HARPER PASS BREVET

Almost 12 months previously to the day we began this trip, Sam “Muel” Jones and I were drifting down the Waiau Toa Awa (Clarence River) in a packraft with our bikes strapped to the bow, discussing how long we’d been planning to ride a route out of Muel’s hometown of Springfield, taking in a crossing of Harper Pass, a historic pack track crossing of the Main Divide.

So after the buzz of the film made from that bikerafting expedition, we finally started talking some dates, buoyed along by interest from Dylan Gee, a young up and coming Australian filmmaker who was considering a summer of mountain biking and content banking in Aotearoa.

The plan was to leave Springfield, ride across the Waimakariri Gorge and climb into the Oxford Forest Park through the singletrack of the Wharfedale. We’d then grind up the Lees Valley and into the Hawarden Plains, follow the upper Hurunui River past Lake Sumner, and into the mountains along the Te Araroa trail, before a carry up and over Harper Pass. Following this, we hoped to ride down into the Taramakau River and follow the riverbed to Highway 73, which would take us through Otira and the alpine village of Arthur’s Pass. The final stage would require some road kilometres interspersed with a