A Great Ride Riding up the Downs
The Heaphy Track has been on my riding bucket list since its winter-only reopening for bikers a few years back – it’s the only Great Walk you can cycle! My plan to ride the track a week earlier had been quashed while camping up at the western trailhead, thanks to a localised weather bomb. During my first early-morning start, it was even a challenge to avoid the wash of debris on the track, well before I encountered an impassable slip. I was the first to reach this near-vertical wall of sloppy mud with torrents of chocolate-coloured water that thwarted my riding plan. I returned to the car safely but disappointed.
On my second attempt a week later, I elect to begin at the opposite end of the track – some 463 kilometres by road on the eastern side. The weather forecast looks perfect, being cool and frosty, and a detour is now in place around that formidable slip. So, not far from Collingwood at the top of the South Island, I reach the trailhead carpark and once again unpack my gear for the two-day adventure. I load my bike with overnight essentials as well as work cameras and, that regular readers of this column will know I have created to assist bike riders all over New Zealand. Flicking on the GPS units and setting the tracking to one-second intervals, I waypoint the carpark and start cranking the pedals to begin the ride up to the Gouland Downs. That’s right, up to the Downs.
