Entering uncharted territory
Gary Patterson cycled 3500km to create an app for the country’s best cycle trails, writes Lorna Thornber.
As far as work stories go, Gary Patterson’s are pretty impressive. A cartographer specialising in cycle tracks, it’s his job to make uncharted territory chartered.
He and his trusty lightweight Aluxx aluminium steed have taken on some of the world’s toughest and most spectacular terrain in the line of duty: the Jamaican Blue Mountains, Canadian forests ruled by grizzly bears, the glacier-studded peaks and troughs of the Patagonian Andes where, Patterson says, he went about his business ‘‘with condors gliding peacefully just over my helmet.’’
‘‘I’ve been self-employed for nearly 10 years and fortunate enough to map in some remote and frigid locations,’’ Patterson – clearly a cold weather man – says, citing sub-Antarctic South Georgia and the Macquarie Islands as highlights. Duty has also called him to Fiji, Africa and ‘‘other exotic places on almost every continent’’.
Originally from the Waikato and now based in Kingston, just down the lake from Queenstown, Patterson studied environmental planning and mapping at university, moving to Fox Glacier a few years after graduating to project manage new walking trails for the Department of Conservation (DOC).
It was on the West Coast that he got into mountainbiking in a big way, receiving a serendipitous offer in 2010 to lead a team of Kiwis charged with building mountainbike trails in Portugal. By hand.
‘‘This led to a similar trail-building stint in Patagonia, Chile,’’ the now 44-year-old says.
‘‘From there, I started to map mountainbike trails fulltime, riding my bike with GPS units in some of the most remote and scenic spots on the world map.’’
In New Zealand, recent ‘‘working adventures’’ have seen him hit the trails of the Wairoa Gorge near Nelson – the mountainbike park was recently gifted to DOC – and Paparoa National Park, where he spent 10 weeks navigating thickly forested karst and alpine landscapes to work out the trail alignment for the Paparoa mountain bike and tramping track, set to open later this year.
The project closest to his heart though has been developing an app for the 22 Great Rides that make up the New Zealand Cycle Trail.
The cycling equivalent of the Great Walks, the trails are said to offer the best adventures you can have in Aotearoa on two non-motorised wheels, and range from sightseeing jaunts as leisurely as you’d like to make them, to hardcore tests of endurance.
Patterson came up with the idea for the app after getting ‘‘a little disoriented’’ along the 300-kilometre Alps 2 Ocean Trail between Aoraki/ Mt Cook and Oamaru (no selfrespecting cartographer likes to admit to being completely lost).
Searching for an app to give him guidance, he was surprised to find there weren’t any.
And so, in a display of classic Kiwi No 8 wire mentality, he decided to make one himself. And fund it. No matter that he’d never developed an app before.
After six months of initial research, he got down to the business of building the app in September 2016, thereby committing himself to riding all 22 trails – he needed to collect GPS data and take notes and photos. He was pretty sure he’d found himself the perfect job.
‘‘What better way to ride the greatest trails in our land than to be able to call it work?,’’ he, rather smugly, says.
There’s no doubt it was hard yakka though.
‘‘Overall, it took a year of hard work to bring the app to life. We took tens of thousands of photos, made several million GPS tracking points and got really fit along the way.’’
Launched in April 2017, the free app is now an official partner of the New Zealand Cycle Trail, and has been used by trailblazers nearly 100,000 times.
Patterson hopes it will reach its 35,000th download by the end of the current riding season.
It took Patterson, often
accompanied by his wife, six months to complete the Great Rides. Having to ‘‘backtrack’’ – read: re-find their way after getting lost – added 1000km to what should have been 2500km in the saddle.
‘‘I had some wild times with washed-out trails, seemingly endless climbs, snowy passes and spilt blood,’’
he says. ‘‘Yet the glow of the retreating sunsets, the grandeur of mountain backdrops and taste of trail-side cafe treats picked me up again.’’
Going back to the spilt blood, Patterson clarifies that it was only a small amount – mostly from scratches.
