Awesome ride

Recently a friend (Evan Hunt) and I met for a weekend catch up. He's living on the West Coast and with me here in Christchurch the obvious place was Arthur's Pass; well just east of there at Bealey Spurr (see Google Maps, the link would not paste). The photo on the left is of Arthur's Pass from Klondyke Corner.

The weather on the Saturday when we met was pretty rough with horizontal rain! Undeterred by this we managed to find a great track running along side the Waimakariri River and had a good hike followed by some hilarious and utterly fruitless fishing. "Local knowledge" Evan kept saying that's what we need, "local knowledge!" So, off we set to get just that: "no fish for 30k either side of the pass, the waters are too turbulent!" Well that explains it, I said. It didn't tell us if the local lakes were any good nor did it explain why there was a fly fisherman stalking along the banks of the river. I began to wonder if the local knowledge we were given was to protect our informant's own fish stocks - not that we were ever a serious threat!!

The highlight of our time was a ride to the top of the Craigieburn ski field road, a 60 minute hill climb - quite a grunt but well worth it.

The following map shows the Craigieburn Forrest and the track we road is shown in red up until the dotted yellow line. Click on the map to enlarge.



The photos: below left: along the road (somewhere!) and right is taken from the second gate as you head up the road looking up the valley where we stopped for lunch. You may be able to just make out a dark line running left to right in the distant trees. This is the road leading to the point of our lunch stop. Above this you may see another dark line in the trees (a little less obvious) running upward, right to left. This is the final hill climb to the skifield car park. (This photo enlarges really well if you click on it).




We lunched just above bush line. The road then cuts back over towards the next ridge to the left. The valley just out of shot on the left is where the ski field is. So, lunch with amazing views, a cold beer chilled in the waters of a mountain stream and a play in the snow on the main field for me while Evan worked his camera.



An awesome ride! Not to mention the 15 minute ride down - where were those gates again Ev?!