Silly Billies Return to Roam

The forecast lately has been quite wild with some good southerly storms making their way up the country. For the first weekend of the school holidays we decided a mission was in order and luckily our friends Matt and La were keen to tag along. We spent most of Thursday night at my brothers getting absolutely nowhere with planning what to do and where to go. Everyone wanted to do something different and the weather didn't look good for our original plan of a mission in to Barker hut (hopefully with skis). Chris and I are still hooked on the idea of ski tramping, although since breaking my very light weight skis last year he has been a little less ambitious with his ideas. By the end of Friday the weather had changed again, enough to convince us that Barker hut was a go. So we whisked home from school, organised our gear and jumped in the car to collect Matt and Lara. We were taken back to China for a brief period as we stopped at Church corner to sample the menu at Yummy's...

Chris and I enjoy some Chimpanzee Drinks on the summit of Mt Una (2300m) two weeks before Godzone In October Chris raced the World Champs in Ecuador and won with Team Seagate. Following a race is always a good way to get a bit motivated, and I felt inspired to challenge myself in Godzone 2015, especially given the awesome mountain location of Wanaka. But I was teamless and I wondered if I would get the chance... In December teams started to lose members and suddenly I found myself with several potential teams. After a bit of indecision I joined Team Chimpanzee Bar - with Greig Hamilton and Milan Brodina and after a bit of further hunting, Rob Creasy. Rob had never done anything like Godzone before, but had a strong athletic background in Ironman and triathlon. Greig and I go way back on mountain missions, and Milan has lots of good adventure racing experience behind him. I was nervous about how it would be racing with a new team, but very excited as well. We spent a weekend tog...

Day Four In the morning snow blanketed the ground and thick cloud hung around the tops. Every so often snow would start drifting thickly down again. After a day spent dragging our bikes up through thick forest with no track, it was a little disappointing to have finally reached the ride-able part only to have it become unrideable again due to being covered in about a foot of snow. We made a big bowl of porridge for breakfast, then coffee, then heated up two minute noodles for morning tea. We were unsure whether to call it a hut day, or to continue. Cozy times at Ghost Lake Hut Our rations were a bit low and the snow was continuing to accumulate, so we decided it probably made sense to continue. It took us a fair while to pack and put on all our layers of warm clothes - reluctant to leave the cozy hut with its amazing views. The trail from Ghost Lake hut winds up the mountainside further, and then traverses high on the ridgetop. We had to push our bikes due to the amount of snow, ...

Day Three At Goat Creek Hut, halfway through the partially completed Ghost Ride, we woke to an overcast sky. We knew this day was going to be a challenging one... Reports weren't great for the state of the track from about 2 km up this track until we reached Ghost Lake Hut in about 18 km and up a very large hill covered in thick native bush. We set out from the hut after porridge and were happy to find we could ride quite a bit further than we thought we might be able to, including a small part of the first climb. But finally, at the site of a small tarpaulin and some pick axes, we reached the end of the road (so far). It took  us a bit of time to rearrange all the gear from our bikes into our packs, but finally bikes were hefted onto backs and we set up off some weird moonscape terrain following some pink markers. Before long these petered out and based on the map we decided there may have been a trail marked earlier heading off up the hill. So, back down we went to the track e...

Most people imagine honey moons are all about lying on beaches and drinking wine in the sunset. We decided that sounded nice, but perhaps a tad boring and unenergetic. We wanted an adventure! So, we put together our favourite things - biking, beaches (particularly wild west coast ones), good food, bush bashing, unexplored territory, mountains... presto! The Kahurangi Moon Ride! Here is our planned trip As soon as this plan came to fruition we realised one snag - the Heaphy Track was only open to bikers for one more day this season. Brown Hut became our necessary starting point, and we would have to ride through the track in one day. Day One At 8 am the dew at the Brown Hut Road end was just starting to evaporate and the sandflies just starting to gather forces. Another vehicle pulled up with three excited bikers about to ride the track as well - they were catching a helicopter back to their car that night. Using a selection of Revelate gear bags on our bikes and because we ha...