Category Archives: MTB

bikes, family, friends, MTB, NZ

A Southern Wedding Week

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My winter holiday for the year (I’m still trying to get to a positive leave balance after the summer’s big bike ride) was a week down south for Adele & James’s wedding. A fantastic, but hectic week spent with much family & many friends – and a little bit of biking too, naturally.

After a catching-up with Mum & Dad over dinner in Dunedin, a group of us piled into a van and headed towards Queenstown for the stag weekend.

We stopped en route at about midnight to sight the church where the service would be in a week’s time. It was already frosty, much colder for winter than I’ve grown accustomed to; naturally we skated around on the lawn.

We spent the weekend staying at a house that was stuck in the ’70s, it was brilliant inside & out – the views of The Remarkables & Coronet Peak weren’t too shabby either.

The days were cold and still – we spotted a few hot-air balloons floating around early morning.

Craig turned up with a wood-fired hot-tub he had made on a trailer – brilliant! We quickly got to work thawing the garden hose, filling the tub and heating it up. The tub got a fair bit of use over the week – they’re incredible, check the website.

We drove most of the way up the Coronet Peak access road, for a reason I could not discern. The view was adequate compensation.

As the light faded, we headed up the gondola for a bit of luging (little carts on a concrete track, not the Olympic type of luging.)

Repeated races down the tracks provided much amusement as we battled it out trying to avoid collateral damage to unsuspecting tourists.

Sunday morning’s activity, which ended up being in the afternoon, was skydiving for the stag & a few of us. It was a glorious day for it &, I’m told, the experience was quite amazing.

A very pleasant drive through Central Otago looking at the recent snow contrasting with the dry pasture soon had me at Mum & Dad’s, where Adele had also arrived from Westport.

With a broken night’s sleep and a few little wedding-jobs, there was just enough recovery for me to head off east again to visit friends & family who have, independently, just moved to Wanaka. It was just warm enough to make riding in thawed mud not worth it; nonetheless, it was an enjoyable visit – which was expected, or else I would not have driven three hours back west.

Mid-week a fair crowd of Adele’s family and friends stayed in the sleepy village of Naseby (2000 feet above worry level, apparently) – where James and Adele have a eight hectare section of mostly pines, a pond and large potential for building singletrack, camping, building huts/tiny homes/container homes etc. The first day or so was frigid – which made for good fun mountain-biking (plenty of traction), a lot of people walking on said pond and good hot-tubbing. A nor-west change came through thawing everything out and burning off a lot of the snow. The biking then got quite amusing as we explored many of the unmarked trails and repeatedly lost our front wheels sliding out in unexpected mud. I even got a ride in with Dad & Uncle Geoff – quite a turn up for the books (as Dad, himself, would say)! So that was a great few days socialising with many that I seldom see, eating a lot and riding bikes.

Packing up once again, it was off to the wedding (reception) venue for the last two nights of the week. There followed two days of busy-ness with many errands to run, people to catch up with – oh, and a fantastic wedding that went all rather smoothly (testament to all the planning, I think). But as it’s not really my day to share here, I shan’t – also due in part to the fact that I was so busy I didn’t even think to take a single picture.

But as this photo has been shared publicly (if you know where to look), I’ll put it here just to show I’m not making this all up – there was in fact a wedding.

Also, I’ve just recently clicked that for the first time I can call someone brother; that’s a little weird.

bikes, friends, GPS, MTB, NZ

Moki & Rerekapa Trails Loop

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When one’s boss suggests a backcountry adventure MTB ride on the return from a work trip, I imagine scuttling the idea is career-detrimental. Not that I’ll ever know – I was hardly likely to say no, was I? I’d not heard of the either the Moki or Rerekapa tracks before Roger mentioned them – deep in the Taranaki hills, both of these trails were built by wheelbarrows, picks and shovels in the early 1900s, but never quite made the transition to fully fledged roads.

Now they’re not much more than overgrown tracks through large stands of native trees (mostly tawa, kamahi and rimu) just above the Waitara River as it starts its journey to the Tasman Sea. Both of these tracks are linked by short stretches of farmland before joining gravel roads – which makes a forty-five kilometre loop, a good day ride. That’s not a great distance for a day of mountain-biking, but the trail is little used and papa surface (particularly through the farms) can be very muddy and slippery with the slightest amount of moisture in the preceding days. The guidebook says “After a week of fine weather, this is the best expert-level adventure ride in Taranaki” – thankfully, it hadn’t rained for days so things were looking up. The book also said the ride would take anywhere between five and ten hours to complete – the only person we knew who’d done it took eight. That’s quite a while for a ride that has little climbing.

