Mountain Biking in Rotorua

Last weekend (edit: more like 3 weeks ago since it's taken me so long to finish this post) myself and three mates headed to Rotorua to spend three days on the legendary trails down there.  I'd never ridden there before, being quite a newbie to the whole mountain biking thing, but my old mate from high school, Alex, and usual riding buddy James are both experienced riders who have been there many a time.

We stayed at the Rotorua Thermal Holiday Park, which is about 2-3km from the main entrance to the trails, so each day we got up, got some food and then a quick ride along the road and we were in business. Our cabin was fairly tiny with 2 single beds and a pair of single bunks, no fridge or bathroom, and with 4 bikes inside I'm sure we would've all perished trying to get out in the event of a fire

The first day was definitely the most epic of the three. We were all nice and fresh and did two sessions on the hill. In the morning we mostly rode the trails on the lower half of the mountain (can't decide whether the area counts as a mountain, but since we were mountain biking I'm going to claim it). The first thing that struck me about the trails was that due to the surface being mud/clay based, as opposed to the sand/dirt base where we usually ride, the ground was packed nice and hard, and the trails rode really fast.

Here we all are at the top of a trail called Hot X Buns

The way the trails were built tended to utilise natural features such as roots, stumps and the general shape of the terrain to create jumps and drops, whereas at Woodhill most of the jumps are constructed from timber (presumably because the sandy base wont hold together to form a ramp). Some areas in the lower section had been logged, which made it feel a bit like you were riding through a wasteland, plus the lack of shade meant the surface was dry and dusty.

Stopped for a break at the lower carpark

After about 35km of riding we headed back to the cabin for some lunch (mmm Burgerfuel) and a bit of a rest, then went back out in the early afternoon. In the afternoon we took advantage of the shuttle to reduce our climbing a bit. The shuttle runs from part-way up the mountain to near the top. I felt a little bit like I was "cheating" taking a shuttle uphill so I could ride downhill, but it was still exhausting work so I got over it pretty quick. There were a number of trails we did from the top which still required a decent climb to the start of them - these included "Billy T" and "Split Enz", which I'd consider to be two of the best trails in the whole park. Below is a video of the Split Enz trail from the website, below that is a picture I took of the view (which coincidentally is where the video finishes)

The view from the Split Enz trail

In our afternoon session we hit some of the proper downhill tracks for the first time. These trails are just such a blast to ride, the one from the top called Huckleberry Hound has almost endless doubles, supposedly there's around 45 jumps on this trail, all of them very forgiving and it was great practise and a real confidence builder. Here's a video I found on youtube, business starts at 1:32

Returning to our cabin we had clocked up about 65km for the day, and I was completely shattered. By about 9pm everyone was in bed and asleep or nearly there: a bit nana-ish but we wanted to get the most out of our weekend of riding. Sunday was a solid day at the mountain, we arrived early enough to catch the shuttle leaving from the very bottom and did several runs of the downhill tracks, including another jump track called "Little Red Riding Huck" and a sweet one called "Corners", which features a good 20 or so nicely bermed hairpins.

Our bikes loaded on the shuttle ready to head up for the day

We ended up doing about 45km on Sunday, and thanks to the weather packing in around mid afternoon we were drenched and our bikes a bit of a mess by the time we got back to our cabin.

Our final day was a relatively short one; exhaustion from the previous days, lack of a shuttle due to it being a weekday, and the hours of driving ahead of us meant we only rode about 25km, most of them with a definite lack of vigour. We did manage a pretty significant climb to the top of one of the hills which had a pretty fantastic view down over Rotorua

The felling makes it less lovely, but there were plenty of trees through most of the park

Alex and James taking a break at the top of the climb

The problem with racking up 140km of mountain biking is the associated injuries - as you can see in the pictures below my shins took a bit of a beating. A number of these are pedal scrapes that would've been avoided if I was using cleats (lesson learned, I now have cleats on the MTB), but I think before any other big weekends of riding I might get some shin/knee guards too.

During the trip I discovered that Alex is going to spend the Xmas/NY holidays riding in Queenstown - sounded like a great way to spend the break so I decided to join him: 10 days of riding, should be a blast!