Panorama from New Zealand

A panorama overlooking Wanaka from about 1,800 meters

New Zealand 2006 Part 2

Following on from Post 1 of my New Zealand trip - the next morning (after meeting Karl in Wellington) it was off to the South Island where I planned to spend most of the trip. The boat ride over to the other island was spectacular. It was about a 3 hour ride in a huge ferry (car + me was around €100). Beautiful weather welcomed me to my first stop there – a beautiful port town called Nelson. I did my usual routine – arrive, get hostel, get food and read the Kenneth Brothers Guide to MTB in New Zealand book and decide on today's spin.

Me on the boat on the way to the South Island

Nelson

Nelson

Coffee + Guidebook

My first spin on the South Island, at the time anyway, other spins later in the trip may have beaten it, was one of the most beautiful spins I've ever been on. A perfect day, beautiful mountains all around me and snow capped mountains in the distance. The pictures really do not do it justice. It was simply inspiring... The trails themselves were not very technical but the scenery more then made up for it.

Beautiful weather & amazing views

When I got back I started to sort out the next days spin. The longest of my trip. There is a famous walk/ride that takes 2 to 4 days to do. I wanted to do it in a single day, which all of the tour operators (I had to take a 60 minute boat ride to the trail head) had a great laugh at. Most of them said it couldn't be done. (I guess they thought I was just some lad who decided to go biking that day...) The trail is basically 71km of single track that is either going up or down... I don't know the exact altitude change (I broke my GPS at in Woodhill at the start of the trip) but I would guess around 3000 to 4000m all off road. The spin went well, about 3 hours in it was pretty hard because I knew I had at least 4 hours to go but I felt really good for the last 2 hours or so... When you see the “KM to go” signs drop to 20 you start to feel pretty good. I ended up doing the ride in around 7 hours. I was glad to have completed the spin but wish that the next time I was on a lighter cross country bike... The Enduros 150mm of travel and DH tires are not really made for this type of spin!

Around Nelson

Me at the start of the Queen Charlotte

I woke up the next day to see that mother nature was a bit pissed again. Heavy rain, low cloud cover and a long drive to Christchurch meant that today was going to be the first day off the bike. Christchurch is a nice enough town but not anything to write home about. It is a small enough city with “Mum's 24”, a Japanese restaurant, being the highlight of the town for me – I went there 3 times! The other interesting thing was the number of bike shops. In the space of 5 minutes walking you would walk by 6 or 7 bike shops. Rotorua was the only other town close to that. The next day I rode around the Port Hills for 4 or 5 hours. They were nice trails but the rear shock on the Enduro started to loose air (and I didn't have a shock pump on me) so I had to take it a bit easy on the rough stuff.

The next day I met up with Zane, Karls mate who lives in Christchurch. He took me up to the Waferdale trails about 1.5 hours drive from Christchurch. The spin was a very hard 4 to 5 hours over very wet, damp mucky ground. It really felt like, out in the middle of nowhere, backcountry riding with lots of hoist you bike over your head river crossings. I learnt a lot that day about how to get my bike up and over ledges etc... Later that day, Zane and his girlfriend kindly invited me to diner to which I obliged :)

In the hills above Christchurch - Looked very much like Ireland!

Zane and I at the end of the Waferdale Trail

I felt a million miles away from anywhere

For the following days spin Zane and I met up with some lads from the Vorb website up in Craigeburn. These trails were amazing. Huge mountain (ski fields in the winter) surround us with some amazing trails awaiting us. The Luge, was possibly (although there are a lot of other 'favourites') the best descent on the whole trip. A very natural, twisty, rooty fast descent that was tailor made for a bike like the Enduro. I was buzzing for about 2 days after it :)

The next day saw me make the trip from Christchurch to (possibly) my favourite town of the trip, Wanaka. But first I was going to head there via Mount Cook. The photos can not do this place justice. I was awe struck as I drove to the mountains. These things were huge. I felt like being in something straight out of Lord of the Rings. It looked so amazing, it looked like computer graphics was used to create it... After a Latte I headed out on a hike up to the Muller Hut. It was a prescribed 5 hour hike to the hut but I ended up going up there and back in a bit under 4 hours (including lunch – I guess my bike fitness carries over well into climbing...). It was really cool – a very steep climb in places up open mountain and over 10 feet of snow. The climb affording me some amazing views and a spectacular lunch at the Muller Hut.

The road to Mount Cook (in the distance)

The usual Latte before exercise

Climbing up to Muller Hut

The view over to Mount Cook

Muller Hut!

Proof that I made it

The Hotel in the distance is where I started, about 1,500m below me :)

Sliding down the snow was amazing

Another view of Mount Cook

In Wanaka I was dropping my bike into a bike shop to get the rear shock serviced. They said they would have it fixed in an hour or two so I went headed to an Internet cafe for some caffeine and a chance to video chat with Mel. When I headed back into the shop I seen the rear end of the bike in many many bits... “This does not look good” I though to myself. The guy in the shop turned to me and said “your not going to like this”. Turns out that the chain stays on the Enduro were very badly cracked and unridable. Another couple of drops and it could have been a spectacular crash... Fortunately, Specialized had new chain stay spare parts so the guys said that they would ship them overnight and I'd have the bike working the next day. Yes it was bad it broke, but thank God they could fix it so quick! The rest of the day was spent hiking up to Foxes Peak. I'll let the photos do the talking on this hike...

Another day, another stunning hike

My desktop background for a while

Bright and early I picked up the Enduro the next morning and headed to Wanaka's bike park. Lot's of man made MTB purpose built trails were a complete adrenalin hush. Lots of them with high speed burmmed corners through trees. Venus was probably my favourite trails.

