About 100km to the West of Christchurch is an area known as ‘Craigieburn’. It’s predominately known for housing a number of ski fields but it also hosts a good handful of excellent mountain bike tracks that, as well as being great fun to ride, are complemented enormously by the equally excellent views, vistas, vantage points and other nouns beginning with the letter ‘V’.

Aside from providing an always useful exercise in alliteration, Craigieburn provides a sense of adventure when biking there due to the surrounding mountains and lack of any civilisation… although it seems not quite enough of an adventure to justify each ride being written as an individual article, so as an alternative I’ve just combined the highlights of several rides into one long day. Which as it happened worked out quite nicely as when looking through the photos and videos of the several trips, we all appeared to be wearing the same clothes each time, such is the lack of variety in our biking attire.

So here we go…

Beginning the ride at the Craigieburn picnic area (I was going to mention the drive from Christchurch but it’s generally uneventful with the only highlight being a slightly over-rated pie shop in the village of Sheffield where they pride themselves on terrible customer service. I’ve never been to a shop where I feel like I’m inconveniencing the owners by wanting to give them money) the first task was to overcome the 6km long, 600 meter elevation climb of the Craigieburn Ski Field access road. As far as access roads go it has very few redeeming features, other than it gets steeper the further you cycle up it. You could argue that it doubles nicely as a warm up, but due to its length and increasing steepness, it tends to feel more like the main event. So by the time we’d reached the top and were ready to start the actual bike trails, I’d already drunk a third of my water and was having doubts over the amount of trail mix I’d brought for the day.

But we had made it nonetheless and it was time to start actual mountain biking on a trail known as ‘The Edge’. In keeping with the ski field access track, the Edge throws you in at the deep end by requiring you to traverse scree slops with lots of exposure thrown in for good measure. And if you’re really lucky, you might come close to slipping off The Edge ….like I did.

The scree slopes aside, the rest of the trail trundled its way through the forest and eventually dropped us off at a bit of an intersection between ‘Helicopter Hill’ and ‘The Luge’. As none of us had been up to Helicopter Hill, and according to the sign it was only a 15 minute walk, we thought we’d head up and have a look around. It turned out that the sign didn’t take into account the additional time that was required to haul your bike along with you and 15 minutes gradually and sweatily became 30 as we slung our bikes over our shoulders to climb up some of the rockier sections.

As we climbed higher and higher towards a panoramic 360 degree view that awaited us, I began to feel that the excited anticipation of getting to the top was slightly undermined by the thought that I was soon going to have to ride back down this this path. As hoped, the view from the top was amazing and once we had stared it at for longer than necessary, chatted amongst ourselves and posed for photos, I couldn’t help feel that we were subconsciously putting off having to ride off the hill, over the horrible rockiness that awaited us. As we were about to head off I decided that I just needed to take one more photo and crack open another sandwich and then came to realisation that riding down was kind of inevitable. I sulkily put my helmet on, tightened my shoe laces, adjusted my underpants, checked my tyre pressure, brakes, seat post height, the time… and then set off. Riding down was as tricky as I had expected, but what made it worse was the general ease that the others found it. I headed off in front and after making it through the first technical section and onto the ridge (all the while repeating motivational quotes and telling myself that I was doing really, really well) my mate came bombing past and disappeared off down the ridge line. I’m pretty sure he was whistling and tilted his bike helmet to me as he shot past. Can’t notice it in the video though.

And onto ‘The Luge’ it was. The trail takes you down to the Broken River Ski Field access track and is great fun to ride. It has a good, flowy gradient with a couple of rooty sections to negotiate but for the most part nothing overly challenging. So you can just sit back and cruise with a relaxed smile on your face without the worry of falling off cliff edges.

The next trail to target was ‘Dicksons Downhill’. A downhill track which would require us to cycle up the Broken River Ski Field access track for several hundred meters. Turning off, we followed a 4×4 track and took the opportunity to stop for our first photo shoot. Which I think we can all agree, was bloody lovely.

