monchopper's high country trip report

[monchopper]

After much mapping, researching, phoning farmers etc the day had arrived.

Unfortunately due to the Christchurch earthquake and a bike not putting itself together on time numbers were heavierly reduced from 11 down to 4. 1 x Berg 570, 1 x 530 exc, 1 x 450 exc, 1 x KLX300

The 530 exc I was to be riding was stuck at Superior's due to the 'quake, but a friend kindly lent me his spare 09 450exc which was greatly appreciated.
We set off towards Albury with the intention of doing a pre-ride ride but once settled in at the Albury Tavern and had a couple of pints that idea went quickly out the window.

Day 1. A bit of slow start due to the number of beers consumed the night before. From Albury we followed the Albert Rd up the Mawaro River to the top of the Mt Nessing road then straight up to the summit of the Hunter Hills just south of Mt Nessing.
We headed south along the summit. To say this track is bloody rough is an understatement. It was bloody hard going in places and not for the faint hearted. Steep, rocky, narrow in places, tussock hiding ruts and rocks alike. One of boys took tumble over the side and managed to cling onto some tussock to prevent a nasty slide of a couple of hundred metres. Luckerly the only other hiccup was a flat tyre which was dealt with in about 40 mins. Glad we did it but wouldn't be hurrying back. Parts of it makes the first part of the challenge stage of the Dusty Butt look like SH1.
Once we had got towards the southern of the end Hunters we headed west towards Cattle Creek and took several farm tracks around the North Branch of the Waihao River. One of highlights was an extremely steep descent into a gully which once started wasn't possible to stop. So it was case of picking your line and running with it.
We came out on the Old Kaiwarua Rd at Kinbrace and headed towards Kaiwarua Station where beer, food, beds and petrol awaited us.

Day 2.
It's fair to say the shearers huts at Kaiwarua aren't somewhere you'd take the missus on a romantic weekend. It was rated at 1/4 star by the group. First up was a run over the Campbell Hills, mostly grass tracks which was contrasting from the previous day. Then onto Kurow for a pit stop. Next up was the now famous Challenge stage of the Dusty Butt (Well the bit through to Guffies Creek). Having read all the comments from the Dusty Butt it was included in our itinerary and we weren't disappointed. From there we went out the Mt Buster Road to Naseby and onto Ranfurly. While having a pint in Ranfurly the rain came and it came in hard so we decided to park up at the Ranfurly Hotel to drink beer and watch rugby.
Days 3 and 4 to follow....

[marks]

good stuff

keep it coming

Did you leave a car/trailer/van at Albury?

[CrazyFrog]

Great effort Simon, look forward to picking your brains a bit more about route details, this area could be on the cards for me in April.
Bummer about the Christchurch lads having to pull the pin, but under the circumstances, who could blame them.

Keep the pics coming

[bart]

Good stuff. A real adventure.

[monchopper]

good stuff

keep it coming

Did you leave a car/trailer/van at Albury?

Yep. The Albury Tavern has a big empty section out the back. Geraldine the publican was more than helpful!! Good cook too.

[monchopper]

Some more photos from Days 1 and 2

Photo 1 and 2. Challenge Stage DB between Awakino and and Hut Creek Hut.
Photo 3. Mustering the sheep over Guffies Creek

[monchopper]

Another slow start due to high alcohol consumption. Regardless of number of beers it seems to take the best part of 2 hours from wake up to on the road. Although a rear sprocket change was performed in this time and unfortunately the oil has started to transfer from the gearbox to the engine on the 450 I’m riding and needs a close eye and the occasional transfer back.

A southerly had blown through overnight and the Kakanui and the Hawkdun range’s both had snow on them. We set off at great pace and blasted over Danseys towards our first track of the day a run up to Mt Pisgah. It was great run up to Pisgah, fast rolling terrain with steep sections but not too many pace dulling rocks in the way. At about 1400 asl we got into the snow line and the cloud, it was cold and windy. Once at the summit of Pisgah (1643) we head back down the Pisgah Spur and below the cloud and snow. Again a fast run down to Livingstone, plenty of mid speed drifting on the sweeping, well maintained road.

