We’re always looking not only at new adventure destinations but also new ways of doing adventures to cut down the faff of logistics which is usually accompanied by a higher environmental footprint for your journey.
Having never biked in the Paparoa National Park we decided it would be a great adventure to see as much as we could of it in a short window of time.
Now there’s 2 great tracks to bike in the Park, namely the Paparoa track and the Pike 29, and as you can imagine the logistics for doing both are quite complicated and/ or expensive. Ultimately logistical faff at the start and the end of a journey just means you’ve actually got less time to be out there adventuring.
To counter this we drove down the night before and settled in nicely at our favourite accommodation in this neck of the woods… The Ikamatua Hotel. This allowed us to get up early in the morning and stash an e bike in the forest at the end of the Pike 29 and carry on to Blackball to start on the Paparoa, with our aim of a 2 night adventure, 1st night in ces clarke hut, next night in Pororari hut and then returning via the Pike 29 down to the e bike that would allow us easily to loop back to the vehicle…. gold!!
We figured that we would save the last bit of the Paparoa, from Pororari to the coast as a future overnight biking up from Punakaiki.
Fully weighted down its a reasonably tough climb from Blackball to Ces Clarke hut, its roughly 740m on semi technical climbing track. We love that this orignial part of the Croesus track has been unaltered and really gives you a sense of stepping into the miners footsteps so to speak. The rough nature of the track surface was ideally suited to the full suspension bikes we decided to use , which meant we could just sit down and plod our way up to the hut. We passed many people going up or down the track, suprisingly there were actually just as many hikers as people biking the track.
Day two of the track going to Pororari hugs the alpine slopes going crossing many mountain catchments for the streams heading down into the lower vallyeys. Before long the land starts the geologically twist and you find yourself ducking in and out of alpne beech forest tottering on the edge of cliff faces with views falling away dramitcally to the coast. The final descent down towards Pororari hut would be a trackbuilders maze to find a way through the tortured terrain and out towards the coast, it looks like it was managed with some good kiwi ingenuity and a lot of explosives!!
Pororari hut is perched on the edge of a narrow ridge with views falling away on 3 sides back to the coast and glimpses inland of the cliffs ridden earlier. The hut warden appeared at the hut in the evening and gave the full history of the area and some insights into local flora and fauna.
the 3rd day involved another climb back the way we came, as we were on the last day of our adventure, our luggage was significantly lightened so we made good speed on the climb back up to the ridge to enjoy lunch and the views before setting off to the alpine start of the Pike 29 track. From the start you can look back into the valley and see the various access and ventilation shafts for the mine, It’s really quite amazing to get a perspective and how far up the valley and under the hills they accesed for mining.
The pike 29 track descent is a super fun ride. Its built so well for bikers you have to pinch yourself and check your speed occasionally to allow for walkers on the dual use track. You get a super long almost 900m descent down to the bottom carpark, with the vegetation changing through the different elevation bands.
The ebike was found easily and it took less than 40 minutes to get back round to Blackball before being able to drive back round to pick up the bikes and other rider.
We had a really good time on the track , and using the e bike allowed us to spend more time actually on bikes than in transit.
We’ve already decided on another mixed bag adventure to knock off the last section we haven’t done, which involves locking 2 mountain bikes at the top of Bullock creek road , then driving round to Fox river to hike the inland pack track to the bikes at Bullock creek, riding from there to a night in Punakaiki campground, next day up to Pororari for a sunset overnight, then back down to the coast and back to the vehicle… that’ll be a good 4 day adventure for sure!!