We set off down Dicksons Downhill which is another fast flowy track with the odd little jump here and there to liven things up, which all paled in comparison to the main jump of the track. This jump was brilliant. It’s not the biggest, or fastest, or craziest, but man it was fun. Having a nice run up, smooth take off and no gap to clear, it was the perfect jump to play around on. And that’s what we did. For ages. All the while our mate photographing every angle imaginable. What helped add to the experience was the surrounding scenery which was continuing to be epic. Once we were satisfied that every angle of our jumping antics had been sufficiently photographed several times, we pried ourselves away from the jump and continued down the rest of the trail. Which was good. Like, not as good as the jump obviously, but until I have my firstborn child, I imagine all experiences from that point on will be lacking somewhat.

Now the problem with Dicksons Downhill is that it drops you off onto the main road that runs through the Craigieburn area. Meaning that to make it to the next trail ‘Dracophyllum Flat’ required riding up the Broken River ski access road again. On the plus side, the trail starts about mid-way up the access track and isn’t as steep as the Craigieburn access road. But an access road is an access road, which means it still has a surprising ability to suck the fun out of the day and replace it with a slow pedaling slog skywards.

It’s amazing how well bitching and moaning kills time, and before we knew it we were up at the start of the Dracophyllum Flat and ready for the next section of downward trail riding. Dracophyllum Flat is similar to ‘The Luge’ except it’s wider and more open, allowing you to go faster and the ability to play about a bit. It led onto a bit of a traverse along the valley floor which was completely deceptive in its length. In your head you think it’s just a short flat jaunt to the final trail of the day ‘The Hogs Back’. ‘We’ll be there in no time!’ we laughed and joked to each other. For some reason collectively forgetting that this section of the trail had a lot more short, steep climbs than anyone of us could remember. It was around this time that the legs began to lose form somewhat and the speed at which the lactic acid built up increased. There was one saving grace of this section though, where it momentarily opened up and flattened off so we were able rip through the low lying grass with the mountains in front of us. Unfortunately there was no epic jump but I guess you can’t have it all – here’s a GoPro section of the track

Dracophyllum Flat finishes at the Cheeseman Ski Field access road and I know what you’re thinking, more bitching about cycling up an access road. Well for once, we didn’t have to cycle up it. However our relief of not cycling up another access track was short lived when we realised that instead we’d have to undertake a shorter, but a much steeper, climb right at the beginning of the trail… so I guess there still is some bitching to be had. The Hogs Back trail is one of those routes where it feels like you’re cycling down a lot more than you’re cycling up. So once the first climb was out of the way, it felt like we were just freewheeling to the end. There was the odd climb, but nothing compared to earlier in the day, so I’ll just leave the impression that it’s one of those Escher type trails where people are constantly riding downhill to the top.

Finally we made it to Castle Hill Village, signifying the end of the ride and where we parked the second car earlier in the day to save us having to ride back along the road to the Craigieburn picnic area, where we began all those months ago. We had tactfully left some victory beers in the car, and as I was about to crack open one of these well-earned beers one of the guys floated the idea of riding the Cheeseman Downhill track. Unfortunately, due to my tired and reduced reaction state, the idea spread faster than I was able to quash it and before I knew it the beers had been packed away, the bikes loaded onto the back of the car, and we were driving up the Cheeseman Ski Field access road. My mood improved with a combination of appreciating that at least we weren’t cycling the access road and the happy hardcore music we had selected as a pre-ride morale boost (which on a side note, in terms of biking movie backing music, happy hardcore makes for an entertaining choice and gives the illusion of the action happening faster than it really is, as you’ll see from the link later on).

So…. the final trail of the day. As you can imagine, it had been a longer day than normal, mainly due to the fact that, as previously mentioned, I’ve combined three days’ worth of riding into one, but in any case, I was still a bit knackered. So why we decided to ride the hardest trail right at the end is a bit beyond me, but here we were. The trail is kind of split into two, best described as ‘The Good’ and ‘The bad and the Ugly’. The first section started quite a way up the Cheeseman access road and traversed across country with a large expanse of view to the left. The terrain remained low lying and scrub as it dropped down, and picked up speed with a few little features along the way to jump and drop off. All the while thinking ‘this is nice’ and ‘what a lovely way to finish off the day’. Then the forest approaches and you end up doing a bit of a mental calculation that the end of the track isn’t that far away yet we’re still quite high… oh no, as the trail takes on a distinctly more vertical and slippery character as you’re launched down a technical, rooty, muddy trail straight down. I’ve never been down a trail before where I’ve been hard on the brakes for the entire way. I got to the bottom mentally and physically knackered and after 3 more runs of the trail, no amount of happy hardcore music could lift my spirits anymore.

