Unbridled Pleasure In Belmont Park

Flawless weather, an entertaining route and good company, made for an excellent outing on Saturday morning, in and around Belmont Regional Park.

8am and the chaps rocked up at my house in ultra-suburban Aotea. Tiger, Nicko and Kah turned up in the cars whilst the infinitely harder Clive and Pete road in (see what I did there) from Karori. After a bit of banter and the boys making threats to do mad skids on my freshly laid lawn, we hit the trail.

Hitting the trail doesn't take long from my place. About 150m up the road you can drop onto the reserve track which heads along the stream on a 4wd all the way to Porirua station. We didn't go that far though and peeled off and up to Cannons Creek lakes before taking the right fork to the Takapu Road end. From the end of Takapu Road we thought the best plan (considering Kah and Nicko had singlespeeds) was to ride the granny gear grind up Takapu (Heartbreak) Ridge. On the Belmont Park map this is marked as a 'route' but is clearly defined and easy to follow, if not easy to ride.

My cunning plan was two fold. A - Burn off Nicko on his singlespeed as he always seems to hammer me out riding. B - Give Nick a mental breakdown by taking him on a route which usually has a reasonably sized herd of cows loitering on it. Nicko hates cows. He feels very threatened by them (in stark contrast to sheep - who feel very threatened by Nick). The plan was he would be dropped early on the SS and therefore be on his own to deal with them, with only Kah to use as bait/distraction.

Sadly there were no cows out. Let alone the herd with 'frickin lazer beams on their heads' which I hoped would be around to give Nick the good news.

Angry, Tony and me made good ground up the exhausting, slippy and long grassy pinches and gained height rapidly. However we were denied the warm shelter of the blanket of glory, as some land-mines caused wheel spinning on the last very steep sections and we were thwarted to a walk. Pete was close behind and Kah and Nick were not close behind. If you have not been up this route it is a good outing. A little tough but rewarding. give it a try.

The tops were beautiful. Great views out across Kapiti and across Welly harbour and the Orongorongos. Just a light breeze. We cruised around the Dress Circle towards Belmont trig and then headed down Honeysuckle Ridge. This track used to be narrower and has been widened by ranger Hoz to allow access to the valley with a quad bike. It is a long descent and we loved it. the constant width means there is plenty of opportunity for mildly aggressive overtaking, late braking and steaming into the bushes and off the sides. Also long enough to BBQ Nicko's brake pads. We'd definitely recommend this descent, especially with a few mates to elbow into the bush on the many switchbacks.

The wonderful and technical stretch along Koro stream was not without chuckles or incident. Nicko was riding point, with me closely behind. Splash. No sooner had I heard it when I saw Nicko lying on his side in the creek. He jumped up so fast to get back on his bike and was ashamed that he had been spotted doing such an epic fail on such an innocuous root. Further long we enjoyed trying a different line on the tree crossing. A nimble gain of the old tree piece that ramps into the creek, leads to feelings of rapture as you splash into the creek, duck the next tree and rejoin the track. Much better then the usual carry over the tree trunk. Check out Tiger Tones, Bushlove's foremost exponent of this fun line.

We climbed up to Oakleigh St via a photo-shoot for Playgirl at the Koro Dam, not realising we would be 'out-studded' by Marco minutes later. Mr Mora headed for home whilst we continued, to catch up with the Godfather of Hard. The Godfather was hard at work on his nice new retaining wall. He was itching to show us some local tracks. Sounds great we thought, lets do it. If he asks you to sample them, don't leave home without a locator beacon and a machete.

It was getting a bit late, especially for those who had made outlandish promises to they who must be obeyed, that they would perform a variety of chores or watch children. Tones and Clive headed back from Stratton St. I tried to sandbag them into riding up Middle Ridge but they ended up wrong turning and taking an easier option. Me, Godfather, Kah and Nicko headed up Danzig to ride Chopper and Big Weta. But we were all pretty tired and Kah had started crashing on uphill corners, signifying his shanks' lack of enthusiasm for much more climbing.

Godfather Of Jungle MTB Parks headed down Chopper and we headed for Round Knob and home. It was a grand end to a great ride, as we contoured round the Dress Circle in the hazy sunshine, traversed under the Knob and dropped back down to my place for a well earned coffee (stovetop of course) and a battle for the remaining cookies in the jar.



So, not a race report this time. But as one of the most 'win' mtb rides I've had in ages, I wanted to document it. We'll be doing plenty of other cracking rides over winter. Sometimes long sufferfests and sometimes shorter, easy frolics. Emphasis on a good time every time. We'll try and pop alerts on Vorb maybe, and likely through the Godfather's PNP spam emails. Come along and share your banter and lollies with us.

See you on the trails.

Davo

PS - Thanks to Ian for his continuation of our man Waghorn's good work, in developing the Tracks database we have hyperlinked above. http://www.tracks.org.nz/ Nice one Ian. An excellent resource.