Lake Kaniere. 

We have a love, hate relationship. 

Love of the beautiful body of water and amazing scenery you are. 

Hate, of your ‘supposed’ biking track. 

In the immortal words of Paul Hogan ‘that isn’t a knife’ 

Okay read track. 

We commenced our ride from the car park with high hopes and expectations. In the first 200m we saw two couples, one of whom said, ‘It gets better’.

Retrospectively, we aren’t sure which track she was referring too. It certainly wasn’t the one we were on. 

Our mountain biking became a long and arduous walk, sometimes a carry of our bikes. 

My love affair with the ‘F’ word kicked in at about the 3 hour mark. 

My desire to be a normal, couch sitting, tea drinking knitting nanna kicked in at the 4 hour mark. 

About the time the tears arrived when I knew this was definitely not what my physio, not two days prior, had said I should be doing at the moment. And I knew I would be attending a lot more physio for both elbow and torn calf than I anticipated. 

Yes. There was a solo pity party happening for at least 15 minutes. 

MoD of course to the rescue, as usual.

He ended up carrying his bike up stairs and steep inclines and then coming back for mine. 

So I got over myself and trudged on, walking, at times still carrying Bruiser over some of the lesser rises. 

There were dips and ridges and gully’s. Dry river beds full of rocks, downed trees we had to pick up our bikes and carry over. Large tree roots which suddenly appeared ahead with the potential to thrust you over the handle bars. Embedded rocks which flicked your wheel out at haphazard angles. Narrow paths with terrorising drops (for me anyway) for us to negotiate across. And blood.  In the wise words of MoD, an unforgiving track. 

But in that 11km, there was absolute beauty and serenity (except for my swearing of course). 

Blue mushrooms today, rain forests, undeniably beautiful glimpses of the lake sneaking through the bush.

Pretty stunning. 

Just the same, with an estimation of 80% walking/carrying Bruiser – and I’m choosing not to include the time and distance on the ride on the road west side of the lake – this definitely was a tough track.

Certainly not a track for riding. 

Reviews on trailforks.com claimed it was an ok, intermediate to advanced track. It also said ‘a couple of fallen trees, so you might to have dismount two or three times’. 

Hmmmmmm 

A local we saw running on day 3’s track said it used to be in much better shape but agreed that it was no longer palatable to a rider.

I foresee a rather strongly worded letter heading your way DoC.