But on a more positive note, here’s a clip of ‘The Good’ section with a cheeky bit of happy hardcore music thrown in for good measure.

With the sun setting on an unusually long day, we finally made it to our now warm beer and reflected on that jump, the ridiculousness of the Cheeseman Downhill and how it was going to be difficult to not fall asleep on the drive home after the past 28 hours of continuous riding… but mainly about the jump.

PS

As an aside, we did see a bearded, old naked man riding down the Broken River access road but without any photographic proof no one seems to believe us…..which is probably for the best.

Recently… well at the time of writing anyway, a new mountain bike trail was completed on the West Coast of the South Island, New Zealand known as The Old Ghost Road. The trail had originally existed as an old gold mining track from back in the day,  however it was not possible to cycle all the way through and the rides tended to involve a cycle in/out on the same route (either from the non-existent town of Lyell or from the other end at the may-as-well-be non-existent town of Seddonville). Much like the gold mining boom of this area, times have changed and it is now possible to cycle right the way through on what is a 2 – 3 day, 85km spectacular trail.

As a mate and I were in training mode for a multi-day bike race, we decided to attempt to ride the whole thing in the one day. We really needed to up our game as race day was approaching faster than our fitness levels were improving. We left Christchurch Friday evening and drove the four hours to Lyell where it is possible to camp right at the start of the trail. The first and last thing you notice about Lyell is that it consists exclusively of a camp site and the beginning of the trail head. If you want to be generous, then you could also include the swarms of sand flies and rumours of a cemetery somewhere nearby, but that’s it. Once we arrived we sorted our tents and got some sleep, excited about the prospect of the ride that lay ahead the following day.

Before – twisted derailleur and look of concern

That excitement was to last all the way up until I got onto my bike the following morning when I took one pedal stroke and managed to twist the rear derailleur out of use. Somehow the chain had been knocked off the back of the cassette and pulled the derailleur off with it, accompanied by a horrible, crunching noise. I jumped off the bike, inspected the damage in dismay and announced to my mate that I wouldn’t be riding today. Calm headed as always, my mate wandered over replying ‘wait there, let’s see what the problem is’, took one look at the mangled derailleur and went ‘… yep, you’re not riding today’. Some frantic discussion and much arm waving later, we decided on driving 45 minutes to Wesport, the closest town, to see if they had a bike shop I could throw money at to try and solve the problem. Three and a half hours later, $250 and a box of beers for the friendly bike shop mechanic, we were back in Lyell with a shiny new rear derailleur on my bike and ready to finally start the ride.

After – shiny new derailleur and look of happiness

After the mornings drama, we were both keen to get onto the trail and start making some progress. It appeared that progress was going to be slow however, as the first 30km of the trail is of an upward gradient. The trail climbs gradually enough through the forest, with the occasional viewing point and historical bit of rusted, ambiguous machinery that somehow related to the extraction of gold in the area. For good or for bad, depending on your emotional state at the time, each kilometer is marked along the trail. So you can literally count each 1000 meters that you cycle. So when you’ve got a good pace going on it can be a real morale boost as you metaphorically crush each marker. Equally, each marker can be a kick in the balls when it takes forever to get to the next one. It can feel at times like the markers are going backwards as you begin to fatigue and sink into an emotionally negative slump. There were times during the ride where I wanted to literally crush each marker into oblivion and remove them from the face of the earth… we’d only been on the trail for an hour and a half and I was already getting dramatic.

Finally, we made it above the tree line and popped out onto the ridge. When you look at brochures for the Old Ghost Road, they proudly show a photo of some cyclists biking along the incredible ridge line with panoramic scenes surrounding them. Well for once the marketing was actually representative, and expectations were met and then pleasingly exceeded. Riding along the ridge line is a little spicy in places and a wrong move could result in a tumble off the mountain side, but for the most part you spend the section of the ride blown away with the views and sense of exposure as the scenery extends in all directions. It’s just brilliant and easily justifies the 3 hours of ascent and extensive plotting of how to torture and destroy every single kilometer marker. The ridge line ends at Ghost Lake Hut which may be the most epic-ly located hut I have ever been to. Had we been riding the trail in the recommended 2 to 3 days then spending the night at the hut would have been amazing, but we weren’t even half way through yet and still had a lot more riding to do. We refueled, took some obligatory photos and embarked on what was going to be possibly the worst part of the day for me. Worse than the derailleur detaching itself from my bike or the increasingly itchy sand fly bites that I had accumulated at the Lyell camp site.

