Biking for Gold: Cycling the Central Otago Rail Trail (May 2-4)

Famously, I arrived in New Zealand not really knowing how to ride a bike. Although my parents would attest to the fact that they once taught me, I really and truly forgot, and really never got the hang of it when I did know how. 

I knew this was a shortcoming I would rectify one day, but never imagined I would do so in New Zealand, and that my forays into biking would lead to a 160km bikepacking trip through the central Otago region. And yet, my life these days seems full of whacky ideas for things I don’t really know how to do but become completely infatuated with figuring out (learn how to scuba dive in October in Rhode Island? Complete an overnight race through Downeast Maine? Climb the tallest mountain in Africa? Move across the world twice in a year? Sure!!!!).

And so, on my dogged determination alone, we found ourselves in the very endearing town of Clyde, about an hour inland from Queenstown amidst the central Otago region, where one of NZ’s earliest gold rushes took place. We drove down from Christchurch late on a Thursday, in the first of our nostalgic-for-me drives in which I feel so full-up of this feeling of being in this moment that I couldn’t possibly imagine it ending. I’m told it’s too soon for these feelings, but in my eyes it’s never too early to recognize when something is so special it hurts to let go of.

That night, we slept in very peaceful field by a river, only for the rest of the gang to be woken up around midnight by a screaming mass of men shouting rugby chats and, among other wonderful sentiments, “weeeeeee want some pu-ssayyyyyyy”. In a stunning testament to the sensory deprivation chamber I climb into every night in the form of my ear plugs and eye mask, I completely slept through the chaos outside. 

In the morning, we woke up in an absolutely glorious fall landscape, having rolled in after dark and having no idea how beautiful it was. After breakfast and coffee, we checked in, had our bags weighed, packed our panniers, and took off into the crisp morning. 

We were all giggles on the first day, as we leapfrogged around some e-bikers and tried to wind our way through a suburb to find the start of the rail trail. After some very necessary group chafing cream application at the trailhead, our journey actually started, with some hiccups including items flying off of our bikes, navigation of slatted bridges, and finding our rhythm in a new activity. 

Generally, we all agreed that it felt awesome to do a new activity, try out something none of us had done before and break up our typical routine of backpacking which, as wonderful as it’s been, has involved a ton of putting one foot in front of the other. It felt fun to pedal fast and be tucked into our own worlds a little bit more, plus it was downright luxurious to have someone else ferry the bulk of our stuff from night to night. It was also our first trip back after our 3-week break in which the group parted and converged again in various combinations, and it was lovely to all be back together in the second half of our time together.

We stopped for lunch at a bar/restaurant featuring New Zealand’s smallest post office, stretching out luxuriously on a grassy hill drinking beer for a number of hours. In another wonderful change from our all-out backpacking adventures, our longest day of biking was four hours, so we had lots of time to check out the many towns along the way without stress. 

On the way out of town, Elodie and Dylan had a blast playing around on some mountain bike trails alongside our trail, leading to much whooping and laughter. The last portion of the ride featured the biggest climb of the trail. Because it is a rail trail, this meant a very long hill with a max 2% grade, so it was certainly not earth shatteringly hard work. Still, it was fun to do some work heading up, and we were all stripping layers by the top. The rest of the day’s ride was mostly downhill with some flats before we pulled into Omakau for sunset. Our campground was also the site of the local rugby field, and the site of a whole town gathering for a sports game under the lights on a clear fall evening made me feel very at home. 

Frances and I biked to the local FourSquare to buy sour cream, the rest of the gang set up our tents, and by about 6pm we were happily ensconced in the campground kitchen–a true luxury– making taco bowls as the rugby team had a barbeque outside. After countless cups of tea and a very cozy evening of reading and registering for Twalk, we eventually retired to our tents. We all slept soundly, no screaming men in earshot. 

The morning dawned frosty, and we beelined it for the campground kitchen again for pan-toasted bagels and eggs. After a pretty lazy morning we left around 9 for our longest day on trail, with 40 miles, many tunnels, and the highest point on the trail ahead. 

The general landscape of the rail trail was a lot of flat plateaus with tall, snow-capped mountains in the distance. Especially on the last two days, we often biked around these ranges and towards other ones, creating an amazing experience of seeing them from lots of different angles. When biking, you have such a unique sense of moving through a landscape, at a pace not as boring as walking but not nearly as breathless as driving. I loved seeing where we were going, and tracking our progress on the slopes on every side of us. 

The rail trail is famous for its bridges and tunnels, which go through incredible gorges and took an immense amount of manpower to create. The tunnels were shockingly dark and roughly hewn, and a real treat to ride through, as were the very bumpy bridges over rushing rivers below. It was amazing to bike on a trail with high cliff walls on both side of us and to imagine what it was like to take a train through this area many moons ago. 

By mid-morning we had spread ourselves out along the trail in a way that was incompatible to chatting, so we pretty much all ended up with headphones in, in worlds of our own making. One of my biggest changes this year has been in my appreciation of listening to music outdoors, thanks to my friend Ryan. I used to be wildly opposed to popping in headphones–or, god forbid, playing music from a speaker– because I thought it took you out of a place and was somewhat sacrilegious. I have certainly changed my tune on this now, both because I think music can really elevate an epic experience, or motivate you through a hard one, and most importantly I think it’s just not that serious. I had a blast moving fast in time with my music, and appreciated the change-up. 

