Thursday, October 20, 2016

Vegas 1: Cratered Moons Saturday 15th

The crew: Phatboy, 'Jaws, Tinks, Nelsie, Buggs, Dozer, Foxy, Cookie and me; flew to Auckland first thing Friday morning and got a van with 3 spare seats and a big furniture trailer, drove through to Rotovegas, all the while watching the rain clouds approaching from the west.  Arrived in the afternoon and grocery shopped etc and weather pretty much packed in as predicted, raining all night.  Just over 10 years since the last time a smaller crew had played up there and watched the world cup.

2W Enduro event was being held in the Whakarewarewa forest on Saturday, and a few rainshowers still around we decided to head down to Taupo and explore the Craters of the Moon mtb park.  Rolled into town and eventually found a bikeshop that'd sell us a pass (everyone had run out), a map, and off we headed.  Parked up, people faffed, and we got riding.

Cant even begin to name all the trails, but they included Hammer it?  Ground Effect Grinder, Deb's Track, Mr and Missus, Young Pines, OutBack, Retro, Luge, and Coaster.  There were a couple others in there too.  Was fun; sort of Bottle Lake on the hill.  Our only criticisms were that perfectly good climbs were ruined by short brief down hills, and perfectly good downhills were ruined by annoying little climbs.  You never quite new what to expect and so the flow got wrecked.  The 'Outback' bit was way shorter than I'd expected it to be, considering the first series of trails we'd ridden hardly covered any ground, and on the map the Outback area looked like twice the size, but suddenly we were heading back and I wondered what'd happened.  We left the whole area between the carpark and the river alone, pretty much, with most of us just hopping over there to play on a jumpy bit.  Rating out of 10, a generous 6 maybe?  Good effort, and would be great place to exercise if you lived there, but as a destination, it just wasnt quite enough for us.

22kms ridden, and we only gained 468m.

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