Pureora Timber Trail: Half of it. Twice.

Locked and loaded. Godspeed.

There is more than one way to skin a cat.  And likewise, there's more than one way to ride a trail.  You can even ride it both ways.  Not wanting to mess around with shuttles, dropping a car at the end of the trail, or taking more than one night away from home, Megan and I decided to start at the halfway point of the Pureora Timber Trail and ride the second half there-and-back in one day.

We pulled into Piropiro Flats campground late in the afternoon and did a quick recce to survey the ground (looking for a nice flat area  and also our potential temporary neighbours (wishing to avoid anyone dodgy, noisy, shifty, scary, too friendly, nosy, weird, stupid, or anyone basically not us!).  There were quite a few camps set up already - some young families - but still plenty of space to choose from.  We found a good elevated spot that would get the first of the morning sun.

Next on the agenda was to try out the facilities.  A couple of very long long-drops was all that was on offer and met out needs adequately, although it was not somewhere that you wanted to linger.

Our tents went up in the blink of an eye... after re-positioning the car three times to give ourselves some room and the optimal layout for our camp.

Magazines and bog roll - just the essentials

It was dinner time next, so I got to play around with my homemade alcohol fuel stove.  It does the job for minimum size and weight, if you don't mind taking a bit of time to boil your water.  Megan had her little gas burner out and reheated her dinner in the time it took me to get my stove lit.  By the time I was "cooking" my dehydrated meal, she had finished hers and was reading a magazine.  Each of us was equally happy.

We had a nice time sitting in camp just chilling out, talking, shuffling gear that we needed for the night and prepping things for the next day.  Darkness fell too quickly and eventually it was time for lights out and sleep.

Sleep came and went and got interrupted.  Piropiro Flats was a hive of activity overnight.  I had no idea what time I heard people come and go, but I thought that hunters were crazy to be going out (or coming back) in the middle of the night.  We found out the next morning that someone had ridden from Pureora and gone straight past Piropiro, missing their shuttle pick-up and resulting in Search and Rescue being called out to find them.  They were found safe and well, tired and a bit cold at the end of the trail in Ongarue.  Not sure what they were thinking, because the trail has kilometre markers clearly displayed on the side of the trail, so they must have been aware they had gone too far.  Crazy tourists.

Maramataha swingbridge. The first of many.

Breakfast was gobbled enthusiastically, with Megan going 5-star and whipping up some hot oats.  We packed down our camp just before a light rain shower came over.  Temperatures were cool, so we happily rolled out of Piropiro with our jackets on.

We had a little bit of forestry road to follow, diverting onto some purpose built trail, and then back to the real trailhead at the end of the road.  Just a few kilometres from Piropiro we came upon the first of many large swingbridges.  Not the biggest one in NZ (that is on the first half of the trail nearer Pureora), but still an impressive sight when it's the first 'big one' you've seen.  The drop down to the gorge below was impressive too and we spent a bit of time peering over the side and checking out the structure.

From the bridge we had a steady climb that damn near did us in.  I started to cook in my jacket, but didn't stop until I'd reached what I thought was the top - after about 7 kilometres and 200m of climbing.  It wasn't a big hill, just a hard hit early in the morning, so soon after leaving camp.

That was the wake-up call I needed.  I felt pretty settled from then on, just comfortably turning the pedals over and not worried about anything that might have been ahead of us.  The trail was beautiful, smooth, wide and well graded. The surface was gravel and sand and well-drained.  I had no trouble riding it on my skinny-tyred CX bike.

There was always something interesting to look at off the trail, a rock, gully, stream, weird tree, and some relics from when the area was a hive of activity felling trees.  I had to stop at the first significant cutting we rode through (and almost every single one thereafter). The near-vertical sides were covered in a rich cloak of greenery, and overhanging trees and ferns leaned in to get a better look as us.

'Our' rock

There were plenty of information boards along the trail and we stopped to read each one, taking in impressive story of life in the forest all those years ago - the hardships, weather, social life, limited resources, and terrible weather conditions.  To think that man power (and a few hardy wives and children) alone could achieve all these things was mind boggling.  We quickly confirmed that we have all gone soft.

Marmite and a spoon.  Hungry?

Looking south-ish

When I rounded a corner and saw the Mangatukutuku bridge, I'm sure I uttered the same thing as Gaz did when he saw the 'big one' on the first half of the trail.  Jaw-dropping, even though this is just the second biggest on the trail at only 90 metres long.

Only the second-biggest swingbridge - wow!

