Mountain Biking the Old Ghost Road, New Zealand

I heard a low-pitched pulsing rose over the steady hum of sandflies. Chris, myself and our new friends Phil and Di Rossiter stopped talking and turned towards the source of the thrum—it was a helicopter, approaching fast. The noise and downdraft from the chopper’s blades as it set down nearby were overwhelming.

New Zealand’s backcountry riding can offer some intimidating climbs, thanks to the country’s distinctive spikey-spine topography, so helicopters are fast becoming a favoured option for mountain bikers who have limited time or no desire to tackle a steep climb. That’s how Chris and I came to be standing in the sandfly-riddled but beautiful Lyell Historic Reserve, half an hour’s drive from rising mountain biking hotspot Westport, on the West Coast of the South Island.

We were heading into the middle section of the Old Ghost Road to check progress on the partially completed singletrack descent from Ghost Lake Hut, before riding back out to Lyell. Chris and I could have pedalled in – the 30km climb, with a 1,200 metre elevation gain, is quite achievable – but I had managed to convince Chris that a heli-shuttle in would be time-efficient. Of course, the exhilaration of flying over the Lyell Range in a machine with an engine powerful enough to re-set our pulses had nothing to do with our decision.

Chopper pilot Wayne Pratt, from Helicharter Karamea, gave us a quick safety briefing and helped us load the bags and attach our bikes to a long line. Then we were in the chopper, watching the land below us fall away. We swept up the valleys and over the ridgelines and forested slopes of the Lyell Range with the grace of a ballroom dancer. Farther off, the blue and grey silhouettes of distant ranges forming staggered ranks all the way to the horizon. Wayne pointed out bridges and flashes of track in clearings between the trees below; it was the Old Ghost Road.

The Old Ghost Road is New Zealand’s latest gift to the world of backcountry mountain biking, as part of the Nga Haerenga New Zealand Cycle Trail project. Situated in the top left corner of New Zealand’s South Island, 75km from the well-known Heaphy track, the Old Ghost Road is a real mix of old and new. It started out as a nineteenth-century bush road, with teams starting at each end, but the middle section was never finished. Now it is part-restored old road with some sections of all-new freshly cut track. Some parts remain as unformed track but once completed, the Old Ghost Road will stretch 80km from Lyell Historic Reserve to the Mokihinui River Gorge, near the township of Seddonville. With rusty relics and information boards to mark historic sites along the track, the ever-fresh-looking native New Zealand rainforest, a string of cosy new huts and the option of a heli-shuttle in to the middle, the Old Ghost Road offers a unique blend of old and new.

The Old Ghost Road was named by the present-day bevy of track builders, the Mokihinui–Lyell Backcountry Trust, in honour of the old-timers who hacked and clawed the original passage in a bid to connect goldmining boomtowns Lyell and Mokihinui. When the goldrush finished, the original road was abandoned. Looking through the chopper window at the country below, it’s easy to see why. The rainfall in this part of New Zealand is measured in metres so the native forest of beech trees and ferns thrive, and the rivers and creeks flow strong and loud, carving steep gorges and driving boulders down creek-beds. It would have been a challenging place for those brave, bedraggled souls to labour for months on end, armed with limited resources and nineteenth-century technology.

One hundred and thirty years later, some things remain the same—rain on the West Coast is as reliable as Tui turning up when the harakeke flax is in flower. But modern-day technology is making things a little easier for the Mokihinui–Lyell Backcountry Trust and its teams of track builders. They have already revived the historic sections of road at the Lyell and Mokihinui ends of the route and are now labouring to forge a path through the section that defeated their predecessors. Currently, Wayne and his blue beast from Helicharter Karamea serve two functions on the Old Ghost Road; shuttling mountain bikers like Chris and I up to Ghost Lake Hut, and delivering supplies to the modern-day track-building effort.

Ghost Lake Hut

Most people who fly into Ghost Lake Hut ride straight back out to Lyell. I’d been in to Ghost Lake two weeks earlier, so I was keen to see how the new technical singletrack was progressing north of the hut.

At this stage, the two ends of the Old Ghost Road are done, each offering around 30km of mountain biking (or walking) each way, and cosy huts to stay in along the way. The middle 20km or so between Ghost Lake Hut and Goat Creek Hut is an unformed track. This section is marked with New Zealand’s iconic bright orange walking track-marker arrows, so it’s open to hikers who are fit, experienced and brave enough to press on through the dense bush, but it’s a total impasse for bikes until the track has been completed.