We lunched in Oturehua, a town with the oldest continuous operating general store in New Zealand… and not much else. We drank flat whites and debated feminism as a global political perspective, got sprinkled on, and kept it cooking. 

That afternoon was without a doubt one of my favorite outdoor experiences ever. I was locked in on my music, pedaling hard, and feeling extremely connected to the stunning place where we were. The climb up to the highest point was negligible but the descent was incredible, almost 4 straight miles of a perfectly-graded hill for blasting music, singing loud, and moving fast, interrupted only by a brief mishap in which my own beloved Nalgene flew off the back of my bike and into the bushes, severing its strap. 

All in all, it was perfect, with incredible weather and views of mountains all around us, cows in the foreground, nothing but miles ahead and behind. I had a smile on my face for hours. 

We cruised through our next few checkpoints, then paused about 5k from our evening destination so we could all catch up with each other and recount the epicness of the afternoon. On our last stretch, some cows appeared in the middle of the road, and we all took turns herding them on our bikes as they ran full-steam to avoid us. 

I felt immensely full of pride as we pulled into Waipiata that evening after far more miles on a bike in one day than in my entire life. To try something new, and potentially hard, and exceed my own expectations alongside supportive friends put a smile on my face that didn’t wear off for a long time. 

Waipiata was yet another town that appeared to have a single establishment. Our bags were supposed to be dropped off at said hotel/bar/restaurant/pie shop, but instead had been ferried over to the campground nearby, where we found them tucked into an extremely creepy tennis clubhouse. After messing around on the tennis court and setting up our tents to dry, we ate a new-to-the-group meal of ramen with edamame and chicken. Mid-way through our meal watching the sunset, we heard a loud noise and looked up to see Dylan’s tent snagged on the top of the tennis court walls, poles completely bent out of shape and snapped, tent waving in the wind. He jumped into action to retrieve it, and quickly realized it was kaput until he returned home, conveniently timed with his decree that it had become too cold to sleep in tents. His tent crowd (himself, Lucca, and Elodie) decided to sleep in the clubhouse, whereas Frances and I decided we would stick it out in my tent. 

Soon after we finished our ramen, the group began to physically fall apart, with a number of urgent bathroom stops and much grumbling. I hightailed it to the hotel/bar/restaurant/pie shop to use their facilities, and everyone else cycled over shortly after, to settle in for another luxuriously warm evening indoors. 

We had been warned that accommodations would be tight that weekend as it was the first weekend of duck hunting season, and had spent the day surrounded by the sounds of gunfire starting in the early morning. In Waipiata we finally caught up with the cavalry, who had taken over the restaurant and bar, all decked out in bright green face paint and camo. Fittingly, the bar was covered wall to wall in trophies from hunting seasons past, and there was a very cute dog named Beaver by the woodstove. We ordered a few pints of ciders and IPAs, shared an order of fries, argued over cancellable takes, met some of the assembled duck hunters, and pet Beaver.

And I won Teacher's Game twice in a night!

Beaver <3

A few hours into our cozy evening, Frances walked out of the bathroom looking white as a sheet and needing to return to our campsite immediately. I went into full WFR mode, asked her a bunch of questions, and started the journey back to pump her full of electrolytes and get her to bed. We decided to all sleep inside the clubhouse, and after a half-hour of consulting with Frances outside, we all settled in sardine-style for our last night on trail. 

After a fitful night of sleep for pretty much everyone, we woke up to another cold day and the goal of getting off trail by 1pm. We jumped into action and were on our bikes a little after 8, after once again using the only bathrooms in town. 

The final day of the trail included some wonderful winding around hills and through another lovely gorge. We also found a random rail intersection, and obviously did what we had to do:

The final stretch was all flat heading into Middlemarch, and I could see the town a long way off as we approached. I’ve come to recognize about myself that there will always be a portion of a trip (usually the last morning) when I am irreconcilably grumpy, want to be left alone, and want the trip to be over. I don’t really know why this happens, but I suspect it has something to do with the end being in sight, which makes me sad, and wanting to get there faster, having emotionally jumped the shark on the trip, and feeling anxious about the many steps that inevitably lie ahead. Anyways, this hit for me on the long flat stretch into Middlemarch, and I cooked past all of my friends, rolling into town mud-splattered and very, very content. 

An adorable cafe stop and stuff-for-bikes trade later, we were on the road again back to Christchurch. With changing leaves and shortening days, it really feels like the end is coming soon, and I have been soaking in the long car rides with their murmured conversations and shouted lyrics. I will miss this chapter in my life, undoubtedly the best year of my life, in a visceral and heart-pounding way, whenever I ride fast on a bike, or scream along to songs in a car with my closest friends, or sleep sardine-style with loved ones. I will think about these days, where our only goal was to live life to its fullest, and I hope I will find more ways to live like this in the future– loud, fast, free, and wild.