Category Archives: national park

national park, roadtrip, travel, USA

Knock, knock. Deatharrrrrrgh

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Up nice & early for the 450 mile drive to Kernville to go camping & riding for the weekend. On the road shortly after seven & soon I was in Arizona & it was back to half past six. Rather than go as far as I could on the I-15 & through Las Vegas again, I decided to skirt around LV & then head west so I could go through my third National Park in as many days – Death Valley. It added only twenty or so miles to my trip, but the roads were slower than the interstate. Pulled in to another small town, Beatty (pronouced Bate-ie by the only person I heard say the word) & it was getting hot at 9.30 & I was tired from the big day before & driving too much. Had a nice nap in the car waiting for the town museum to open at 10 – only to find that it was temporarily closed.

Into Death Valley & I took a small side road up to Rhyolite – a dead set ghost town. It was a big mine town in the 1900s (peaked at 10000 people), but funding for mine expansion dried up near the end of the decade & now the town looks like this:

This is one of the best preserved bottle houses in the world.

A few hundred yards down the road there was quite a few outdoor sculptures – this of course was my favourite:

It was back on the road to head in to Death Valley – the lowest, hottest & driest place in North America (curiously, it is only just over 100 km from Mt Whitney – the highest place in the continental States). The roads were a lot of this:

But over those hills, I descended to look out at the low spot:

Naturally, it was getting quite hot (about 110) & I eventually made it down to sea level, before starting another big climb over another pass (the poor Dodge has done a fair bit of climbing over the last week – & more to come).

Once out of Death Valley & climbing another pass, I passed veritable forest of Joshua Trees – strange looking things, they were everywhere.

I made it to Kernville, the camping rendezvous, about two & a half hours early – lounged around on the village green (found free Wi-Fi), went to the local museum & so on.  Irmina & Bill turned up, it was off over the road to another microbrewery for good food & beer & get to know each other a bit.  We pushed off for the campsite at about eight.  Apparently, we were trying to get to pitch tents before night fall – that turned out to be a bit hopeful.  As I followed the others in the Dodge, it became apparent that it was forty miles away & a few more thousand feet of climbing on windy, gravel roads.  I watched with increasing nervousness as the fuel gauge dropped, the light came on & the needle continued its plunge.  Night fell & we twisted around more & more turns as we climbed to the stars.  It was much relief that we pulled in to a vacant campsite (who else would drive this far?).  As we pitched tents, I was surprised as to how cold it was (it dropped to about 40 that night ~ 5 Celsius) & it was great that I had brought my Fairydown sleeping bag all the way to the middle of nowhere in the Californian summer.  The stars were out in full force – easily the best I have seen in the northern hemisphere – & I went to sleep listening to the stream running down to Big Meadow.

bikes, MTB, national park, roadtrip, travel, USA

JEM & Zion

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Up early on Thursday to go & ride before it got too hot on the JEM trail – one that came highly recommended. At the trail head just after seven, a couple from San Diego (of all places) – Mike & Annie – pulled up & had the same riding plan as I did. I waited around a little so I had some riding company & we took off up the first part of the loop – Gould’s Rim Trail. This climbed a bit up on to a plateau & as the sun was still rising (no daylight saving in Utah) the spectacular scenery was cast in even better light than I had previously seen it.

While the map we had was great, unfortunately some of the trail markers were annoyingly absent. We skirted around the side of a canyon & it was mostly nice twisty, but not too difficult single track.

There was one really rocky & gnarly downhill section – Annie must have been feeling it on her hardtail. As we got closer to the highway, we lost the trail again – we split up, they went down & I went up a dirt road trying to find the JEM trailhead. In the end, I did a few extra miles uphill & couldn’t make it across to the highway so had to backtrack – unfortunately I never saw Mike & Annie again. I made it up the highway & hit the JEM. What a fantastic trail! It was on another exposed plateau, but overall it lost altitude. It was more of the same great single track that weaved around, but it had plenty of little rises to hop off, plenty of bermed corners & was generally a big chainring flowing singletrack. The most difficult bit was when it plunged down in to a small canyon with a series of very tight & rock singletrack.

As I was beginning to discover & appreciate with a lot of the riding I was doing in the Southwest & California, babyhead rocks could appear at any time & completely change the trail. One thing I will say about the fireswamp – it definitely keeps you on your toes. Near the end of JEM, I joined the Hurricane Rim Trail – it basically followed the top of the gorge formed by the Virgin River back to Hurricane.

