The Timber Trail (Realities version)

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Lilz said this to Amanda on the trail and it made her laugh. The Timbertrail is beautiful and we experienced amazing Instagrammable moments, but I think it’s the toughest thing we’ve done in NZ so far…

• Tired beginnings - To get to the Timbertrail start point at Ongarue we had a 45 mile day, including fitting in essential chores at the only town. However Maybe Thom got a puncture - glass fragment in tyre - that took ages to locate, remove and fix. Losing this time, on top of an ambitious day for us, meant we fell 5 miles short of reaching Ongarue and had to set up a less-than-ideal wild camp beside the edge of the road as it got dark. Neither of us slept well.

• Unable to cook food - We ran out of liquid fuel. Luckily we had a spare gas canister, but this meant converting the stove ‘in the field’, whilst very tired, in the dark, having only once done it before, and it’s quite tricky. Lilz managed it with minimal swearing 🤗. Disaster happily averted and eventually we were ‘cooking on gas!’

• Tough track conditions - Due to rock-falls, large stoney gravel, ice crystals, mud, fallen trees, and water channelled/uneven ground. We concluded the Timbertrail is not really suitable for heavily laden touring bikes! mountain bike and electric fat bike territory only.

• Predominantly uphill - We cycled the Timbertrail the ‘wrong’ way! 😆 The majority of riders ride east to west, but our route meant we were bucking the trend and cycling the 50 mile (85km) trail west to east. Doing it this way means the trail takes you UP the western flanks of the Hauhungaroa Ranges and the southern side of Mt. Pureora with a total ascent of 5790 feet (1765m) - the highest point on the trail is a Munro (3185ft/971m above sea level). The ups are steep.

• Miscalculating all of the above - The length of the Timbertrail is not a problem being split into manageable mileage across two days - 28 miles on day one (+5 to get to the start) and 23 miles on day two. However finding the track much tougher than we’d anticipated we were very very slow. On day one we spent 8hrs completing the 33 miles to get to the half-way camp at Pureora, and had to ‘cycle’ the last 3 miles in the dark - tricky navigating narrow tracks and precipitous drops in the pitch black guided by bike lights and head torches alone.

• Cold cold nights - With beautiful clear days come star-studded clear nights and the temperature overnight dropped to -2 and -4 on the respective nights we camped. This just makes things a bit harder. Our cooking oil solidified, water in our water bottles froze, the tent was crispy to pack up, fingers are numb and cumbersome.

• No way out - Once you’re on the Timbertrail you’re in remote forested wilds and trees as far as the eye can see with no reception and no real routes off the trail. Just gotta keep going!

Reaching our booked cabin at the end of the trail was truly bliss. Beautiful route, glad we did it, but perhaps Type 3 fun? Lots learnt too!Leggi altro