With such an adventure in store, Steve was not going to miss out either – so he drove over four hours from Napier to join in the fun. With the roadside organising done and a stable of pretty new bikes, we were off in the early morning sun.

Token new bike picture – I have a fun bike again.

Chasing horses down the east end of Moki Road – we were heading for the valley in the distance to the right.

But first a stretch through farmland where Moki Road becomes unformed – but thankfully dry – as the sheep run away. We passed a couple of ruined old houses, still standing – just.

The valley closes in, as does the native bush.

Reaching a shack that still looks to be used, for hunting I assume, the trail narrowed and went into the bush as the farmland finished. The route wound its way above the river, with short climbs and descents, frequently following the contour to small, rocky stream crossings. Most of the small bridges that had been put in were in such a state of disrepair to be almost non-existent or else unrideable due to slipperiness or the approaches being too tricky for us. The drop off the side of the trail to the river was often precipitous and best avoided.

There were five wire swing bridges over the bigger chasms – at least these ones had decks. They were considerably easier than the demon wire swing bridge on the Timber Trail approach.

At least here, the trail is well defined. With a GPS trail and the orange markers to follow, only a few times did we lose the trail temporarily as it faded into nothing.

In the shade of the trees, the trail was still quite slippery in parts despite the lack of recent rain. It was a beautiful ride as the morning slowly warmed; ride is a loose term – it was plenty technical and it became one of those days where after a while you begin to wonder if it’s worth getting back on the bike for such short stretches before another dismount due to some obstacle.

This bridge was intact and rideable!

Progress was slow – for two hours we barely got above ten kilometres per hour, the average speed being about half that. But it was excellent adventuring and great to be out somewhere where few people ride – not only did we not see any other riders all day, I saw no other tyre marks on the trails. Due to the slowness, the lack of traction and trickiness of it all there were numerous crashes and falls – mostly of the overbalancing, embarrassing-due-to-their-comic-nature type. No injuries ensued and we were quickly over dented pride as it was hard-going and everyone fell at one stage or another.

Steve trying to work out how much of that slippery approach to another stream crossing is worth attempting to ride as the drop to his right becomes apparent. At least, I assume that’s what he’s thinking as that’s what I thought riding down there.

There were frequent stops for track maintenance – we cleared numerous branches and trees from the trail, mostly led by Steve, ever the font of energy.

Finally, we crossed the fifth swing bridge and emerged into the farmland again. Over two hours for less than ten kilometres – that’s Waiuta-level progress.

With a brief stop to refuel, it was through farmland again.

The view was certainly more expansive out of the trees – Steve taking it in.

The little tunnel of the ride – the stock were slow to relinquish their positions as Roger approached.

We crossed to the right side of the Waitara as the farm track improved to was-once-a-gravel-road and things got a bit faster.

Approaching noon, we rejoined proper gravel road at the halfway point. While flat for a while, the only sustained (fully rideable) climb of the day spread us out as Steve carried on with his inexhaustible energy. Seven weeks later it’s not surprising I’ve lost some Tour Aotearoa conditioning, also this was riding of a different intensity – at least, that’s what I’m telling myself.

Really nice gravel road riding – and about the highest we got all day at a whopping 350-odd metres above sea level.

With a steep blast back to the valley floor, we found the start of the Rerekapa Track and a suitable lunch stop – suitable except for the young hunting dog that tried to steal most of our food.

Just after one o’clock and with only about ten kilometres to go I was pretty confident we’d finish OK – even if we took it slowly. Following a small stream up through more pasture, it was not long before we crossed it and went back under the cover of the trees. If it was possible, this trail was even more difficult to ride than the Moki track – possibly because it was wetter receiving less sun being in the shade of the hill we were climbing slowly.

There was no way we were clearing the trail of this tree, and a fair few others – the muscling of bikes around obstacles became more commonplace.

As our speed consistently stayed lower than five clicks, a slight slowing in my line-choice made me wonder if I was starting to get a little fatigued. My legs still felt fine, as they would – they’d hardly done any pedalling; but all the dismouting and lifting/pushing of bike over obstacles was starting to tell on my complete lack of upper-body strength led to me feeling rather worn out. As I felt I was slowing Steve down and contemplated on letting him past I took my second fall of the day. It was by far the biggest of anyone’s – one of those where you put your foot down on something that isn’t quite there. Before long I had fallen off the side of a bank headfirst and then slid even further down again bringing my bike on top of me. So there I was lying, comfortably all things considered, upside down in a dry stream bed somewhat stuck under my bike – very thankful that it was mostly amusing and not at all injurious.