The next two days I spent riding around in Queenstown – as usual the trails were great but I much rathered Wanaka as a town. Queenstown is VERY VERY VERY touristy. All the 18-24 year old, my first big holiday type tourists seemed to swarm there much more then anywhere else in New Zealand.

Ridge riding in Queenstown - a bit scary at times!

After Queenstown I headed down to Alexandra for a day of riding arid lunar trails. This place was amazing – about 80km from Queenstown which was lush rain forest to Alexandra which was like riding on the moon. When I was in the local bike shop, about to ask about the trails, one of the Vorb guys I met in Craigeburn noticed me and asked if I wanted to go out riding for a few hours. Can't get better then that – a local to take you around the trails. We rode for a couple of hours then he brought me along to one of the local DH tracks for a few runs. Nice fast track – good for training on. Next, I started to move back up the South Island but I'll leave that to another post.

New Zealand 2006 Part 1

It's been a long while but I'm finally going to write about my New Zealand trip. It's been a while now but hopefully I'll remember the interesting bits. On November 18th I headed off to the airport for about 30 hours of flights and hanging around. I had the option of flying west or east to New Zealand but in the end I choose to fly via LA for a couple of reasons. First, it was going to be two long flights (Dublin – LA, LA – Auckland) versus 3 or more going via Asia and then the other, important reasons... There is some law in the US that means if you are travelling internationally then you must be able to take two bags. For me, that meant 2 x 32kg bags one being my bike. The airlines if I went via Asia only offered 1 x 23 kg bag... Just my bike gear weighs more then that let along everything else.

The flights all went grand – first tip, take a roll out, blow up mattress if you have to stay in an airport for any length of time between long flights. When I got to LA, I lay down and slept by the gate for 3 hours – felt like first class :) I was then in the mood of sleep and slept for a further 8 or so on the 13 hour flight to Auckland.

For my time in New Zealand I planned to hire a rental car. There are lots of different companies that offer 10 year old, ex-Japanese cars for cheap cheap. I used AEQ rentals and got an estate for around €20 a day. The estate had enough room in the back for me to chuck my bike in without having to remove wheels etc... Oh, another tip – for going into restaurants etc... when you have your €€€ bike in the car. Lock the bike to the seatbelt anchors in the back seat. At least that should stop any convenience robbers.

The Euduro just after I built it up outside my first nights cabin.

My first two days in New Zealand were going to be sent riding the trails in Woodhill. (Turned on the GPS - 18,457km from home!) It's basically a purpose built MTB park with an amazing variety of trails (although not much climbing – highest point was about 150m, lowest about 40m) I arrived off my flight, picked up my car and drove to Helensville where I was staying for my first two nights. I got a cabin (the guy was apologetic that it was SO expensive at €13 a night!), built up my bike and headed for the trails... I arrived at 6am into Auckland – lots of time to go biking on the first day. The trails were amazing with lots of stunts, drops and bermmed corners... I could ride there for a long long time... Over the two days there I got to ride all the trails (but not all the stunts, some were just crazy), about 90km in all.

Jumpers Alley

All stunts were sign posted with a rough difficulty - 1 to 5

Next it was a 4 hour drive down to Rotorua. Everyone I had met had told me to go straight to the Whakarewarewa Forst trails. A network of natural and man made trails that will be the cornerstone of the 2010 World Marathon Championships (I think...) Again, there really was all types of trails there with a great map of everything – some of the work that was put into these was simply amazing – trails sculpted out of the hill, it was artistic. Trails ranged from easy flowy single/double track to a National DH course. Again, I spent two long days riding these trails. I did most of the tracks but I knew that I would probably stop off here again on the way back to Auckland at the end of the vacation.

The view out over Rotorua

Me in Whakarewarewa Forest

After a beautiful drive through Tongariro National park on the Desert Road, I arrived in Levin... There are apparently some descent trails here, but I didn't find them. It had been pouring rain there for a couple of days and everything was as mucky and slippy as you could imaging... I gave up after about an hour and a half in the saddle. Then I tried to find something do for the evening there (it was Saturday night) but there is NOTHING there. Stay clear of this town!!! (Apart from an Indian restaurant half way down the main street – it was fantastic and pretty cheap too). The next morning I got up real early (about 6am, but for most of the trip I got up between 6am and 8am...) and left that place behind. My next stop was Wellington :)

Ngauruhoe Mountain (AKA Mount Doom) I would see it again later in the trip :)

My rental car

The night before I found out that one of the stages of the New Zealand DH NPS series was on at Long Gully close to Wellington. I had seen videos of the downhill course a while ago and thought it would be interesting. I arrived at the sign in anyway and got two practice runs on the course... The course itself was not very technical from a rocky, rooty, twisty perspective but there were lots of jumps and one Loooong Gully. The course would have been handy enough were it not for mother nature that day... It was the windiest day (Sally Gap a couple of days ago a close second) I had ever been on a bike. That didn't exactly make navigating tight single track on open mountain easy. On both my practice runs I ended up crashing and decided that I should give the race a miss. I had my body armour but the holiday was another 20 something days long and I didn't want to wreck myself in a race... If I either had more practice or the weather was a bit better I probably would have tried. I watched a few of the other people doing their runs and I headed down to Wellington for a touristy day.

The start of the downhill race - people were falling off the start ramp due to the wind!

The Long Gully

Wellington

Makara Peak MTB Park

Wellington was a very nice city – it had great restaurants and was VERY close to the mountains. I would live there if it wasn't so windy! (and so far away from everywhere else in the world) I then spent the next day riding the MTB park (Makara Peak) built close to Wellington. As usual, the tails were amazing and I ended up meeting a guy called Karl (who is running an MTB tour company). He was sound and ended up giving me the email address of one of his mates that lives in Christchurch.