‘‘Surprisingly, I only took one tumble – when I was riding the Old Ghost Rd.’’
On a steep climb when friends ahead suddenly came to a halt, he put his foot down on the edge of a bank and ‘‘with the extra weight of the overnight gear, the bike attacked. But it was only a small tumble’’.
He’s pretty careful on the trails, he says, as he wants to live to ride another day, and the expensive electronics in his backpack provide extra incentive.
The 85km Old Ghost Rd, which begins in the ghost town of Lyell and traces an old gold-mining route through the Mokihinui River gorge, proved one of his biggest app-related adventures.
New Zealand’s longest backcountry mountain bike and tramping track, the Old Ghost begins with a gut-busting ascent through native bush, giving you brief respite at what feels like the top of the world before re-testing your stamina and survival instincts through often-hazardous and sometimes-impassable stretches of the West Coast mountain ranges.
‘‘Fortunately, there are plenty of huts that you can stay in overnight, negating the need to carry up a heavy tent or gas cooker,’’ Patterson says.
‘‘I rode the Old Ghost with a few friends and stayed near Ghost Lake Hut in one of the bivs. It’s a real blessing to ride such a well-built and scenic trail with such outstanding views.’’
The 38km Dun Mountain trail, which follows New Zealand’s first railway line, is his favourite front country ride. Largely because it feels like it’s in the back-country.
‘‘Leaving Nelson, it climbs to the sub-alpine ultramafic mineral belt along some real scenic trail,’’ he says.
As a bonus: ‘‘It’s a day ride and, even better, a loop.’’
The Old Ghost Rd is his favourite back country trail proper, but the Waikato River, Twin Coast, St James and West Coast Wilderness trails also hold extraspecial places in his heart.
‘‘Having been brought up in the Waikato, I was pleasantly surprised by the greatness of the Waikato River Trail. I expected farmland and riding near the road, but it was primarily under canopy and beside the river and we saw sights that are just not possible by vehicle.’’
The 87km Twin Coast Trail, the newest of the Great Rides, is another standout, he says, offering up a diversity of distinctly Northland sites and experiences as it zig-zags from the Bay of Islands on the east coast to the Hokianga Harbour on the west.
Think some of New Zealand’s earliest Ma¯ ori and European settlements, Kaikohe of demolition derby fame, the love-em-or-hate-em Kawakawa toilets, pub and pie shop-centric towns, where every other backyard is a car graveyard.
The 64km St James Cycle Trail, meanwhile, which passes through mountain-backed alpine meadows in Canterbury’s St James Conservation Area, ‘‘gives a real remote feeling, riding past backcountry huts and chilling rivers’’.
As for the West Coast Wilderness Trail, it does, Patterson feels, what it says on the tin.
‘‘After living on the coast for many years, this relatively easy trail is a perfect way to taste a heap of what the West Coast dishes up.’’
Surprisingly (to this irregular cyclist at least), Patterson says he wasn’t all that saddlesore after 12 months astride his steed.
‘‘One of the good things about mapping a trail is that you cannot do it too fast. We eased into the tracks, collecting data along the way.’’
There were times, however, when the weather forced them to pick up the pace.
‘‘On one trip we rode for two continuous weeks with some long 12-hour days on the bike to achieve what was needed for the app.’’
There’s no doubt, he says, that the trails have made him a better rider, but they cater for cyclists of all levels.
Patterson feels that cycling offers a near-ideal pace for travelling, giving you time to absorb the details of your surroundings while still being time efficient.
‘‘A cycle trail like St James would be a three-day experience if walked,’’ he says. ‘‘On a bike it took a day and I still got time to sit beside the lakes and rivers and soak in the natural hot pool.
A few of the greatest things about the Great Rides, he says, is that they vary (greatly) in their length, level of difficulty and the landscapes and climate zones they pass through.
‘‘Bring or hire a bike, ride a trail or just a section of one,’’ he says. ‘‘If you haven’t cycled for a while you know what they say. It’s just like riding a bike.’’