Thankfully, Steve had hauled my bike off me and I was standing again before a decent photo was taken. My, that trail looks simple – I assure you that there were more slippery rocks there that I misjudged.

The climb over the ridge into the next valley over, we were now amongst the headwaters of the Waitara as we dropped down to the Boys Brigade Hut – which really didn’t look like it was in a great place for a hut. I suppose it had “completely isolated” going for it, but it was next to to an area that looked decidedly swampy.

The trail disappeared into the grass before heading for the trees again.

There was one surreal hundred metres of so knee-high ferns completely covering the track. Also covering wheels – it went on and on, the feeling of floating on lush green ferns that is.

Roger emerging from some taller ferns.

We climbed the gate that signified the end of the Rerekapa Track and joined a farm track that was very difficult to ride on as a bulldozer had recently been over it. Thankfully that didn’t last long as we climbed up and joined the main farm track. We spied the Rerekapa Falls off the side of the track – they demanded a side excursion to investigate.

The last bit of gravel track riding back to the car was easy and we arrived back just shy of six and half hours after our departure. We savoured car-beers and an excellent and demanding day of remote and stunning backcountry riding. It’d rate as one of the rides I’ve done with the most amount of sustained technical riding and constant dismounts – brilliant. Thoroughly recommended if you like this sort of ride and can find a good window of weather – as the guidebook says “If it’s wet, find somewhere else to ride.”

bikepacking, bikes, GPS, MTB, NZ

Tour Aotearoa – My Day Five – Matamata to Timber Trail Start

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Having slept well through the night, I was on the bike at the much more reasonable hour of six o’clock – almost three hours later than the day before. It was a short distance into Matamata and a bakery for breakfast and to stock up on pies for the day. Heading for the central North Island, towns and services would be much further apart for the next few days.

Sunrise wasn’t too bad as I breakfasted.

The first sun of the day hits Hobbiton – another photo checkpoint.

I thought that the two Triumphs one of my early primary school teachers owned was excessive, evidently not.

The mist slowly burnt off as I rode through flat land surrounded by dairy farms. I stopped briefly to chat to a farmer on his way back from milking – the first of quite a few “why are there so many cyclists on my quiet back road this week?” conversations.

Back on State Highway One for a short time, I was finally riding beside the Waikato River (the longest in the country). Much of this day was on parts of the Waikato River Trail. I learned later that I passed another family connection – a farm Dad worked on one summer while at university.

A gradual climb for over twenty kilometres was a mixture of riverside trail, rural roads and a small reserve of native forest. Most of that altitude gained was very quickly lost with a big dive back down towards the river. From there the trail followed the river much more closely and there were an awful lot of short climbs and descents. It was now the middle of the day and hot again.

A sign of things to come – big swing bridges began to appear. This one, I think, was used in the construction of one of the many hydro power stations on the river.

Crossing to the left side of the river at Waipapa Dam, the next section of almost twenty kilometres was beautiful trail indeed. However, with not much overall altitude gain, there were plentiful pinch climbs and corresponding downhill bits. I see now this took me the best part of two hours. As became a common sentiment – I looked forward to riding this again with a lighter bike and a lighter load. Approaching Mangakino and second-lunch (I’d eaten all my pies by then), I was pleased to find Steve (on his way to a triathlon in Auckland – and my training buddy for this event, he’d been easily talked into a couple of bikepacking weekends). In my excitement, I missed the turn off-route to the shops and had to back-track a little. It was excellent to see another familiar face and hear a bit of news from home and how my little tracking dot online had gathered a small following at work.

Steve insisted he get a photo of me – I was bemused to find this in the weekly division news when I returned to work. But, definitely pleased to have a photo of me riding on the event – even if it’s on a road, & off-route!

There was only about six more kilometres of the River Trail before our route left it. When I caught up to fully-loaded cycle tourist (touring bike, skinny tyres, four panniers and more), I was astounded to learn she was attempting the Tour Aotearoa route. I had a feeling it was going to get a lot more difficult for her very soon (the route had been either road or relatively good trail to that point) – for the rest of the trip if the trail got a little rough and tricky, I only had to remember this encounter and then I didn’t feel so bad about how I was going.

Fifteen more kilometres of road, the first half was pretty flat before the climbing that would last for much of the rest of the day began.

Suddenly the road ended and there was but an overgrown old track to follow. Now in Pureora Forest Park, this was our link to the start of the Timber Trail.