It was starting to get a lot warmer by now & there was quite a bit of climbing considering I was following the river down – but there was still the odd cool downhill & rocks to negotiate (they always make the climbs more challenging than back in NZ – it’s always nice to conquer them). Due to my little detour, I ran out of water with about four or five miles to go – how I wish they were the much shorter kilometres! I eventually made it back to my car – another great high-twenty mile ride under my figurative belt. Back to the motel to clean up & then off to explore Zion National Park.

Once again, I joined the masses at another popular national park. Due to its popularity, the park has a great shuttle bus system – you park your car at the bottom & hop on & off for free as the whim takes you. The day had clouded a bit (when I left the motel, I couldn’t believe the amount of cloud that had come from nowhere & how much the wind had picked up), but the canyons on either side of the Virgin River (upstream tens of miles from where I was riding earlier in the day) were still vividly red-brown. Every twist in the road or path showed a different side to them & I was enthralled. I went on a few little walks, some only five minutes or so to get a bit of elevation to look out at something, one about an hour loop that took visitors up a side stream to a series of rather tranquil ponds & stunning waterfalls. Completing all my little walks, it was back in the mighty Avenger to drive to the east edge of the park. The geology here was a little softer, with some nice patterns in less steep cliffs. There was also a very impressive 1.8 mile tunnel that was blasted out in the 1920s. As awesome as the Grand Canyon was (& I really liked it) – for some reason, Zion was that little bit more enjoyable – perhaps because at Zion you are in the bottom of the canyon looking up at the immense rocks above you. Back to Hurricane to do some much needed washing & have an early night – big drive the next day to meet up with some more MTB internet friends back in California for a weekend of camping & riding.

national park, roadtrip, travel, USA

A day of a big drive & big cliffs

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Taking some time out from driving & doing anything really – sitting in a small park in the centre of a small town with a nice breeze blowing through the trees waiting for some more mountain bike buddies to show up for a weekend camping. Anyway, back to Wednesday.

It was up to early again, breakfast, car packed & gassed up & on the I-15 North shortly after eight. LV was going for another scorcher & it was already in the high-nineties by nine o’clock. Probably because there isn’t any at home, I still find desert mildly interesting – I’m sure this will wear off after a thousand miles or so. There was plenty to look at – mostly hills & mountains of various sizes & rather large mining & quarrying operations sort of in the middle of nowhere, but close to the freeway all the same. As I was driving by myself & on the freeway, any time I saw anything worthwhile I got to practice my point, don’t look & shoot photography technique. As I had forgotten to clean the windshield when I last filled up, there was little success.

Quite a bit of climbing through a gorge & it was back in to Arizona & then in to Utah. Here the mesas were becoming more pronounced & spectacular – & also a lot redder in colour. Got to Hurricane (SW Utah), where I was due to spend the next two nights at about ten, found the local museum & information centre – the charming old guy in there pointed me around the corner to the local bike shop. Here I met the first person yet to guess I was from Australia – she had just got back from there (which is better than the cop on the mugging night who commended me on my ability to speak English – “you speak English good” – shudder) – & got some good tips on what rides I might do the following day. Enough of that, it was time to hit the road again.

Crossed back in to Arizona (I later found out that I had changed time zones without realising it – Utah doesn’t do daylight savings) & the next hour or so of highway was lined with more spectacular mesas.

The road then hit the hills & climbed up to six thousand feet & I was soon in the Kaibab National Forest (designated so by Theodore Roosevelt, who used to hunt around there a lot). As the road got higher (7000 ft+) the forest turned really pretty & then opened up a bit in to big meadows. The superb road curved its way through these meadows & trees – I’m not sure I have done a prettier or more enjoyable drive for quite some time.

It was straight from Kaibab in to Grand Canyon National Park. I was visiting the North Rim – the less visited side of the canyon (it only gets fifteen percent of the visitors) – as it fitted better with going to Utah & my time constraints & dislike of large crowds. I was surprised at just how many trees were around the top of the canyon – probably because most photos I have seen are from South Rim – the reason for all the trees is that it is getting up towards nine-thousand feet high, so isn’t really desert like the North Rim. Of course the views were breathtaking & all the different layers in the rocks fascinating. I won’t wax lyrical, although I could, but put some photos from my puny camera up instead. I took a short walk down part way in to the canyon (got passed by three mule trains – very dusty & smelly) to get a slightly different perspective. I only went down twenty minutes; on the way got chatting to some guy who was making hard work of the last bit of the climb to the rim. It turned out that he had started walking at four-thirty that morning from the South Rim, walked along the bottom & was almost at the top of the North Rim. What’s more, he was planning on doing it all again tomorrow in reverse – crazy old guy! Feeling sickened by that, I promptly got back to the car & took off back to Hurricane (not before fixing the trunk lid that wouldn’t close; the car is quite good for cruising on the highway & carrying all my gear – but the build quality is awful, for a two year old car there are so many buttons that stick or don’t work first time & the vents are all stuck in the same position & so on). Crashed back at the motel – did just over four-hundred miles that day, was quite tired. What a great day though – what different scenery I had seen – desert, rocky mesas, forests, & the Grand Canyon.<