Then a nasty road section to Kurow via Duntroon. At Kurow we refuelled body and motor. Looking towards our next destination the Kirkliston Range which had a decent covering of snow especially on the higher peaks. We were trying to work out the altitude of the snow line using the topo map. We were asking the locals what was the peak in distance covered in snow, none of them knew. Then the local fish and game officer turned up in his 4wd, he was able to confirm that the peak was Mt Milne. From this we worked out that the max altitude we were to be riding next would have some light snow be not too dangerous for an afternoon ride.

Next up another pesky road section up the Haka Pass to Cattle Creek then a run up to Haldon Downs at the northern end of the Kirkliston Range. From here we crossed Basin Stream and headed up to the southern end of the Little and Big ranges we then headed east towards Lake Benmore high above the Innes Burn then headed south to the ridge high above the Blackforest road to the east. We dropped down onto the Blackforest Road at Montys Saddle.

For me his was most disappointing part of the trip as I had spent allot of time negotiating access (discussing public liability) and had bowed to a demand to pay an access charge for ‘Track maintenance’ which I normally try to avoid, but some parts of the country you just gotta see and a $10 fee isn't going t stop you.

Track maintenance my bollocks! It was heavy going, really heavy in places, we had to walk the bikes across the headwaters of Ross Stream and by the time we got to the ridge above the Blackforest Road it was starting to get into the evening and with only a hour or so of daylight left we were wishing some track maintenance had been done. We had to take it easy for several reasons, we were tired, the light was fading, going over the side wasn’t a nice prospect and the risk of a flat tyre from a rock hit. Then the main battery on the GPS went. We had no choice but to hook up the aux battery which took 10 minutes of precious daylight. We found the track down to Montys saddle and rode up to Blackforest station in near darkness. At this stage we were thankful that there wasn’t the full complement of riders as we would’ve been riding the last parts in the dark with dull endure bike lights. One thing of interest was we had ridden almost the entire length of the Hunters and not seen a single Wallaby and one went bounding across the track in front of me above Monty's Saddle. (Note to self for next high country adventure get some high powered LED lights as backup)

We were exhausted when we got to the Shearers quarters at Blackforest and as they were expecting a few more people there was enough beer to sink a ship and around 20 pies in the oven. It’s fair to say we gorged ourselves.

The Shearers quarters at Blackforest are a stark contrast to those at Kaiwarua. In the morning we got a great view of Mt Cook in the distance.

(Later we discovered that the local stations use helicopters to muster the sheep and the tracks we were riding hadn’t seen vehicles in years so track maintenance wasn’t something that has been done for many a year)

[monchopper]

Another Photo

[mattsdakar]

Nice write up, is that young Matt there on the Berg? Rode with him on the Dusty Butt, now understand why you had issues getting away from the pub!

I've done a similar route to the one described ie: over the Little and Big ranges and Mt Sutton to Montys Saddle, on my old BMW Dakar, nice part of the world.
I can verify that the tracks are used on occasion as we ran in to the Manager of Waitangi Station while up very high, he was none to impressed that we were up there, apparently we had taken a wrong turn
A quick whip around for "track maintence" soon had his blood pressure dropping and we parted amicably with phone numbers exchanged for pre arranging future visits

[XF650]

Awesome stuff there Monchopper.
Can you post up an overlay of your route on a map somehow, especially Day 3?

[monchopper]

Nice write up, is that young Matt there on the Berg? Rode with him on the Dusty Butt, now understand why you had issues getting away from the pub!

I've done a similar route to the one described ie: over the Little and Big ranges and Mt Sutton to Montys Saddle, on my old BMW Dakar, nice part of the world.
I can verify that the tracks are used on occasion as we ran in to the Manager of Waitangi Station while up very high, he was none to impressed that we were up there, apparently we had taken a wrong turn
A quick whip around for "track maintence" soon had his blood pressure dropping and we parted amicably with phone numbers exchanged for pre arranging future visits

Yep that be Matt on his beloved 'Husitastic'............ thirsty beasts the pair of them!!

