A Dangerous Business

Date: 11th December 2023

Start: Camp Epic, Piropiro (km 975.4)

End: Ongarue (km 1016.6)

Distance Travelled: 41.1 km

Total Distance Completed: 943.5 km

Song Currently Stuck in Head: Colours by Voyager

Days Since I Last Hiked with a Man: 5

When I woke up and walked over to the camp kitchen, I was met with a scene of breakfast-based chaos. It may have been a big kitchen, but everyone was trying to use it at the same time. People darting around frying eggs, making toast, and brewing coffee. Oh yes, the eggs. The camp had been provided with, oh maybe 3 dozen eggs, most of which were gone by the time I got to them. No time to lose, then. I squeezed myself next to a gas hob and got cooking, doing my toast and coffee at the same time. Certainly not the most peaceful of breakfasts I’ve ever had, but once it was done I could retreat from the chaos and eat it in peace.

Thoughts now turned to the track ahead. It’s a bit further than yesterday, but should be easier going. There was no need to dart off immediately, so we took our time in packing up, eventually saddling up just before 10am. Our rested bodies then had to endure a short climb out of camp to reach the longest bridge of the trail.

Not pictured above is just how high the bridge is, over 50 m above the creek below. The wind – thankfully – was calm, making it easy to ride across, but I can see how daunting it would be in worse conditions. Speaking of which, the rain had left us behind, now greeted by a mostly overcast day with the occasional cameo from the sun to warm us up.

A steep (in cycling terms) climb awaited us on the other end of the bridge, with most of our little party choosing to walk up the worst bits. By “most” I mean all of us; I didn’t see the point in burning all my energy on this little 2.5 km climb. Apart from Anne and myself, everyone took a break at the top. I was feeling good, the pain in my right arm having mysteriously disappeared, and Anne just doesn’t take breaks. A short drop took us to the terminus of what was once a bush tramway built to haul timber off the hills to the main railway at Ongarue.

The gradients were indeed nicer, the track surface was a mixed bag. Like yesterday, there were spurts of gravel track where I felt free to go as quick as I liked, but then there were others which were covered in rocks and ruts that I had to navigate over. Despite the obstacles, it was a beautiful trail, passing through dense, lush forest, the kilometres passing by very quickly.

I was alone by this point, having passed Anne on a hill further back. Maybe stupidly I had packed my satellite messenger into my big pack that was now sitting in a Camp Epic van somewhere, but I still had my first aid kit with me and knew that my friends were carrying their PLBs in the event that I did something silly. Normally I would always be down for something silly, just not whilst riding a bike on a semi-bumpy surface. So I kept pedalling along until I reached Historic Camp #11, my lunch break for today. Anne soon joined me, followed by… no one. There was no sign of the others. Normally that’s not a biggie, I’d just pack up and move on, but we were nearing the 1000 km mark of the trail and I figured it’d be more special to arrive there as a group. Figuring they had lunch at the previous shelter, we had a short nap whilst we waited.

It took an hour before they finally arrived and we set off together as a full party of 6. Far Out pointed to a random bridge being the marker for 1000 km, however on the other side a more memorable memorial had been created.

I don’t know how it got here or who placed it, but I’m glad there’s an actual milestone – or rather a milebath – for such an important distance. One-third of Te Araroa was complete. That felt both like an amazing accomplishment and that we hadn’t gone anywhere at all. The truth, as they say, is somewhere in between.

Once again setting off as a group, everyone stopped again after only 2 km at a lookout point. I was getting a bit sick of all these frequent breaks so I pressed on. I later learnt that there was a good reason for stopping there: it had mobile reception and they had called ahead to Taumarunui Canoe Hire to enquire whether our chosen start date for the Whanganui River section was available (it was).

Now alone and carefully descending down the tramway, I came to another point of interest, the Ongarue Spiral.

If you’ll allow me to be slightly nerdy for a bit, spirals on railways are really cool to me. Trains need to run on much shallower grades than say a car needs, making for quite the headaches when it comes to building a route through a mountain range. For the tramway here, they needed to reach the upper slopes of the forest. Spirals are a great – albeit slow – way of getting your rail line to rise vertically over a small horizontal distance. There’s another example of this on the main North Island line at Raurimu.

My route took me on a bridge over the trail, followed by a shallow anti-clockwise descent into a short but very dark tunnel, appearing on the other side going underneath the bridge I was just on.

From then on I followed a smooth gravel slope down the mountain to a forestry road, barely needing to pedal at all. It’s always nice when gravity works with you and not against you. The trail then took me past several farm fields, at long last arriving at Camp Epic’s HQ in Ongarue.

Together with a volunteer organisation who helps maintain the Timber Trail, they had set up a free campsite next door, complete with flushing toilets, picnic tables, and an indoor shelter. Next to the HQ was a van filled with our packs, and I can remember thinking that it was a shame that they couldn’t just transport them for the rest of the North Island. Anne joined me soon after, followed closely behind by Snacks and Vicky and finally Sonja and Maud. A round of tent drying followed, as did a proposal to sleep inside the shelter tonight to avoid needing to pack up our tents in the morning. Probably not the safest option regarding fire safety (and it’s probably generally frowned upon), but everyone except Anne took up the offer. We then enjoyed a beautiful sunny evening before making our way to the shelter for a rather cosy night. Sleep, surprisingly, did not come quickly for me. I wasn’t that tired so I spent a solid hour just listening to music before eventually turning my phone off. Tomorrow would be back to the roads and to my feet moving me forward instead of wheels. I had a lot of fun cycling the Timber Trail but I don’t think I’d want to do the whole island by bike, not without training a tonne beforehand.

And next time I’m definitely hiring an e-bike.