Queen Charlotte Track

With plans to meet Lisa’s parents at the end of the month in Christchurch, Lisa and I made a rough plan to head south from Nelson, stopping in for a hike at Nelson Lakes Provincial Park, then do a multiday bike ride somewhere in between Nelson and Christchurch. Initially, we had chosen to bike the St. James track, which is an 80km alpine track running out of the Lewis Valley popular with mountain bike enthusiasts. After hiking out from the Angelus Hut in Nelson Lakes NP, a quick look at the weather forecast changed our bike plans. Cold and a potential for early autumn snow were in the forecast for the St. James area, while just 200km away, the forecast for the Marlborough Sounds was slightly warmer with rain instead of snow. Biking long distances in cold and snow sucks, so we decided to take a detour up to Marlborough Sounds and bike the Queen Charlotte Track (QCT) instead. The next day we were on our bikes, traveling through ancient forest in the rain.

The QCT is a trail that was on Lisa’s and my own mountain bike trail “wishlist”. It is a 75 km track which undulates along a rain forested peninsula separating the Queen Charlotte (where the inter-islander ferry lands) and Kenepuru Sounds. While popular with trampers, the track is open to bikers during the low season, and generally takes 2-4 days to ride depending on the riders ability to climb hills, push bikes, or just genuinely suffer. Generally, hikers and bikers access the trail via water shuttles, which pick them up from the town of Picton, drop them near the Eastern end of the peninsula at Ship Cove, and pick them up at the crotch of the Queen Charlotte at Anakiwa, then returning them to Picton. Most of the shuttles offer a convenient service (free of charge with Cougar Lines) which will also pick up your bags and move them to the next point of camping or lodging, thus you don’t need to carry much besides food, water, and beer money. Yup, beer money; there are multiple drinking establishments and restaurants along the track, so you can really adventure in style.

We were dropped of at Ship Cove with just our bikes and our daypacks and it was still raining. The first 2 km of the track required pushing our bikes due to the rain, but also the extremely steep grade. Honestly we were a bit intimidated. But after cresting the top of the hill, the rain ceased, the clouds parted, and we were gifted a sweet view of the Queen Charlotte Sound, and several km of easy downhill. The rest of the day was pretty mellow, we biked about 30km to our campsite at Camp Bay along well formed track which was never flat but also never very steep. We picked up our bag with our camping gear from the wharf and set up camp. After a quick nap, we walked over to a hotel/hostel several hundred meters down the cove and grabbed a pint of beer. We were more or less warm, dry, and shamlessly boastful about how great of a decision it was to bike the QCT instead of the St. James track.

The next day we continued on for 25 km to Portage Bay under blue skies. The day started out again with a combination of uphill riding our pushing, this time to the highest point on a ridge at 450m above sea level. While the ridge had a tiresome amount of undulation to it, where we gained and lost over 1500m of total elevation, it was generally fun and scenic riding. Much the same as the day before, we grabbed our bag, set up camp and walked over to the local bar for a pint.

The last day from Portage Bay to the wharf at Anakiwa probably had the most pleasant riding although there were far more people hiking and biking the trail. We probably passed 4 times as many people on the last 20km of track then we did through the first 50 km. Many of the these people were less then excited to see bikers on the track, and even shared there displeasure with us as they stepped to the side of the track to let us bike passed.

I get it, bikers are fast, quiet, and take up a lot of space. At the parking lot we noticed a large group of high school kids with bikes, who had presumably passed all the same people moments before us. As a hiker, who might mire at this trail for being seemingly in the middle of nowhere while being highly accessible through well serviced access points to society, might be a giant piss off. Fortunately either because of the weather, or because less people hike or bike any other sections, we hadn’t noticed the negative part of this dichotomy until the very end of the trail. Instead, we were just happy to bike an awesome trail with light weight packs, and drink cold beer by the pint at the end of the day.Læs mere