family, friends, hiking, history, national park, NZ, roadtrip, snow

Northland rain and Waikaremoana sun & snow

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After two long weeks back at work (it was straight in to three night shifts the day after arriving from London – jet lag? Didn’t have a chance.), it was time for another holiday in the apparently miserably wet NZ winter (thankfully I missed most of that!). Adele & two of her friends (Anna & Ben) had flown up to Auckland that day & we managed to fit everyone & everything in the mighty (so to speak) Galant – including three large tramping packs & my bike (of course), you could easily tell that the rear shocks had not been replaced in the seven years I’ve had the car (probably never). Staying the night at Matakohe, we visited the Kauri museum in the morning – mostly for Adele’s benefit as there is a bit of Dad’s family’s history in there, not to mention the restored house of our great-great-grandfather. A stop in Whangarei saw the rest of the car filled with wedding presents & we continued up to Coopers Beach, where Anna had rented us a house for the rest of the week.

Settling in to watch the Olympics on the 14″ television with awful reception, I tried to acquaint myself with Adele’s macbook & mostly enjoyed it – but it still bugs me that there is no easy way to maximise windows (not that I could find anyway). As Thursday dawned reasonably fine, if a little breezy, we hightailed it in to Kaitaia, had a quick look around & met up with a lot of the people involved in the wedding (two of Adele’s med school friends, also a former flatmate, getting married). Eventually our little procession of cars set off to Cape Reinga stopping a lot along the way – to look at flowers on the side of the road, wait for stragglers, change a flat tyre, stop at a service station & so on. Eventually we hit the twenty kilometres of gravel that is the top of SH1 only to find that it wasn’t quite twenty kilometres – sealing of road has started at the top of the country & is working slowly down (apparently so that all the heavy vehicles don’t ruin the recently laid tarseal while going to lay the next section). Obligatory photos at the top of the country in the wind & then off to the sand dunes to have a look – somewhere on that road is part of a rental Corolla’s muffler & a fair chunk of the underbelly of the Galant as we managed to bottom out twice landing in rather large holes in the road. Somehow I found myself at the stag party for someone I didn’t even know six hours previously – for such a low key event, it was surprisingly eventful. Mike got knocked out on Coopers Beach, the cops turned up & then finally (to add injury to insult or injury to injury) Mike went off to A&E with a rather large gash in his heel.

Friday’s weather was utterly miserable, but we were happy to stay inside & read, start a jigsaw, watch the Olympics & generally do sweet buggerall. I did manage to have a phone interview that day – but as I was outside in the car (stuffed cellphone battery) in the middle of a massive thunder storm, I was slightly distracted (not to mention firmly in holiday mode) & was a bit poor at answering questions. About the only thing I did know was what a pivot table was – geek that I am, I had made one that morning while I was still trying to work out the macbook. Saturday dawned a lot better & it was almost warm for the wedding (it definitely wasn’t raining). Sunday, up early for the hike back to Newmarket where we spent much too much on tramping gear – pack, down jacket, gators, shoes, Camelbak… Dropping Ben at the airport, it was back home to Pukekohe for a night of rest & unpacking & repacking for Waikaremoana.

Monday held another big day of driving, via Hamilton to drop Anna at her parents, on to Rotorua to leave valuables at Andrew & Kate’s (I don’t rate the security of my car) & the mission that is the gravel road to Waikaremoana. Adele managed to drive most of that, so it was good to have a break; with the weather closing in, it started to sleet & then snow on us – much to Adele’s surprise (“this is the North Island, it’s not supposed to snow down here”). At the motor camp we decided to change the direction of our walk to start at the flat (ish) end as the forecast wasn’t looking fantastic & so we would have a bit more company than just each other (a German couple – Anna & Thomas – were the only other people we saw for three days). A much better packing of our gear was called for & then it was off to bed with the snow falling outside – this was possibly the coldest night of the trip & we hadn’t even started walking yet.

When we got up on Tuesday morning it wasn’t much warmer & walking to breakfast the snow started falling again. Looking out of the dining room it was quite easy to see the snow settled on the trees not so far away. Well packed & our hut passes changed the four of us loaded our packs on to the water taxi for the ride across the lake to Whanganui hut (we had to start here as there was a impassable landslip blocking the track close to the end). Well rugged up on the back of the boat it wasn’t too cold & the lake was so wonderfully flat I was dreaming of a waterski; however the cloud was still low & I would have taken a lot of persuading & a thick wetsuit to jump in.

