This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
Solstice weekend
by Hans Wiskerke Eamonn, Paul, Hans, two dogs and three MTB’s
Imagine you're going for a mountain bike ride, and one of the few hits to be found on the web is a forum message of last millennium asking ‘John McDonalds loop, where did we go wrong?’ No answers have been posied to that question in nearly ten years. Either nobody knows the answer, or nobody has tried. Time to try if a small delegation of the WTMC will be able to complete this loop and enjoy it. At least a pocket book on NZ’s best MTB rides exists in which some pages are dedicated to this ride, explaining how to get to the start, and what to expect after that.
So let’s go to the start, because that’s where Eamonn had arranged to meet up with Paul. We find ourselves during Solstice weekend in Whakapapa, slightly less than 1000 meter vertically above the starting point, and we're deciding if we want to be dropped off with one of the vans, or feel the cool morning breeze while gently wheeling down. Even with temperatures around zero degrees, we prefer the latter option and agree to meet up around 3 PM at the road end of the cycling trip. Once we are on the road we go on easy as it seems a bit slippery. Just a few hundred meters down the road we pass a car standing on the roadside with a few excited people — their friends just slipped of the road and are climbing out of the car ten metres down the bank. We lenda hand to get them out of the car, while in the meantime the ski station staff pulls up in a pick-up and starts arranging assistance. Luckily nobody seems injured, they all scramble back up to the road, and will need to start thinking of a good story for the car rental company. With the ski station guys happy to take care of the further steps like getting the car back up on the road, we jump back on the bikes, and a few minutes later the road is dry, the sun shining and the speed up to more exciting levels. Down on the main road we have to push the pedals again, take some layers off, enjoy the impressive scenery and watch for the occasional cars passing. One of them turns out to be the van carrying the WTMC-trampers going up to do the Tongariro semi-alpine crossing (that is: walking up from Mangatepopo to the Red Crater and Emerald lakes, and then back to the van). They didn’t end up doing this, but that’s another story better told by them.
Another few kilometres further we meet Paul and two beautiful dogs all excited to do a nice work-out. The John McDonald road starts as a typical logging road which gently slopes down towards the north where we find ourselves an hour later near the Mangatepopo river. The road becomes a single track, a foot path, then a vertical drop along a rope. Even a bit challenging for the dogs, but without a bike on their shoulder they manage it a bit easier. Thinking of nice summers or hot chocolate, we ford the river and follow it downstream for another 20 minutes, often knee-deep in the water. Once back on dry land the track goes steep up, and after a tunch in the sun we take a left which should lead us to the remainder of the loop, without going down into the river again.
Parts of the track are indeed rideable, but more and more often we see the dogs turning back to us, wondering why it takes these guys so long to show up. Fact is we’re struggling with the toetoe which has overgrown the track, and sometimes we’re wondering where the track is anyway! Some trial and errors later we conclude we are still far off the 50% mark, have another three hours of daylight left and can not rely on the topo-map: the tracks may be there, but are unrideable or so overgrown it’s impossible to locate them. Paul is familiar the 42 Traverse ride, running only a few km from where we are, and knows we will be missing a nice bit of biking. Reluctantly we decide it’s best to turn back, knowing there's a fair bit of river to go upstream.
So we go down to the river, into the river we drove (or were Springsteen’s lyrics slightly different?). Paul has to convince the dogs who are not that fond of another swim in the cold water, but they jump, swim and show their best. About 30 minutes later we’re back at the bottom of the steep bit. It’s here where it pays off to have a light bike, going up along the rope to gain 20 metres altitude along a muddy slope. Even if we would have thought of having a cuppa at Chateau Tongariro our mud-tinted outfit might have distracted other patrons.
The nice and gentle slope which brought us down from the road-end has now to be done in reverse, but after a snack stop the four of us find our way back to the road-end, with Eamonn already up front to notify Rene in the van, as we are a bit later than expected, and cell phones did not have any coverage once away from the main road.
As you will understand the John Mcdonald loop is still out there to be done, but maybe better on a long summer day rather than Solstice day. And now it’s time for a good shower!