This was easily the worst and most difficult swingbridge of the entire route. It was so skinny, my handlebars would not fit through – and as I couldn’t walk beside my bike and steer it, I definitely could not push it through. The floor was only wire netting, so it was not practical to lift the front of the bike & wheel it through. In the end, I had to walk backwards along the bridge pulling my bike behind me – guiding it through every handlebar barrier; on the way puncturing a dry bag, most annoying. Still, I only had to make one trip along the bridge.

Up ahead I spied the first TA riders I’d seen riding all day. I caught up and lo & behold, it was Kirsty from last year’s Kiwi Brevet (great riding company, most memorable for the fire alarm incident pre-dawn in the Hurunui Hotel), her partner, Ian, and friend, Ness. The company and chatting helped the five-hundred metre climb pass much more quickly. They’d started the same day as me, but I’d not seen them as they’d ridden longer than me the first few days and got the Kaipara boat ten or so hours before me. I was encouraged that I’d caught them as I remembered Kirsty was a strong rider & experienced adventurer and had put in some long days and easily beaten me home last year.

A photo of me at a checkpoint! Despite the three pies that day, looking a bit thinner than normal. Geographical centre of the North Island, apparently.

Drizzly rain threatened and I lost the others somewhere on the ten kilometre downhill to the start of the Timber Trail. I really didn’t know where I was going to camp that night, figuring I’d find somewhere on the trail. But I knew that the trail started with a big, long climb – so after thirteen hours and much more climbing than the previous epic day, I wasn’t really keen to do that in the light rain & then make camp. Just after where we joined the trail there was a historic Caterpillar. It even had it’s own shelter – perfect! After a bit of internal debate, I decided that was a great spot to end the day.

So it happened that I slept next to this relic of a tractor that night.

I was pretty pleased with my progress that day backing up 260+ km, I’d done the kilometres needed to keep me on the required pace and a fair amount of climbing too. I wasn’t too concerned of not using all the daylight and so set up my sleeping gear and went to bed the earliest all trip. Unfortunately the mosquitos didn’t get the memo, nor the trio of riders that arrived much later, woke me and faffed for ages. But that could not detract from another great day on this increasingly enjoyable trip.

bikes, family, friends, MTB, NZ

West Coast Weeks

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Now that June is over, my weeks based in Westport are also coming to an end – it’s been a nice change of scenery. While somewhat wet, it has definitely been a lot less cold than if I’d spent the month further south at Mum & Dad’s house. Adele’s also been pleased to have various visitors, besides me, as we all realise just how isolated Westport is. With people new to the area, there is always added incentive to go out and show them new places.

Craig, Kelly and their young daughter, Elsie, visiting for a weekend meant a trip out to Charming Creek – I finally got to ride the whole thing (it’s only ten kilometres each way) after being stopped by a large trail-covering waterfall last time. We didn’t even get rained on! But there was plenty of water standing on the trail to soak us. The river not being in a raging, flooded torrent was not quite as impressive – but it did mean I got to see the most-noteworthy waterfall as we followed the fallen-into-disrepair railway up the valley.

As with a lot of the coast, there were mining relics to explore. These at the top trailhead – where we turned around for a quick, fun and wet return to the cars.

The girls having been for a Sunday mountain-bike ride up at Denniston while we (mostly Craig, admittedly) watched over Elsie – the late afternoon was time for Craig to take James and me on an adventure quite different to those I normally write about (no bikes!). Half an hour south, a bit past Charleston, we turned off the highway and followed a narrow gravel track inland and up into the hills. Craig declared we had found the right place as we parked the car – what he’d seen I had no idea, one patch of native bush looks much like any other. With a bit of advice I managed to get into my harness – as climbing things generally bores me, it’s been many years since I’ve had to put one on.

Someone saw a slight parting in the foliage and we set off down a narrow path, hiding the car keys in a small hovel trailside as the steps got steeper and more slippery. Surprisingly, there was an official sign warning of a tomo – which as far as I could work out was a really big hole in the ground. The surprise being the sign in such an isolated place; the large cavity in the earth being rather the point and not at all suprising. I stood around in the increasingly heavy rain getting rather wet, wondering why I wasn’t somewhere warm reading a book by a fire, as Craig and James set-up various ropes and slings that would, all going well, prevent me falling forty-odd metres and making little impression, but a big mess, on the rocks below.