Landing, the water taxi took off & left us to ourselves in the middle of nowhere. The sun even managed to come out long enough for me to drag my sunnies out of my pack – & then promptly disappeared. The first morning of the tramp was a mixture of ascending & descending – nothing too high or steep & a mixture of rain and then snow. At this stage we were still quite excited by the sight of snow at such a relatively low altitude in the North Island. Thankfully we didn’t have to walk all the way around one of the peninsulas (not that the track even went that way – but it sure looked like quite a circuitous route) – there is a relatively recent kiwi sanctuary there. Being day time & all we didn’t see a kiwi, but did manage to spy a rather impressive predator fence. For an early lunch we arrived at the brand spanking new Waiharuru Hut (it replaces one that was removed closer to the kiwi sanctuary). It is actually two pretty large buildings – one kitchen & dining, the other thirty odd bunks – a sign of just how popular the track is in the summer; a common remark during trip was how glad we all (all four of us) were to be walking such a beautiful track in the solitude brought on by winter – the place must be teeming in summer. Nice and close to the lake with great views of Panekeri Bluffs & some sunshine by now made for a great lunch stop. We reached our overnight hut (Marauiti) by 2 pm and proceeded to do nothing all afternoon – that’s not quite true, I did nothing much, Adele tried to study. Dinner over & done with we gathered around the gas heater (luxury! – when I was a child we used to have to sleep in a lake) & attempted a game of Who Am I? – Twenty Questions. This proved a bit trickier than normal as ze Germans had little idea of NZ celebrities and we ignorant Kiwis had even less idea about famous Europeans (don’t mention the war, I did once, but I think I got away with it). Sherlock Holmes proved to be the trickiest of the night & Obama the easiest – although we never quite got over Adele thinking his first name was Frank & the game ended slightly after that & it was off to bed at the late hour of 8 o’clock.

After easing in to the tramp with a nice five hour day first up, the plan was for the second day was slightly more ambitious. It was supposed to be eight hours to Panekerie Hut & we wanted to do an hour detour to a waterfall to have a look. Leaving earlyish (nothing compared to starting work at 5 am though) it was more of the walking close to the lake and going up, over & down the odd ridge. By this stage we were beginning to see just how ravaged the bush had been by recent high winds & high rain fall. Still we managed dry feet & enjoyed the brilliant sunshine that was to be with us for the rest of our walking. Lunch in the sun again at a campsite & it was off to the waterfall. Thankfully it was only about twenty-five minutes up the river to the falls – but there was one good crossing over the swollen river using big slippery boulders as stepping stone, aided by a cable strung across the river. We had to stand in the river a couple of times (still dry feet), but thankfully no embarrassing & chilly falls. Quick look at the small falls & it was back to pick our packs up again & carry on.

Beginning to realise it could be quite late & dark by the time we finished, we blitzed the next section to the next hut (another really new one) and from then on it was pretty much (I’ve got one word for you, Kim) vertical. It wasn’t too long before we had climbed long enough to be walking through small patches & then large patches of snow. Round a corner after three hours climbing we were pleasantly surprised to see the hut (we were expecting another hour) & it was packs off & time to admire the wonderful view of the lake & the setting sun. Off to the east the lights of mighty Wairoa started to flicker against the much mightier Pacific. A much quieter night after such a long day – the gas heater was a complete let down; Adele did manage to spend twenty minutes standing outside in the freezing cold balancing on a bench wishing Mum a happy birthday after she found her phone worked up there.

Sun was the order of the day again for our last day – unfortunately, we didn’t feel quite as radiant – Adele sick & my knees aching strangely. Away early with more great views & walking along (more up & down really – the down playing havoc on my weak knees) the bluffs we could really admire the amazingly still lake. Not much more of note except beautiful lunch spot perched on a rock on the edge of the bluff & a slow descent – almost forgot, all the snow that was quite fun to walk through. Still we were nicely early for the water taxi & that gave us (more me really) heaps of time to read the displays about the hydro scheme flowing from the lake – strangely, the lake was lowered five metres (I’m not sure I’ve quite worked that out yet) – and the track – it was built in the ’60s & ’70s by high school students (it probably wouldn’t happen like that nowadays). Back at the motor camp it was straight in to the car for the drive back to Rotorua & then Te Puke. The ninety kilometres of gravel sure made it easy to spot all the ice on the road (c.f. tarmac) – this was despite all the sun; at least icy gravel is not too slippery.