Training Log Archive: KFish

15# pack

Tracks, posts, and pictures from NZ added. You cant turn your head and not see something amazing. Hope to go back some day.

Hit year goal for foot travel!

Nice day for a bike, still some fall colors left.

Bought a pass. Mostly bouldering. got a new V2-4, and made some progress on a 3-5

Run around schenley park, my old stomping grounds.

whakarewarewa redwoods forest mountain bike rotorua
Made a few stops on the way to rotorua to watch boiling mud pools and wade in a geothermal creek callled kerosene creek, then on to rotorua. After doing some research on things to do we found an expansive mountain bike park rated as one of the best in the world, and decided to rent bikes. We rented low end hard tail giants, and ended up with sizes a little too small. Coupled with no cages or clips, and tires pumped to max, it wasn't the most comfortable ride. Even still we had a blast bombing around the trails, which were all exquisitely maintained and varied from redwood forests, palm trees, logging roads, downhills with jumps. We didn't put a dent in the 140 km of trails in our four hour rental, but we made the most of it. I bashed my shin quite painfully once when my foot slipped off the pedal, reminding me why I prefer clips (it's a 4 inch gash and a tad infected... oops). There's also a pretty awesome map of the area that let us pick trails the right length and difficulty - I wonder if they ever do mtbo here!

Dubbed as the most popular one day hike in New Zealand this was a must do for us. Arranged a shuttle to and from our cabin and caught it at 7am. It dropped us with a view of mt ngauruhoe in the distance. The hike started with a shallow climb up the valley to the base of ngauruhoe with a brief side trip to soda springs waterfall. At the base it turned sharply up to a steep but manicured climb up to the lip of the south crater. The hike was quite busy from the start, which had us racing a little bit to find a spot where we could be in relative peace, which was a little awkward, but eventually we settled into a good spot, but still leapfrogged a couple other couples through the hike. Once we hit the steep part we passed a lot of people who stopped to rest. Once we were up to he south crater the hike was awesome and felt like we were on another world! We were in a shallow red/yellow crater with hot sun and strong winds that felt like it could be mars, and surrounded by snow peaked mountains a few hundred meters taller thAn us. After crossing the crater we climbed another steep section, less well manicured and loose rocky dirt up to the lip of red crater, which again looked otherworldly. We followed the lip of this crater up to the highest point of our climb which afforded us views of the emerald lakes and blue lake below us, but still on he mountain. We then climbed down to close up views of the emerald lakes, which were thermal pools with a weird green color. We the. Continued back up a bit to the blue lake, which comparatively wasn't as cool, but would be confusing on an o map due to its higher elevation. At this point clouds started to move in and our views out the other side were obscured most of the way down, but when it did clear up it was evident the views weren't as stunning as those we had already seen, so no great loss. We stopped for lunch at a hut on the side of the mountain meant for shelter in the case of bad weather, and then continued down to catch the shuttle. It took us about 5.5 hours, and we dragged our feet for the descent because it was clear we were going to get down well before the shuttle would show up at 7 hours. This was may favorite hike of the trip and a must do for any visitors to NZ!