With little time to do more than accept the fact that I’d be lowering myself a long way down a cliff with only a slight theoretical, and no practical, understanding of the hows and whys – I found myself doing just that. With a wet, doubled-rope threading through my belay device, it turns out being rather small and featherweight [disturbingly – if I was a boxer, I would be a featherweight; also, I’d probably be the worst boxer ever] does slow things down if you’ve not got the technique sorted. Still, in such circumstances I much prefer slow and steady over fast, uncontrolled and dead. The waterfall beside me cascading into the giant hole with much greater certainty and confidence was doing a fine job of making everything very slippery and more difficult. Eventually my technique improved and I descended a bit faster; one strand of rope ran out (a sixty metre rope can’t be doubled all the way down a forty metre cliff) and I bounced a little as I passed that by.

Somewhat relieved to be standing on solid ground, rather than bouncing off the side of it, James made his down and soon we were caving! Some photos of all this would be useful, but it was so muddy and wet down there I left my camera safely at home. For a couple of hours we proceeded through quite a network of tunnels downhill. We followed the stream part of the way, marveling at the large stalagmites and stalactites (some were a good eight inches in diameter) and appreciating the rather dainty ones forming that were no thicker than drinking straws.

It was a lot warmer underground than we expected – the others shed a layer or two, while I gave up trying to keep my feet dry and just walked in the stream when it became too much like hard work to stay out of it. Hauling ourselves up small rockfaces, clambering over things and gingerly jumping off rocks into semi-darkness was, as Craig said a few times, a full-body workout. I felt my shoulders twinge a couple of times from exerting force at weird angles – a warning that I shouldn’t pursue caving more, I’d hate to be stuck underground with a dislocated shoulder.

Craig reckoned he’d been down here four or five times before and seemed to know where he was going as I blindly followed, every so often hearing words along the lines of “this is the right way”. Every so often we’d emerge from a narrow passage into a larger chamber. It was one such chamber that we started to return to repeatedly after Craig started to utter the words “this doesn’t feel right” a little too often. This started to become mildly alarming after what seemed like half an hour. I was not keen on having to get myself back up that slick tomo in the dark. Eventually we had success as one previously overlooked passage sent us on the right track; we crawled and hauled ourselves on our bellies down another shrinking tunnel.

With Craig convinced we were back on the route that would get us back above ground, we elected to take a small side-route. This first involved a ten-metre shuffle head-first under an extremely low ceiling. I’ve not found too many instance where lacking in upper-body strength is useful, and this wasn’t one – but it was a good time to be very skinny. The ceiling was so low that I had to turn my boots parallel to the floor – as if I had my Size 8’s perpendicular, they would quickly wedge between ceiling and floor. Emerging from that, we were in a deep, but narrow cleft, in the rock. Soon this narrow chasm had a stream running swiftly down it, showing just what had carved such a deep slit in the layer rock. The layers were pronounced, but smooth as we shuffled past. Hardly having wide hips, even I had to twist my body sideways to be able to walk forward.

That rather unusual journey over we reached the objective – sizeable whale bones fossilised in the rock many metres below ground, but now somewhat exposed by the rock having been worn away. Amazed, we studied these for some time before deciding we really should get going and returned through the narrow passageway to the main route. With more shuffling down a muddy creek bed, we were finally able to stand up again and clambered up a lot of rock. Suddenly, Craig spotted ferns in the dark ahead – we were outside again and it was much later than we thought. With no real path, we headed up the left bank of the Nile (not that one) before Craig spotted some small reflectors off to our right. Following these had us bush-bashing through dense bush back to the gravel road, ending our fantastic little adventure with a half-hour walk up the road in the rain to the car and retrieving the rope from the start.

Later the following week, after a flying trip Napier (where I tested out Sounds Air’s new nine-seater service, Westport to Wellington), Fiona, a family friend of ours from growing up in Te Puke, arrived for a few days at the end of her med. school holidays. Around Westport, we went for walks to Cape Foulwind to see the seals, explored small local bike trails and waited for fine spots between the frequent showers of rain. Further south, we visited the Pancake Rocks at Punakaiki. Finding that the gravel road we intended to follow inland was closed due to slips, we explored another short walk nearby.

The Truman Track starts on the side of the highway and follows an easy path through a wide variety of native trees, before the bush finally thins and you find yourself above a rather charming little bay. I enjoyed exploring the bay, and the next one too (avoiding being stranded by the incoming tide), looking at the various wear patterns in the mudstone – while James, the geologist he is, looked more closely at rocks on the beach and Fiona tried to escape sandfly attacks.

A most excellent stay visiting the coast – the highlight was definitely the Heaphy, both trips – there’s a lot to do and more left unexplored for next time. Thanks Adele & James!