Well as they say, time flies when you’re having fun.
Whilst it’s been quiet on the interweb of late, it doesn’t mean a lot hasn’t been happening!
We’ve been having a blast working and playing on the land as well as IRL intruding at times.
Here’s a wee recap.
Boom!
You may recall we got stuck on extending the River Track (From the Other End) by a rather inconvenient rock ridge. Well thanks to our awesome neighbour and club member Andrew, that annoying rock ridge went Boom!
New Map
We’ve made a new and glorious map, all updated and easier to follow. Also new instructions and guides around where and what to ride. Available for all club members!
Open for Business
We are now actively marketing the park, we have enough tracks and things to do to keep everyone occupied, so come on out! We’ve had a heap of groups and visitors over summer and we thank everone who came out and had fun. Help spread the word, you will notice some posters around and we appreciate people telling your friends about us.
We don’t turn anyone away (if we are open,) but we do ask that you contact us first to arrange a time to visit, if you aren’t a club member.
To know if we are OPEN or CLOSED, scroll up to the top of our website, follow us on FaceBook or Twitter.
Groups & Families
We love having groups and families use the Park – that’s why we built it. We have plenty of spaces to rest, talk and take in the scenery. The skills/picnic area is a great place for people to while away the time whilst others burn off their extra energy.
The Skills Area
The Top Tracks
The Top Tracks have had the jungle beaten back, the chest high grass mown and sprayed, so over winter you can check out the awesome snow capped Southern Alps. You can also see the bottom of the valley shivering under the frosts, but you will be toasty warm having climbed to the top. It’s a great feeling! You then get to double your fun by screaming back downhill.
School Visits
Another couple of super successful school visits have occurred as well. They are so much fun, it’s great to see kids out enjoying themselves. If your school or community group wants to come on out, we’d love to host you. There is never a charge.
Ali Track
The thing that’s been keeping us all rather busy for months has been helping Ali with his big new hand built track. It’s had a number of names, Ali has kind of settled on a name, but we will keep it secret until we’ve finished. So for now, it’s Ali Track. At the moment, it at least 800m long with about 38 corners. This is amongst some great native regeneration and exciting terrain. Ali is pretty proud of what he’s achieved and to be frank it looks fantastic! I can’t wait for the chance to ride it. Here is a teaser video of the track in it’s early stages. We have done a heap since then and expanded the track quite a bit as well. Expect a new video out soon! We’d love a hand to complete it before Christmas, Ali kindly comes out every week to put 5hrs into the project – impressive huh! What’s an hour or so every month compared to that!
Rain & Snow
With winter in it’s throes, Christchurch has had a fair dumping of rain and snow. Sadly but gladly, we had no snow and not a deluge of rain at Haven MTB Park. We have had little or no track damage, nothing that can’t be fixed pretty quickly by hand. We have had a couple of pines commit suicide on the Lower Tracks, so we will need to buzz them up before reopening the Park. But that won’t be too far away. Once this recent rain settles down, we will reopen the Top Tracks.
What’s Next?
So what’s next, we have a great number of cunning plans what with extending open trail work, a couple of new digger tracks and another hand built traversing singletrack. We have plenty of trees that need a home and soon it will be spring when we will start to fight back nature and enjoy the trails over Summer.
We hope to see you soon.
May you wheels remain forever true
Mr Haven