The track-building started on this middle section in December 2013, with a cohort of volunteer track-builders cutting and shaping the descent from Ghost Lake by hand. Building a mountain bike track by hand hardly sounds unusual, until you take into account the remoteness of this one, together with the raw terrain and the demands placed on the track and its builders by that hefty annual rainfall. While these things made the road-build a risky business for the old-timers, they also make for an impressive backcountry riding experience.

As we neared Ghost Lake, Wayne flew us over a hillside of newly finished switchbacks on the Dragon’s Snout, which is part of the descent from Ghost Lake. Eyeing up these elegant zigzags of track it was clear that the project is really moving forward. Westport locals Di and her husband Phil are both involved in the Old Ghost Road project, but the sight of those beautiful switchbacks rendered us all equally awestruck.

We disembarked from the chopper and stopped for a quick cuppa out on the deck of Ghost Lake Hut with some of the volunteer crew. Below us, the resident weka (a New Zealand native flightless woodhen) chased each other about and poked their beaks in the dirt, looking for worms and other edibles. Chris admired the track winding up the ridge across from the hut; during my first visit that bit of track had been transformed from a mud trench to a shingled track with rock armouring.

My friend Marion Boatwright, the chief of operations at Ghost Lake, popped in to say hi and fill us in on the team’s activities north of the hut that afternoon. Wayne was about to be put to work, flying bags of rocks to ‘Team Crusher’, they’d feed the rocks through the Red Rhino rock-crushing machine and wheelbarrow the shingle into hoppers for Wayne to deliver to teams waiting to surface the newest bits of track. Chris and I were able to spectate or ride our bikes in areas outside the flurry of heli-aided track surfacing activity. We were keen to catch up with the track-building crew and see their latest handiwork, so Marion put us to work on the chain gang for the afternoon.

Riding the Dragon

The next morning we wheeled out the bikes to test the new singletrack coming down from Ghost Lake Hut before we loaded up for the long ride out to Lyell.

Ghost Lake Hut is perched on the top of a huge cliff on the Lyell Range—it’s at around 1,200 metres and just at tree line. The hut marks a change in the character of the track, which is more like a fire road to the south on the Lyell side of Ghost Lake Hut. The track north of the hut is known as the Dragon’s Tail. It’s technical singletrack, comprised mostly of compacted shingle with some rock cobbling and boardwalks over creeks and vulnerable wetlands. As Chris and I rolled away from the hut that morning, the singletrack north of Ghost Lake Hut extended 2.6km. Though short, it’s plenty varied with subtle changes in elevation and terrain dictating dramatic changes in the riding and the plants at trackside.

We were amped; it was a bright sunny day and the singletrack we were about to ride was so new it practically still had the packaging on. The Dragon’s Tail starts with a quick flick, sharp enough to shock off any lingering early morning complacency. Then it winds through a forest of beech trees, ferns and mosses before emerging into more open country with tussock, native flaxes and boulders fringing the edge of Ghost Lake. A short but tricky climb up from the lake gave us views of the cliff beneath the hut. From there, Chris and I found ourselves at the top of those sharp switchbacks we’d been admiring from the air the day before—the Dragon’s Snout.

This bit of track, through snowgrass with the occasional hebe, lichen and alpine cushion plant, is narrower than the Lyell to Ghost Lake section. The hillside is much steeper too, with the tight corners making the Dragon’s Snout a real test-piece. Chris and I trundled down at a sedate pace, gauging our braveness on the freshly groomed corners depending on angles and the amount of exposure over the side. We then flew on down through another chunk of forest, past a creek and through a tussock-clad saddle dubbed ‘the Anvil,’ all the way to the current end of the track, where Marion and the team were cutting and benching fresh turf.

The Dragon twitched and curled its lip, but it rode beautifully. Going back up the Snout wasn’t quite as easy though. I grunted and growled my way back up the pinches in the forest, and pushed up all the switchbacks. Currently, the Ghost Lake to Goat Creek section is being built with gradients to suit one-way bike traffic. But rumour has it the Mokihinui–Lyell Backcountry Trust and New Zealand Cycle Trail are considering adapting those gradients to allow riders to travel from either direction—stay tuned.