The brochure was right!

Leaving Ghost Lake Hut, I rode for a good minute and a half before my first fall off the bike. Note that it wasn’t a crash, as that would imply that I hit something. No, this was far more embarrassing. Today was the first time I was riding with clips, a means of attaching your feet to the pedals, requiring an initially unnatural twisting of the foot to release said foot from said pedal. It takes a while to get used to this new release method and normally I wouldn’t have used the pedals for the first time on an unknown trail. But as race day was approaching I needed all the practice I could get, which unfortunately meant having to go through the rites of passage with comical, yet painful falls off the bike when losing your balance and being unable to unclip your foot before falling off. Which is exactly what happened soon after leaving the hut; whilst negotiating a hair pin corner, I lost my balance and with the feet still clipped to the pedal, tumbled off the side of the bike to the hilarity of my mate and much inflicted pain to myself. It was then, after getting to the top of a small climb we could see the trail snake its way down the valley via a succession of steep, tight hair pin turns. My heart sank at about the same rate that my mates grin grew as I suddenly became aware of the gauntlet I was about to have to run (I should also point out that my mate isn’t being mean here. Several weeks earlier we rode the Wharfedale bike circuit where he was just getting used to clips for the first time. The circuit has a load of river crossings which he ended up falling into while attempting to ride through and lost his balance. Much to my entertainment and piss taking. So the dozen or so switch backs that awaited me was just the universe re-balancing for all the laughter I enjoyed at his expense).

It was horrible. I struggled with every corner, convinced that each turn was going to be the one that I messed up and would result in me bouncing down the mountain side, still attached to the bike. After a few skids and tumbles we made it to the bottom of the trail, and at that exact point in time I was ready to add the clips to the burning pile of kilometer markers. I had lost all confidence in my biking ability and any remotely technical looking sections, say a tree root across the path or a menacing looking bird perched high above me pretending to look innocent, would be enough to reduce me to walking the bike. This continued along a smaller ridge line with equally epic views, although somewhat diminished by my current emotional state, until we descended some steps (which are provided with a slightly defensive sign providing the reasons why the trail builders opted for steps over trail, the short version being ‘Safety’); then hit flatter ground, where I had an opportunity to regain some dignity and confidence and start riding the bike again.

We were now beginning the final climb of the trail, which depending on which trail profile map you used, was either a minor bump or a gruelling climb depending on the scale – a detail I’ve been caught out on a few times! We entered the ‘Bone Yard’ which sounds worse than it is. It’s basically a bit rocky and barren which normally would have been fine and quite interesting, expect for the fact that fatigue was starting to set in, along with exposure to the sun. There’s no shade through the Bone Yard, and we found ourselves drinking litres of water to try and compensate for the heat as we pushed our bikes to the top of the summit, kicking over kilometer makers as we went. Sweaty and tired, we rolled down the other side of the hill and onto the final section of trail affectionately known to locals as ‘The Suicide Bluffs’. The trail follows the river Mokihinui out of the valley along twisting and turning trails. Although some turns are provided with a makeshift barrier to stop you falling off the large drop to the river below, there are plenty of other corners that would have benefited from a bit more Health & Safety legislation. Maybe it was due to it getting dark, or riding for nine hours, or having drunk roughly 12 litres of water, but I started to have visions of me hitting some rock, being unable to regain my balance due to my clips, and falling off the edge of the trail into the river below. It was actually quite a terrifying way to end the ride, and coupled with the slow puncture I had recently acquired within the last 10km, the bike felt a bit more unstable as the rear wheel bounced around behind me.

Descent into the ‘Suicide Bluffs’

Arriving at the end of the trail 9hrs after we had started, it was a nice relief that I had survived bike failures, clips, switch backs, heat exposure and large scary drops into fast flowing water. It is only in retrospect that I realised the slight morbidness of this article, which seems suitably fitting seeing as the trail is littered with equally morbid references: Old Ghost Rd, Ghost Lake Hut, The Bone Yard, The Suicide Bluffs. Man it feels good to be alive.