Saturday, January 5, 2013

Wakamarina Track

The Wakamarina track goes from Renwick to Canvas Town. Aaron has wanted to ride it for a while, but it is a bit out of the way and requires either to be done as part of a bike tour, or a car shuttle. The track also needs to be dry as it is clay and gets very slippy and impossible to ride when wet. The last few days of our holiday in Nelson the weather was great and we needed to head back to Picton for an early morning ferry. We had a bit of an issue to get to the start of the track as the main road in was closed due to logging. So we had to drive another 30 km around to Bartletts Creek Track. 

The track started with a short downhill and then a bit of traversing, before a steady, and sometimes tricky, climb up to Foster's clearing. It took about 1 hour to ride the 6 km, through some beautiful beech forest, with some views down on to the Wairau Valley and across to the Kaikoura Range.

Mount Tapauenuku in the Kaikoura Range

Fosters Clearing
At Fosters Clearing we had lunch and then walked up to Fosters Hut. The section after Fosters Clearing is renowned for being a bit of a hike and then some technical single track. So while Aaron continued on, Helen rode back down to the car to drive around to the Wakamarina road end.

Fosters Hut

A section of the track

One of the many switchbacks on the descent

Finally at the bottom of the hill

Doom Creek

It was a fun day riding, but I'm not sure Aaron would make the effort to ride it again....

No comments: