Following days of heavy rain in Greymouth sun was finally forecast. Time to ride! I rose a relatively quiet paved road through farmlands for an afternoon to reach the Waiuta Lodge ($15 advanced registration required) at the well maintained Waiuta gold mine ghost town. The lodge was really a mountain hut, but with electricity and one of the few that a passenger car could access. I had the mansion to myself! Well, besides all the critters thumping around in the ceiling. This year is a mast year, meaning massive tree seed production and thus massive rodent populations. https://i.stuff.co.nz/environment/109165768/305-million-hit-planned-for-mega-mast
The next day about three hours of spongy single track took me to the Big River Hut. Most of it was through beautiful fern and moss filled forest, but the final segment was through marshy bushland so they built the track below.
Like many of the west coast tracks this one exists due to mining history. While I approached the hut via singletrack, I would be leaving by four wheel drive road to the town of Reefton. The Big River Hut is part of the Department of Conservation (DOC) system and I was able to use my hut pass, finally!!
The town of Reefton was a lovely small mountain town with great cafes, grocery stores for resupply, and in town camping. The next circuit I had planned for the last two days of fine weather was a bit of an unknown. Everyone I mentioned it to said it was harder than Big River (which was fine, in fact desirable) and that wind blow (downed trees) might be a bit of an issue, but they also had this “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea” look on their face that I apparently should have paid more attention. I wish they would have actually shares any reservations about the wisdom of taking my bike on the Kirwan Track circuit, but in my experince it’s not the Kiwi way to tell you how to run your personal business.
Fortunately I did pick up on the fact that this would be a challenging outing and it would serve me well to lighten my load as much as possible. The lovely woman running the sporting store in town readily agreed to keep a pack of my belongings and to make sure I returned safely on schedule. Things I left behind included my tent, sleeping pad, and cook kit — instead I would eat wraps with egg and fresh veggies and cold oatmeal and coffee for breakfast. Since I was only going to be out for a single night making do without hot food was worth the weight savings.
The track up was challenging with the first half being fun, though reasonably steep and technical uphill riding, and the second half being a bit more intense. Part way I encountered some wind blow and spent a while doing as much trail maintenance as I could by hand. The track became progressively steeper and I had to shove my bike up out of an increasing number of gullies. I was earning my dinner this day. NZ tracks always post the walking time, ideally bike time should be slightly faster on the uphills and much faster on the downhills. It took me almost the full walking time to get my bike up to the hut (about 5 hours). But it was a beautiful hut and beautiful weather!!
I noticed in the hut Intentions book that the few people that came in by bike tended return in the same manner, as opposed to continuing along the circuit. Hmm… But it was largely downhill and flat, so how bad could it be…
The walking time to Montgomerie Hut (where I did not intend to stop for the night) was four hours. That’s downhill, six miles, and it took me four full hours on a bike. This may be one of the most ill suited trails I have ever taken a bike on in my life. I lifted, heaved, and lowered my bike up and down ravines and hill sides. I shoved it up and over tree trunks and slips. I bashed through the grasping branches of tree tops covering the track. For four hours.
At the Montgomerie Hut a man who had set up camp for the week kindly made me coffee. From there the track was supposed to improve, but I sure did appreciate the caffeine jolt. The track did improve *some* as it attempted to follow a four wheel drive track, but so much of it was completely boggy that inconstantly had to follow side tracks. Then there were places where the river had eaten away the track and they sent you straight up the side of the mountain, traverse 25 meters, and then procede to lower my bike back down the slippery mountain side. After eight hours of this I finally made my way back to town, retrieved my belongings, at a bunch of food and collapsed into my tent.
The following day my bruises and battered body would have liked nothing more than a rest day; however, more rain was coming and it made sense to head down the road while the sun was at least trying to shine. Two days later I landed at Brunner Lake and have been sitting out several more days of stormy weather. Purchasing all my food at a convince store is less than ideal, but at least my bunk house comes with access to a kitchen for making the best of it. I really would love to eat a huge salad sometime soon! Tomorrow is another small break in the weather and it will be time to pedal again.
Please excuse typos and lack of editing, blogging on the phone is proving much more challenging than I expected. Both getting photos to upload and creating text.