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with bl ind exits that hide bigger ledges. They slash across hairpin turns at straightaway speeds. But more than anything else, the Minjin are defined by steepness, sheered angles so dramatic that much of the time the ground in front of their tires is litera lly below their sightl ine. They feel the earth before they see it. And what makes their feats more amazing is where they choose to ride. For 100 million years the 60-foot canopy of the world's oldest rai nforest-pre-dating even the Amazon jungle-has covered nearly 1.5 mill ion mountainous acres that butt against the Great Barrier Reef in the Australia. The world's 11 most venomous A pair of eyes in the water becomes a twpntv-tolClt croc wi poun s of force per inch in its jaws. A seven foot-tall bird called the cassowary can open the human body from sternum to crotch with a single kick of its clawed foot. Plants such as the gympie inject passing animals with slender, poison hairs that break when touched, intensifying the pain to level you might experience if, say, you aimed a blowtorch at your skin. A slender, serrated vine cal led the wait-a-while dangles into trails and clearings. It gets its name because if you're snagged on a barb you can only get free by stopping to wait a while, moving backward to release the tension, and disentangling. Keep moving and the tenacious vine tears your shirt. Or your skin. Or rips your ear off. It is within this unforgiving rainforest that this hardcore group of mountain bikers ride, taking their spi rit and group name (minjin) from an al leged mythological panther of Aboriginal lore. Enoch, an aboriginal from the Tjapukai tribe, says that a saber-toothed cat about the size of a puma ruled the prehistoric rai nforest. White settlers assumed the minjin, or "mountain devil," was imaginary; at least until the timber industry began penetrating the rainforest in the late 1870s. Loggers reported glimpses of a large, silent, swift animal, too clever to ever be seen clearly. In the early 1900s a timber worker on horseback was plucked from the back of his group. His remains were found strung across the branches of a tree high above the forest floor-something no known rai nforest predator was thought to be capable of. Sporadic disappearances and discoveries continued until the 1960s when the timber industry was played out and civilization retreated from the rainforest. Minjin sightings ceased-until about ten years ago when the first mountain bikers began riding deep into the forest. Riders revived the legend and adopted the minjin as their spi rit. A tribal-style rendering of the cat's face shows up as tattoos, handcut rock amulets and occasional graffiti on walls around the coastal town of Cairns where most of the riders live. nob "When we discovered mountain bikin9, su ody was ever around to tell us we weren t inspposed to be able to ride that steep, that anely," says Glen Jacobs, one of the original Minj in who, even in his 30s, can intuit a path through wait-a-while vines that with the thickness of sewing thread are nearly invisible at 20-30 mph. "We just didn't know any better. Now it's just our life."