Sarah O'Callaghan Arrives

Sarah O’Callaghan arrived from Australia last night. We had brunch with Liz Forbes and her new boyfriend, Jay. Afterward we took Sarah for a ride around Makara Peak mountain bike park. In the evening we took her into Wellington to taste some of the delightful beers at the Macs Brewery and dinner.


Sarah at the top of Makara Peak

Tree Trunk Gorge

On our way home we stopped to ride a popular mountain bike track called "Tree Trunk Gorge" just east of Tongariro National Park. This was a great little ride through some beautiful forest and with a couple of fun stream crossings to negotiate. The gorge is quite spectacular, supposedly you can kayak it but you have to abseil in! The "Pillars of Hercules", on the other hand, were not as imposing as their name leads you to believe. Another fun ride, and would make a nice walk.


Tree Trunk George


One of the several creek crossings


Pillars of Hercules Bridge

Pureora Forest

On the way back from Tauranga we did a couple of side trips to explore some mountain bike tracks that we hadn't ridden before. Pureora Forest is just to the west of Lake Taupo and is an old logging area that has been reforested with a few remnants of original podocarp forest with Rimu, Kauri, Totara and other native trees. There are several tracks for mountain biking in the forest, mostly disused logging tracks, we headed to the northern one "Okahukura Loop". This was a fun, relatively short ride through some really spectacular forest. It wasn't too technical, and fairly undulating, but there were a few muddy spots.... it had been dry for weeks, but it had rained the night before. Therefore, I wouldn't recommend riding this after lots of rain... We also did a couple of short walks within the forest, one of which was to the centre of the north island - why? because we could! Lots more exploring to be done in this forest!


Camp setup - including our new tent!


Aaron stuck in the mud!


Geographic centre of the North Island

Tauranga

We were up in Tauranga for the New Zealand Geology Conference, but we took the opportunity to hit some of the local mountain biking trails in the evenings. Although not extensive, we found a few really fun areas to ride - the Summerhill Mountain biking park was great fun with some beautiful forest and swooping downhill and some relatively easy, and not too scary, north shore structures to ride over. The park also provided some great views over the Bay of Plenty from the Pa (old settlement/fort) at the top of the hill.


Dodgy creek crossing


Helen and Geoffroy overlooking the Bay of Plenty

Whakarewarewa Forest

As if we hadn't done enough riding the next day we met up with the NIWA geology boys to do some mountain biking at Whakarewarewa Forest - NZ's mountain biking mecca! Fortunately they had had a big ride the day before - so they were equally as tired. We set off to the top of the hill, a slow one hour climb. Then we hit one of the new tracks, a twisty track that contours across the hill before heading down to hit some of the old favourites. Aaron and Josh decided to climb back up the hill for more punishment and to descend Hot X Buns and came across some young ladies in distress. The girls couldn't get their 4WD up the loose gravelly hill - so of course the boys came to their rescue and drove the vehicle up to the top of the hill - with their bikes in the tray of the truck. What Gentlemen! At least that is their story....


Relaxing near the end of the ride - the "Motown Bikers" sporting their wonderful "moustaches" that they had been growing during "Movember" to raise awareness and money for prostate cancer.

Around Taupo

Well after a tiring day of riding around lake Taupo the next day we spent relaxing in the hot pools which flow into the Waikato River and walking along the river to Huka Falls. It was hot and sunny and we had a nice picnic. Thank god we didn't have to ride in this weather - it was 28 degrees C.


Hot Springs flowing into the Waikato River


The cold Waikato River

Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge

This year a friend and I decided to give the Round Taupo Challenge a go, but as neither of us had much time to train (I was out at sea and she was away at a conference) we did it as a relay, each of us doing half of the total 160 km. As you would expect the ride is on the road that goes around the lake, but several sections are fairly hilly. The ride is very popular with around 9000 participants this year. It is quite impressive to see the town of Taupo totally overtaken by bicycles...

This year the weather was perfect - cloudy and warm (not too hot), and no wind. This was ideal conditions for riding, and the course record was broken and many people got their best times. I was riding the second half of the ride, so I had to wait around quite a bit for Kareen to come in to transition - the waiting around was a little frustrating, especially as I had no idea how long she would take and I kept drinking too much and then running to the loo! Having never really ridden 80 km in race conditions I had no idea of how long it would take me, but I guessed around 3 hours - my official time was 2 hours 42 minutes, so I was very happy with that and I felt pretty strong at the end. Next year I will probably try and do the whole thing. The ride is really nice and the hills were no where near as bad as I had been led to believe.


Kareen and I in fancy dress with our support team, Aaron and Dave.


Kathryn and Kareen waiting at the start.