Return to Lyell

Back at Ghost Lake Hut, Chris and I packed our bags and readied for the 30km ride out to Lyell. We had a half-hatched plan to catch up with Phil and Di, who had set off on foot just after brekkie.

The track south of the hut is much wider, with a friendlier gradient, so it’s more accessible to riders of a wider range of skill-levels. Over beers the night before, Marion spoke about the responses the track was getting from visitors, “People are quite blown away by this track and the work that’s gone into it, and the country it traverses. The contrast between the forested sections and the open Lyell tops moves even the most well-travelled visitors.”

On my previous visit I’d zipped down the Old Ghost Road to Lyell in two and a half hours; this trip I wanted to take in more of those views. With photo stops, I expected the ride out to be a three-hour cruise. But I hadn’t factored in the added weight of our bags or the effects of that changeable West Coast weather.

Chris and I pedalled off feeling like heroes, but the steady climb up to Rocky Tor soon punctured our egos. Last time I’d done this ride I’d put my bags on Wayne’s chopper. This time Chris and I were carrying our kit out, and the bags evidently had a firm bond with gravity because the climb up to the ridgeline sure felt slower than on my last trip. At the saddle, we got off the bikes and walked the 800-metre foot-traverse; this narrow, scruffy section of unformed track is not for the faint of heart. Two weeks ago I had walked it alone, through ankle-deep mud and thick white cloud that limited visibility to three or four metres. This time the mud had dried and visibility was fine, but a cold wind nipped at us. The wind-chill worked fast, and I was shivery and numb before I knew it. Chris had to help me get my jacket on. Nestled in a windproof layer and pedalling hard I soon had the blood flowing again.

The track then drops down on a fire trail through forest. Chris and I zoomed down, loving the straights, loving the turns. The short section of narrower ‘corduroy track’ felt old-style, with the track surface built over a base of branches that stick out on either side, but I later learned that it was freshly built. We arrived at Lyell Saddle Hut in no time, but Di and Phil were long gone. Phil is a trail runner, so he’s pretty fit but still, we didn’t want to get beaten to the Lyell car park by walkers!

I crouched down low on the bike and settled in to the groove of the track, with its easy-rolling gradient and rounded turns that hug the steep wooded hillside. This section between Lyell Saddle Hut and Lyell is restored gold diggers track, and it has a different feel again. Zipping through the mist-sodden trees, I could hear the water trickling over rocky streambeds and gushing in waterfalls around us. When we came to the swing bridges, it roared in the steep-sided gorges below.

We caught up to Phil and Di only 20 minutes’ ride from the car park. They still had a spring in their step despite their pack-laden and bike-less descent. We pulled up and compared notes on our respective journeys so far. The Old Ghost Road is a popular shared-use track, so meet-ups like this are a common sight. It was starting to rain, so Phil gave us the car key and waved us on. Chris pulled ahead, his thoughts fixed on the sandwiches we were planning to scoff down once we reached the car.

All too soon we were walking the bikes over that final suspension bridge. Chris loaded the bikes for the drive back to Westport, while I ripped into our bags for food and insect repellent. We then settled down to eat every scrap of food in our bags while waiting for Phil and Di, and gushed over the Old Ghost Road. The riding experience it currently offers, through forest and over coursing rivers and alpine ridgelines, is thrilling. But the singletrack section through the middle, once it’s finished, will catapult the Old Ghost Road straight to NZ backcountry gold.

 

Old Ghost Road Overview:

The Lyell and Mokihinui ends of the Old Ghost Road are complete and open for business (Lyell to Ghost Lake and Mokihinui to Goat Creek). These sections offer a New Zealand ‘grade three’ riding experience. Each end currently offers a one-way journey of around 30km. There are huts along the way as well as at the 30km marks, so you can overnight there before starting your return trip.

The Old Ghost Road’s trailheads are two hours’ drive apart, with good parking at Lyell but limited parking at the Mokihinui end. Read up on the track and the facilities at the huts on the Old Ghost Road and book your bunk or group sleep-out online before you go: www.oldghostroad.org.nz.

The middle section of the Old Ghost Road, currently under construction, is mostly unformed and unrideable, except for the singletrack at Ghost Lake. ‘Each section of the Old Ghost Road has a distinct character,’ Phil Rossiter tells me. It’s expected that the entire route open to mountain bikers sometime in 2015 (Editors note: The entire length of the OGR is now officially open - woohoo!).

