Pie stops

Looking Out from the top of Mt Cheeseman.

Shaun called me on Wednesday afternoon and suggested a mildly impromptu Christchurch bike trip, having had one rained off a couple of weeks before, after agreeing and making a quick plan. Friday morning rolled around, and I headed off to the airport.

Arriving around 9 am we headed off up to Mount Hutt for day one, having never ridden here, everything was ridden blind, a nice mix of scree up the top and Rocky tech trails down the bottom gave us everything we could have wanted. Thankfully, Shaun had a friend who was willing to let me borrow his full-power e-bike, so we managed to polish off a cool 37km and 1500m of vert in a scorching 26-degree Canterbury day.

All of this.

For Saturday we decided to head up the Cheeseman, having ridden Craigieburn together last year, we thought we would try a couple of valleys over this time. Both are club ski fields in the winter and offer some awesome biking during the summer. Around an hour and a half away from Christchurch, they are easily accessible for a weekend mission. The climb consisted mostly of a steady shingle access road climb, which luckily was sheltered, given an absolutely mint day with no wind and the sun beating down we were thankful. After scoping out a few of the marked trails, which provided some awesome natural tech, a guy who was baiting wasp stations pointed us towards a few unmarked lines. All starting above the bush line, we rode some awesome traverses across scree slopes and headed down into some decent grade 5 trails, full of drop corners and root steps. Some awesome backcountry riding to be had here.

Could possibly be the best pie stop..

Hard to beat looking at this landscape.

Another great couple of missions to start off the year, heaps of new trails ridden, maybe a few too many pies and bakery snacks.. feeling stoked to have scored these amazing trails in perfect dry conditions with a great mate! Couldn’t have asked for a better weekend.

See you soon!