[monchopper]

Nice write up, is that young Matt there on the Berg? Rode with him on the Dusty Butt, now understand why you had issues getting away from the pub!

I've done a similar route to the one described ie: over the Little and Big ranges and Mt Sutton to Montys Saddle, on my old BMW Dakar, nice part of the world.
I can verify that the tracks are used on occasion as we ran in to the Manager of Waitangi Station while up very high, he was none to impressed that we were up there, apparently we had taken a wrong turn
A quick whip around for "track maintence" soon had his blood pressure dropping and we parted amicably with phone numbers exchanged for pre arranging future visits

We didn't actually make onto Waitangi land. It cut up really rough on the descent into the Ross Stream crossing where we had to walk the bikes across until we descended onto Montys Saddle. Awesome countryside wouldn't take it back but still wouldn't go through there again, great adventure stuff and glad we done it but not the target terrain for the type of riding I like.

[CookMySock]

Epic!

It seems you try to fit a lot in, and set a desperate pace.

[monchopper]

We woke to sunny day. Not so much alcohol consumed the previous night, the boys were pretty knackered. Our South African import Vince cooked up some bacon sandwiches and we were off.
Out the Haldon road and up Stony River road. We followed Moffat Stream up to a hut on the topo map the plan was to head up to the ridge high to our left (west) but after a couple of difficult climbs and within 200 vertical metres of our goal we couldn't go any further the track was lots of loose rocks and the steep section was impassable, Matt gave it a good go on the Berg 570 which could climb a tree but it wasn't a runner.
We then tried the ridge on the eastern side of Moffat Stream we got a good distance down when the track became very rough. We walked up the track a bit to see if it was worth continuing and found that the track went across a scree slip and didn't look to stable. (see photo Dead End)
So plan C. We could see a track that wasn't on the topo map but looked well defined and headed in the general direction we wanted to go. So after about 2.5 hours of exploring dead ends we were off. We were heading towards Monkey Rock on the summit of the Grampian Range. This section was really good, a well maintained farm track with good fast climbs (3rd and 4th gear). Once we got to Monkey Rock we headed south again and were aiming for Black Rocks and the highest altitude of the 4 days at just over 1900 asl. The track from Monkey Rock wasn't quite as good but not as bad as we'd ridden over the last 3 days. We came around a corner and up a bit of a climb and there was a motorbike (TTR250) parked on the track and a guy in shorts and a swandry fixing a gate. After a quick explaination of what we were doing he degrudgingly let us past, he wasn't very happy with us interrupting his gate mending!! We don't know if this guy was the Station owner I had spoken to just the week before and he's got the memory of a boiled spud or a farm worker impersonating the boss, we suspect the later. From Black Rocks we cut a rapid descent down to the Haka Pass.
From here we needed to work out a plan. We were meant to be heading back up in the Hunters and over Mt Nessing but the weather looked a bit dodgy and we were getting pressed for time cos of the time spend with dead ends. So we decided to head to Albury via the MacKenzie Pass and Waratah Saddle. It was on the MacKenzie Pass I had the scariest moment of the trip and one of scariest driving moments of my life and I've done some fairly interesting driving jobs.
I came around a corner at about 90 kmh and there was a big fuck off cow on the other side of the road and it bolted straight out onto the road then for reasons only known to the cow it had a sudden change of heart and went back to where it came from. The fucking elbow of right arm actually brushed the kisser of the cow as it changed it's mind. I rode on for about 2 minutes and had to stop and get off the bike cos I was shaking like a shitting dog.
Not long later we were having a beer in the Albury Tavern where it all started 4 days earlier. Looking over towards the North end of the Hunter's confirmed we made the right decision, it looked nasty up there and besides having unfinished business drives you to do it all again.
Over all an awesome 4 days spent exploring a small corner of our great land. I'm constantly amazed that no matter how remote you are you can always see tracks in the distance and you wonder what's that like or where does that go.
So it's back to the laptop to start dreaming up the next mission.

[NordieBoy]

Good stuff

Next time for a challenge you could do it on a Bandit 1200, FXR150 and a KLR650.