New Trail at Totara MTB Park
And we're involved!
With Auckland's Totara Park becoming recognised as a much overdue success story for MTB in New Zealand's largest city, cyclewaynewzealand's very own Gabb has been involved in the next stage: getting more trails in there.
After getting to know the Auckland Council contacts and meeting a few freindly local riders such as Mike 'Idle Idol' Breen, Gabb has worked with Auckland MTB Club President Hayden Russell on the design of a new trail that will utilise a new fenced off section of the park (no cow s%*&tting all over the tracks, yah!).
On this page, we'll keep you up to date on progress...click here for the latest bit.
Late 2011
The guys meet Vince from Auckland Council and Les who was the contractor for the build of the existing trails. Both fine blokes quickly understood the desire for more kilometres of trail and so when news came through of the fencing project we jumped at the opportunity to squeeze in a few hundred metres of track.
This would also be an opportunity to show that MTB trails don't need to be heavily engineered to work well. Hopefully this will be demonstrated once the trail opens.
March 2012
Kicking things into gear, Elvis Zaskarelli, the Idol and the Russler hit the area to scope out the potential.
As the goal is to make the trail nice and rideable for the majority of skill levels, the Russ shot out and scored the crew a Clinometer so that they could ensure a steady-ish climb gradient of around 5 degrees. The Clinometer also helped with the descent section of the trail in regards to speed control (avoid over braking/skids etc.).
So after a few hours of walking talking and flagging, the lads stood back and admired a confusing miriad of pink, blue and orange survey flags which would serve to give direction to the next step in the process - weed spraying the line to give the digger dude and easy path to follow.
On the Friends of Totara Park Facebook site for supporters of the MTB Park, it was easy to see that local riders were hyped about the prospect of a bit of new single track to enjoy. None more than local Greg Simmons who had clocked up an enormous 4500km on the Totara Park trails since they were built!
All that riding has been good for Greg - he has lost over 15kg since taking up the sport!
One of Greg's comments: "Spoke to one of the other dads from The Gardens School out on the track last night. We came up with at least 7 men and 2 women in the neigbourhood that have gone out and got mountain bikes BECAUSE there are tracks to ride in Totara Park and they wanted to do something about getting fit. I'm sure there a re a lot more."
Good on you Greg and good on you Auckland Council!
Cows Like Pink - No sooner had the lads marked out the trail, the cows mooooved in to stomp all over the flags.
April 2012
After a few false calls, it was time for the next great step: spraying the line. So Mike and Gabb met up with Alan who has done much weed control and planting in Totara Park before. It was good that the riders were there as the cows had dealt to a lot of the flags and, because the trail does a fair amount of weaving to maximise the area used, it would have been tough for Alan to work it all out.
It was a greatly productive afternoon and the lads left buzzing with anticipation...
Thursday the Twelth finally came and it was time to scrape off the paddock grass with a digger. For that, Vince called in the ever faithful Les from Timco to bring in Digger Dude Fela, a top bloke with great skills with a blade. You can see the work in action on the vid below that Elvis Z threw together.
With the locals hyped up, Mike already had a Working Bee arranged to quickly get in and add the aggregate to the trail before the cows got in and messed things up.
As of the 24th we have had 2 very successful working bees and a third is planned for the weekend of the 28th by which stage all the aggregate should be laid down and it will be down to final trail tweaking and the 2 rock crossings.
And that's where we're at!
See the vid!
Yeah! As usual, Gabb has been doing his best to record the whole thing and so here's a quick edit of things so far...
Totara Park MTB Trails, Manukau, Auckland, New Zealand from Elvis Zaskarelli on Vimeo.
And here is a quick vid of www.cyclewaynewzealand.co.nz's Gabb ripping into some work on the other new trail that was part of this project, Zebzag;
Location
The Main Carpark to the park is the end of Wairere Road in Manurewa (90 Wairere Rd, Manurewa) although riders are being encouraged to parl at the highpoint parking lot off Redoubt Road where you dive straight into the trails with the downhill Hub Link.
Totara Park is close to Manukau City Centre and is only 10 minutes from Auckland Airport.