This is the story of five friends,
who filmed a mountain bike video around the UK.
That grew year on year, and now it seems to be one of the biggest
free ride gatherings In the world
This is Pure Darkness and now this is DarkFest
Hi there! I'm Sam Reynolds,
I'm 26 years old, and I'm a professional Mountain Biker.
First got into riding,
when i was at school, I guess.
Just met people in the bike shed, and yeah they took me out riding one weekend
and then, I joined the crew, as it were.
The best crew of all time, and the baddest jump of all time
and we about to throw down some of the best hammers of all time.
PureDarkness was about sending it, really hard, like....
Let's go!
We wanted to take it back to
being punk and yeah,
big crashes and rock n roll and stuff
Oh my god, we went absolutely mad.
Whatever you had, whatever your comfort-zone was,
You, just go way outside of it,
that where we gonna go.
All the sudden we were in, like, the middle of nowhere in South Africa
With this massive hole in the ground, and a huge pile of earth.
Big mess, everyone was super disorganised.
We been drinking too much beer man.
And I remember, I was super into building, It was like, this is it for me.
You know, everyone got out here,
And worked hard man, and now we biggest lip, I've ever seen.
Ok, this is breaks. Yup.
And this is: it's perfect!...Yeah! Ok!
Hey!
Dropping in!
Yeah boy!
Ahhhh!
Oh my word, this one was massive!
I love the carnage of these ones!
Such big crashes!
What?
He was trying to do a whip
The quad pendulum
We survived! Yeah!
Dude! No injuries, man! Can you believe that?
A year later we reunited
to add to our creations.
The best jump ever!
Your bush tunneling, You anyways gonna bush tunnel
Welcome Knysna, South Africa
the home of Pure Darkness 2
We are now in Pure Darkness 3.
We made the step up twice the size Also, we building a hole line down the hole field
Maybe six hits with a big step down, big hips
It was insane building those jumps, It was a lot of hard work,
like insane hours every day, but good times!
It was mostly just a friends thing, you know.
Ah, lovely view, Perfect for a streak
And then, in number 3
Erin though it would be cool to add more people
Which I though was a f*kn awesome idea!
That's when Andrew joined the crew.
I'm gonna land this dude! I'm gonna land it!
MTB legend, like you see him in real life, it glows dude!
You’re on the right path,
when you bump into people like that, you know what I mean
They kinda like share the same passion
It was one step-down hip
And then a 12 foot lip, 55 foot gap
The landing was literally Over a hundred feet long.
Like steep as f*ck!
They had this little like… Foot long case pad sitting beside this step up
It looked tiny like And that jump was gnarly like…
Lacondeguy jumped it.
Said it was one of the top 5 Gnarliest jumps he’d every jumped in his life
I can’t believe me and Matt managed to build all of this
and we’re not very good at driving diggers, you know.
For the fourth year, we teamed up with the Fest Series
they just seemed to be the perfect guys to partner with
so yeah, we extended are invitations to all those boys
and bought them all to South Africa for a taste of PureDarkness.
The jumps are looking a little worse for wear But I brought along Clemens and Nico
You know, Like my two favourite builders
The very first thing that came in my mind When I arrived here and saw the starting tower
and the step up was…
“Man… maybe you should have stayed home”
This is so big!
I showed up about a week ago in South Africa
Looking forward to clean them up and assist Sam and creating his jumps… His ideas.
Sam has brought in like minded people to create this In such a small area
There’s like three lines
Not including the mega loop
In, a little thumbnail of a property. So badass!
Holy shit! You peddled down that?
Yeah for test runs Oh my…
My name is Adolf Silva I’m 20 years old from Barcelona, Spain
And I ride mountain bikes
I think he’s everyone’s favourite rider because he’s not scared.
It can be 6 in the morning and he’ll just do a double flip or something
You know like…?
It’s pretty big hey?
Adolf has got some problems on his bike But he’s coming next year anyway…
So whatever
So it’s chill you know.
This guy is so young, he’s got so much time
Last year’s course was the best of the dirt jumping project
That Sam and McDuff did.
