Extreme cycling
VulcanSpirit
Richard & Alison Brunstrom
Sun 12 May 2013 10:09
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I found out that the famous Queen Charlotte track
is open for mountain bikes for some of the year. 70km off-road along the side of
Queen Charlotte Sound at the very northern tip of South island. So e arranged to
do it. the set-up is excellent: a small ferry takes you and your bike and
camping gear out to the far end of the track and you cycle back. The ferry takes
your luggage. Easy-peasy. However, what the tourist information, which leads you
to think that this is a nice gentle country cycle did not mention
anywhere is that the track is graded 'advanced' to 'severe' for bikes. An easy
walk maybe, but a very challenging cycle.
Here I am on it:
 We have no photos of most of it because we were
either shattered from pushing up steep hills, or too terrified to stop going
down steep bumpy hills. The photo above makes it look easy, but it wasn't. But
it was really good fun, one of the very best things we did in NZ. We took four
days over it. The views over the Sounds are tremendous:
 This area was rapidly deforested by farming
settlers, and much of it just as quickly abandoned a few years later - just long
enough to destroy the environment. Then they planted exotic European pines which
out-compete the native bush and spread into recovering areas. The government and
local people are now waking up to the sad state of the Sounds, and doing
something about it. In the shot below you can see several dead pines sticking up
through cleared & recovering native bush:
 These dead trees have been exactly located by GPS
by a trained Ranger botanist, then individually sprayed with a contact herbicide
from a helicopter using the GPS coordinates. Very clever, and very successful.
But there is so much to do it will take many decades.
Below is the view towards Picton (base for the
inter-island ferry to the capital Wellington) from the track:
 Finishing the track:
 And waiting for the ferry at journey's
end:
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