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- Dec 7, 2018, 6:57 PM
- ☀️ 14 °C
- Altitude: 736 m
- New ZealandTaumarunui County38°36’19” S 175°34’2” E
Timber Trail - Bikepacking Adventure
December 7, 2018 in New Zealand ⋅ ☀️ 14 °C
Since we started touring around the North Island, we have come across several couples/ groups traveling in similar fashion to us, that is with mountain bikes, and the intentions of riding everywhere they possibly can in NZ. Many of these groups have recommended an adventure mountain biking trail called the Timber Trail, and we are grateful that they had. In a last minute decision ( the day before).
The Timber Trail is a 85 km long track which passes trough a remote area of the Pureora Forest Park, about 50 KM West of Taupo on the North Island. The trail is well built, half purpose built mountain bike trails and half repurposed historic tram line The forest is situated on a volcanic plateau, and is comprised of native bush (massive black pines, palms, and a bunch of shit we'd never heard of) and regenerated timber (red wood, pine). The lushness and diversity of the forest, and the quality of trail made for a spectacular bike ride. Oh, also if you do the trail from North to South you descend a lot more then you climb, so theirs that.
We decided to split the ride into two days, so we would not destroy our bodies, and also so we would get some much needed practice bikepacking. So bikepacking, if you are unfamiliar, is a type of biking which falls between cycle touring and mountain biking. You travel on full on mountain style trails, with rocks, roots, and stream crossings, thus necessitating fancy mountain bikes, although camping gear (tent, sleeping bags, food and cloths) are needed for multiday travel. This is accomplished by carrying the gear either in a backpack, or strapped onto the frame or handlebars of the bikes. While its kind of cumbersome to carry an extra 25 lbs on your back whilst trying to rip sick lines through a forest, the ability to travel huge distances into remote places more than makes up for it.
We hired a shuttle company (Epic Adventures) to pick us up at the end of trail, and drop us off at the trail head. Sidenote: they can drop your camping gear off at the 40 km mark for a nominal fee. The trail begins with a gentle and enjoyable climb up a volcano through a mix of old growth forest and through cut blocks with about 500m gain spread over 14 km. The next 25km was a constant decent down the volcano through native and regenerated forest, and was made interesting by the numerous suspension bridges spanning narrow overgrown canyons.
The remaining 16 km of day 1 kind of sucked. While it was pretty, it was mostly climbing. We were happy to make it to camp, which we shared with 4 hikers of the Te Araroa, an insane long distance hike, which traverses the entire length of New Zealand, both North and South. We spent the entirety of the evening learning just how insane the Te Araroa hikers just actually are, and how borderline malnourished most of them are (they eat Instant noodles exclusively).
The second day was much easier. We only had to bike 30 km, most of which downhill on repurposed tramlines used for moving timber prior to the 1960s. The views in this section were epic with much more vistas then the previous day. It was also interesting riding through a gradual transition of dense forest to sheep-filled pasture land. The highlight of the second day was a spiral in the track. When we saw this described in the tourist pamphlet I was half hoping that the spiral was vertically oriented, like a loop-de-loop. Sadly it was not, the direction of travel was entirely horizontal.
But yeah, the Timber Trail is sweet; not to challenging, and super scenic. Oh also, next last minute epic adventure we need to bring more food. We seriously brought half as much food as we probably needed. Whoops.Read more
Traveler So want to do this one!