So, the jumps there were much more steep style It was more like a dirt jump trail set
There was already something there, So, we just modified it to ride it on big bikes
This year, we had a blank canvas It was a good opportunity
to build one of the sickest lines ever, I would say
Darkfest!
Here in a new location near Cape Town, South Africa
And it’s absolutely… one of the sickest places I’ve ever got to build
Or ride at.
The dream slope
The dirt was amazing and we got Nico to build whatever he wants
it couldn’t be any easier like, you have a natural roll in at the top
it starts with free flowy shark fins
Yeah it’s sick dude! Such a unique entrance to a set of jumps
Like a flat area where you could build a big jump
Then you have a natural bank
You only have to put a little like extra on top
And you have a landing
There’s not much more beautiful than what C-dog
Is making right now
Then there was a road gap A big natural landing again
That’s going to send you down to the bottom of the valley
Down there
Where you’re going to be going so fast
Then a massive step up Up the hill the other side
Which is going to be pretty Pure Darkness style
Always scary when you’re building something for so long
You start to doubt yourself.
But, we just put in the rolled in the top section
And… yeah ticked off three jumps first lap And Nico did too!
So far so good
That looks super quick though Nico You were pinned!
So much fun!
That makes me f*in nervous I didn’t know he was going to go that fast
For the big jump When we first built it
We built it a little bit small
We knew that it was going to be a bit bigger
than the 60 feet that we built it as
I was like holy f*ck, I’m catching up with Sam
But we just wanted to test it out you know And a little bit safer gap
This sounds insane!
When we were coming full speed It was going to have to be bigger so…
After a little to and frow We ended up making it about 90ft
Sent a big one and opened it up for the boys to session
It works perfect!
The step up is so sweet!
It’s like…
Oh my god
Like a cat landing
Best feeling ever, Two and a half weeks of hard work and
I get to follow Sam on the line
Made it through, top to bottom
A couple of days after testing The rest of the crew arrived
and we showed them what we built.
I cannot believe what the guys have made This is nuts
I mean these jumps are huge
You look at this hip here, It’s not even how big it is. It’s like…
What’s going on with the landing
What the f*ck!
I mean we walked the course earlier, but that was
Just jetlagged off the plane
Now we’re padded up and we’re speaking about a session
So it’s getting real now
That’s the most insane feeling jump in human history!
Yeah!
But it’s so hard to stay patient on it, it’s so long
Yes!
My first time, I wasn’t at the first Dark Fest
I had a few like warm up sessions on the last jump
It feels good, there’s a lot of speed out there. It's fast!
On the Thursday evening, the wind was really good
And a bunch of the guys were riding the whole line
I got a couple clean runs in on the big jump and
It’s definitely the longest jump I’ve ever hit before
So that was cool to jump it a couple times.
And then the third run through I’d done my speed the same
as the runs before but…
I wanted to no hander it and so I did Got nose heavy, and as well as a bit deep
It cause a pretty… Yeah, pretty heinous crash.
To me the Fest is all about pushing the limits On big jumps,
to you know, to help progress the sport
And see what’s possible
And try to create a good environment to do so
Nobody’s competing against each other
So we talk about it,
and you don’t push someone into hitting something they’re not ready to.
Someone will just go when they’re ready and
You never know, really, when that is.
This year, I was looking inwards, not outwards. I set some personal goals
and I really wanted to flip my bike.
I just jumped the biggest jump
and I quickly realised it wasn’t going to be easy at all
I’ll take care of you
Like,
I was going to die and then I just hit my brakes
And everything landed ok.
I don’t know, I felt terrible man Like a rollercoaster I couldn’t control.
You see how much fun people are having And doing it the right terms
Everyone’s stoked. You’re having a good time and you’re willing
To push it for those reasons which are like…
The reasons you started riding as a kid.
I mean it was even gnarlier than I expected it to be
But it worked so perfect and you know, these…
Biggest jumps in the world
and the guys who are just pushing the limits on them.
Well the type of mountain bike I do, I guess it’d just be more like Free-ride
Just riding big jumps, riding big bikes and trying moto tricks
And just going big all the time
That was insane dude!