Riding high on a Great Walk
A dream realised on Paparoa Track
My Paparoa Track Great Walk experience began long before it became great. You see, where I now rest on top of the West Coast’s Paparoa Range on the track’s official opening day was, four years ago, my campsite that was anything but restful.
A violent storm raged, gales flattened my tent, and rain poured from above like heaven’s riot hose.
Laying damp in the darkness, I wondered if I would ever get this survey completed, could anyone wrangle our country’s latest Great Walk from this staunch wilderness?
Perched here now, on a magic West Coast day, I am rewarded with the answer stretched out before me, and I realise my Paparoa Track experience has become two-fold. Firstly, as part of a 10-week track survey team to find the alignment and establish gradients suited to walkers and riders and, secondly, returning now on opening day to map the track for the Great Rides App.
Our first track survey began with a helicopter flight to the top. My companion was conservation ranger Dave, who was my pal in the hills for the following few months. Our task was clear: take a rough line on a map and translate it into a bluetaped line on the ground.
We were one of two survey teams working at opposite ends of the map. One team started at Blackball, the other at Punakaiki. Unlike the trail builders that came later with excavators, chainsaws and shovels, our skills were the ability to grovel through rough terrain and use tools such as maps, GPS units, and a shiny silver clinometer.
My Swedish clinometer is no larger than a matchbox, with a hole in the side for one eye to look through at a rolling gauge measuring gradient to achieve a 1:10 grade, while my other eye looks across the terrain. Hanging around my neck it sways as I walk like some hippy medallion – a modern aid to make the backcountry grade.
Our first week in the subalpine zone was in blinding clag. Together we formed a system of exploring nature’s canvas, sketching up the best route in our minds, then confirming the line by painting the track alignment with blue tape. The work was physical and creative. Every few hours the cloud briefly parted, giving us a tiny glimpse of the terrain ahead – that is when the big mountain tops become our circus stage.
Like a clumsy clown in large boots, I raced around on the uneven ground to get views, sometimes cartwheeling over tussock mounds.
How we found our lost GPS unit in waist-high grasses after one of my cartwheeling mishaps is still a mystery to me.
Each week in the hills was different. One week, I worked on the Pike29 Memorial branch. Close to the mine portal, we laid out the groundwork, the Pike men never far from our thoughts as they lay deep underground.
Another week, we discovered karst springs and found a route that follows a historic pack track.
My favourite week, though, was the Pike escarpment. This 5km long, 300-metre precipitous face looks as if a sculptor ran out of clay and only shaped half a mountain. This feature rightly became the poster shot of the track, and my imagination ran wild with route choices, while I tried to envisage biking along its razorback edge.
My final track alignment memory, though, was our reunion with the second survey team. High on the escarpment, we tied together the blue ribbon track lines and ate jet plane lollies, before we flew out together and went our separate ways.
Over the next few years, three track-building teams worked hard on the steep, wet Westland terrain. Like our time in tents, they too were tested by the elements. Ex-tropical cyclones sent torrents that destroyed new bridges, and slips that washed away freshly-built track, something that culminated in the track having to open in stages.
Finally, it was announced that the fully completed track was ready for opening, and I returned on the last official day of summer to be one of the first along its way.
I am ready to ride, reflect and record data for the app. Pushing play on the GPS units, I pass under the carved gateway at the Blackball end and ride to the tops. By lunch, I reach the spot where our
survey party first landed, the untracked now tracked, and I love the riding experience.
At the far end of the ridge, just short of our weather-beaten survey camp, I reach the luxury of the backcountry Moonlight Tops Hut. It has stunning views, with its windows gazing across the valley to the edge of the escarpment.
Just behind the hut, the closed section of track opens the following day – only one more sleep.
Opening morning dawns cool and clear. The escarpment walls are in shadow, as the sun casts beams over its edge. All eight of us who overnighted together eat quietly, silenced as we watch the golden glow strike the closed section of track. The morning’s rays reflect off freshly laid quartz gravel, beckoning our party to explore the beautifully glistening path.
Enlightened and loaded, we accept the invitation. We leave the hut early, all keen to be the first visitors on the track. We pedal our way past the remains of the tattered closure tape, cut open earlier by our hut warden with her pruning saw.
The track takes a cross-country route through the mossy cloud forest to reach the Pike saddle. Here, we regroup. We peer far down into the forest to see the mine’s ventilation shaft, and pause for a moment to consider the lost.
Then, onward. The jagged escarpment is just around the corner and looks not unlike the sharp teeth of our warden’s saw. The landform lies like a giant, our senses alert as we cross its lair. The track is only a metre from the precipice, the spurs of the backbone are like ribs covered in a skin of tilted rock. The hut warden’s geology talk from last night comes alive, as we traverse this massive, ruptured fault on our knobbly tyres.
Dropping off this beast is epic. Below me, it’s near-vertical, with a slightly more gentle drop-off farther down the escarpment. I am impressed the other track survey team found a rideable route off this bluff, taking the rider between cliffs and down the seemingly impossible slope. All credit to the trail builders who safely crafted a track that floats like a magic carpet, skirting bluffs to land us back on the floor of the cloud forest. We ride on amazed.
The forest down here is damp and draped in hanging moss. We ride under rocks the size of backcountry huts, and cross a bridge that sits under a towering waterfall. My riding party are full of gasps and wows before I too cross and my sounds of wonder are extracted by the splendour.
Back under the canopy, we reach the new Pororari Hut, where I bid farewell to my travelling companions who stop to rest.
I ride on alone past pleasant pools, squeezing through tight canyons and on to the flowing, forested and fun-filled trail. I encounter other visitors beginning their adventure in the opposite direction as I reach my journey’s end.
Wow! What a ride! It’s my new favourite. My Great Walk was long, starting with the first track surveying helicopter trip and finishing today with a selfie – a visual record of the first person to complete the track on opening day, and now one of my celebration photos for the Paparoa Track on the Great Rides App.