Once it’s done, this middle will deliver a more technical, backcountry singletrack riding experience (grade four), through landscapes dominated by open, earthquake-devastated valleys and associated landforms.

Old Ghost Road - Mokihinui End

The northern end of the Old Ghost Road (from Mokihinui to Goat Creek Hut) is a gentler ride, without the significant climbs of its southern sibling. The trail sidles along the Glasgow Range through the Mokihinui Gorge before opening out into forested flats of the South Branch of the Mokihinui River. The first 18km up the Mokihinui Gorge is restored 19th-century goldmine road that only gains 100 metres in elevation. ‘It takes you through some spectacular native forest,’ says Marion Boatwright, who has spent a fair bit of time on this part of the coast. Brace yourself for towering giants of beech, rimu and kahikatea. 

 

Other Ride Options:

Denniston Plateau

The Denniston Plateau, a 30-minute drive from Westport, has a singletrack network with a range of grades. The geology of the area delivers bizarre rock formations, water-worn runnels and chunky shale—it’s all well worth exploring. Get the latest trail map from Habitat Sports bike shop in Westport. 

Heaphy Track

One of New Zealand’s iconic Great Walks, the Heaphy is open to mountain bikers from May 1 to September 30 each year. The two-to-three-day grade four ride has trailheads in Karamea and Collingwood and can be ridden either direction. Visit the Ground Effect ‘hot rides’ pages for up-to-date track conditions and tips on logistics (www.groundeffect.co.nz), and Department of Conservation website for general info (www.doc.govt.nz). Click here to read about our experience on the Heaphy.

Croesus Track

This 20km grade four to five/six backcountry extravaganza is an hour and a half’s drive south from Westport, and one hour and 45 minutes from Lyell. Greymouth (101km from Westport) is a popular base. Starting at Blackball (30km from Greymouth), Croesus traverses the Paparoa Ranges from east to west, finishing at Barrytown (19km from Greymouth). Nelson-based backcountry shredder Simon Bannister describes the track as “a mix of long, grade three climbs and unrideable hike-a-bike sections, with a mega-technical grade five/six descent to finish”. Snow poles marking the way across the tops and route-finding adds to the riding experience. Ces Clarke Hut is a popular turn-around point for overnighters not keen on the descent.

 

General Information:

Getting Around

Fly direct to Westport via Wellington, or fly to Christchurch and continue to Westport by rental car, bus, shuttle or a very scenic train ride. Be warned; New Zealand’s bus companies offer online bookings and ticket purchase for passengers but not bikes. For example, InterCity “cannot guarantee carriage [of bicycles] on any specific travel date or service”.

At Westport there are local mountain bike shuttle services to get to the Old Ghost Road’s Lyell or Mokihinui trailheads – and any other mountain bike track in the region.

Hike’n’Bike Shuttle in Westport will take you and your bike to the either end of the Old Ghost Road and to other mountain biking tracks in the area, and pick you up at the end of the ride.

Karamea Helicharter in Karamea – Wayne Pratt can fly you and your bike in or collect you from spots on the Old Ghost Road and elsewhere in the region.

Helibike Nelson (based in Nelson) also offers a mountain bike heli-shuttle and backcountry mountain bike-guiding combo. 

Accommodation

There are plenty of places to stay in Westport and the surrounding area – all are very supportive of mountain bikers. Bazil’s Hostel (in Westport) and Miners on Sea (in Granity, 20km from the Mokihinui trailhead and 30km from Westport) offer transport to the Old Ghost Road trailheads. If you want to stay right at a trailhead, you can camp at the Lyell Historic Reserve or go a bit upmarket at the Rough and Tumble Bush Lodge at the Mokihinui end. 

When to Visit

The South Island’s weather is most settled January and February. West Coast rain is no joke, and the high parts of the Old Ghost Road are alpine environments, so conditions can change suddenly. Check the weather forecast before heading out (www.metservice.com and www.metvuw.com), and always carry sunblock, a warm layer and a rain jacket. 

Bike Shops

Habitat Sports bike shop in Westport has a workshop for repairs and is well stocked with bikes, hire bikes, trail maps plus all sorts of riding and camping essentials. Owners Adrian Nicholson and Denna Carson can also tell you more about other rides in the area.

Gibson’s Sports and Toyworld in Westport also sells bikes and riding and camping gear.