negra trail.
 Pablo is as handy with a camp stove as he is with a bike... which is lucky if you're hungry for food or trails. Surrounded by glaciers and tumbling rivers we slung our bikes onto our backs for arduous hike-a-bikes into the backcountry, and when unseasonal snowfall scuppered our plan to camp high on the Sierra Negra, our pre-arranged gear-carrying mules went light, hauling just our bikes instead to its 2700 metre high summit for a snowline descent.  Heading up to the Sierra Negra plateau and into 1200 metres of descent as reward.
And we emerged from our six days dirty, tired but grinning and swearing to return, aware that we’d only scratched the surface of the adventure potential of this area. Leaving the race tape behind we had merely eaten the crumbs from a seemingly limitless adventure buffet, and it has left us hungry for more.  Plenty of playtime options on the Salto del Roldan trail.
In a place like Ainsa, adventure doesn’t have to mean long-haul flights and stomach upsets, it just means ducking the race tape and heading off the beaten track. No timing chips, no trophies, no fuss; just you, your bike, a solid group of friends and some world class backcountry singletrack.  Cloud 9 above Benasque.  Putting the VW's 4-motion capabilities to the test to reach a high trailhead.  Ainsa's local trails provide a warm up before diving deeper into the backcountry for Rafa and Pablo.
Words and pictures: Dan Milner
All the info about our Ainsa adventures here. !
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 Riding in the Pyrenees in June can be surprisingly cold and snowy. Photo: Dan Milner It is easy to be proud of your country when in few hours you can travel from the sunny coast of the Mediterranean sea to the rough mountains of teh Pyrenees. Spain is a country where mountains and sea have created a vast variety of landscapes, making it a true paradise for mountain bikers. The enormous possibilities of riding make our country an awesome place to explore with a MTB, a unique land with tons of sun along the year and tricky mountains that will make your dream riding come true. You will not be disappointing to put Spain in the radar for your MTB holidays!   A fall sunny day in Madrid can rise temperatures up to 20ยบ, delivering an awesome day of riding. Photo: Dan Milner  History, culture and art are around every corner in Spain. Photo: Dan Milner  We just love to celebrate life and delicious tapas are in the DNA of the Spanish culture. Photo: Dan Milner.  El Carril del Gallo is one of the ancient connection trails between Madrid and Segovia One of the many things that amaze me of our local trails in La Sierra de Madrid is that all of them are natural. The meaning of this word can sound quite redundant when talking about trails, but it does not in the MTB world... I feel really proud to know that all the trails flooding our awesome Sierra have been naturally built for centuries by shepherds, traders and even armies. An epic ride becomes even more epic when your tires are rolling over the same trails used by troops moving to multiple wars in the medieval age or shepherds moving their stock along Spain. This increases the feeling of romanticism that sometimes we feel lost in mountain biking. It does not matter if you are a local and you´ve been riding here for years or a visitor on your MTB holidays... the epic feeling becomes a part of this awesome sport´s romanticism... isn´t it?
Words by Félix Torija Photo by Alejandro Cubino |
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