Remnants of the central pier foundation

We leaned over the side to peer down into the ravine and the stream bed below.  Huge boulders were strewn about, but what caught my eye was the large mass of concrete and a massive timber beam embedded in it.  Those workers would have placed that by hand, mule, and rudimentary crane (a rope slung over a tree?) and then mixed the concrete by hand in whatever barrows they had available.  I guess they would have dammed and diverted the stream too - all in a days work.

Click to enlarge

The major milestone for our ride was the Ongarue Spiral.  This was our turnaround point and something else I wanted to spend some time gawking at.  The story of how it was built, abandoned and the stream diverted through it, then rebuilt adjacent to the stream, and finally reinstated as per the original construction is quite amazing.  Riding through it felt like a privilege to me.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Tunnel entry, heading south

Totara vertical props and railway iron arches

Heading north, back to camp

It was soon time to turn around and head back through the tunnel (for the third or fourth time?) and go back the way we had come.  We decided to increase our speed (as best we could at this stage of the day) to expedite our return to camp.  We set a goal of a food stop at the Mangatukutuku bridge and got underway.  I thought the trail would feel more uphill in this direction, but it wasn't the hard slog I had imagined it would be.  We still had some work to do to climb the 240m or so from the spiral, and only stopped briefly at some of the points of interest we had passed earlier in the day.

Getting to our pre-arranged rest stop was a wonderful feeling.  I got to duck into the bush and take a nature break with the most stunning of swingbridges as a backdrop.  It felt like we were really on the home stretch now.  Any doubts Megan had had about being able to hang in for the return journey had been left behind at the spiral.  If we had to crawl back, then that's what we'd do.

Twenty minutes of eating, drinking, idle chit-chat, and comparing trail notes with passers by had me feeling quite relaxed and I was reluctant to get back on the bike for the last piece of trail which I was certain would be distinctly uphill.

I can't quite remember where we were on the trail when we met Derek and his 3 mates, but it was in the first half of the ride and they stuck with us right through to the spiral.  We didn't ride together as a group, but we would pass them at some point and then they'd catch us up when we stopped to take in the views, read some information, or eat.  Derek, a local, had a lot to add to our trail-side narrative on the information boards, though not always relevant to the history of the trail, it sure added to the experience.  He told us that he and his little foxie Taylor spent a lot of time in the forest hunting.  They were both quite at home - he with his hunting knife on his belt; and Taylor diving off into the bush to grab a possum for a quick snack. Derek was riding on a borrowed hybrid bike, with a padded gel seat cover, no helmet, and not a care in the world.

As I rode back along the trail, it became apparent that we were finally on our own.  We had passed a few people on the way back, but since leaving Mangatukutuku bridge we had seen only one group who were making very rapid progress in the opposite direction.  I stopped on a long climb to grab some more food and rest while Megan pedalled on.  The bush was completely still and quiet.  A fantail flittering in the trees a short way away, caught my eye.  I watched it hopping between branches with short bursts of flight.  It came closer, checking me out.  I called to it, with my best rendition of the high-pitched sound that a cork makes when rubbed on a wet glass bottle - that's what my sister used to do to call in the fantails when we were camping.  The fantail came right to the trail edge, on the branch closest to me.  I stood still and slowly reached behind me into my rear pocket for my phone camera.  I barely had my fingers on the phone before the fantail flashed it's tail feathers and flew off.

It was time to get going again and it wasn't far along the trail when I saw a small bank where I had stopped to remove my jacket in the morning.  I realised I was at the top of a nice long downhill section (remembering the long slog we'd had in the morning).  There was not stopping now, not until I reached the bottom.

My hands were feeling worse for wear and they were now feeling every little vibration from my wheels passing over the trail.  At least this was nothing new.  I was more than familiar with this feeling after a summer  of riding the 'cross bike on lots of corrugated gravel roads.  This was the only time during the entire ride that I thought I would be more comfortable on a mountain bike.  The reward for lasting all the way to the bottom of the downhill was to have a quick photo session with the Maramataha Bridge in the background.

We rolled back into Piropiro Flats camp 7 hours after leaving that morning.  We'd ridden through some amazing country, learned a lot about the history of the area, and had a strong feeling of "let's do that again" despite our tired bodies.

The first half of the trail is definitely on the To Do list, and I wouldn't mind doing the whole lot in one go because I had enjoyed the ride I did with Megan so much.  I'd probably take a mountain bike to conquer the first section, as it is reportedly a rougher trail surface and more "mountain bikey" according to one couple we met who had ridden it the previous day.

Highly recommended. A+++, would trade again.