Grants from three trusts, totalling over $67,000, will provide over two-thirds of the quoted cost of work to reduce the steepness of climbing to the start of trails at Whautopoko Reserve. Photo / Chris Taewa
Grants from three trusts, totalling over $67,000, will provide over two-thirds of the quoted cost of work to reduce the steepness of climbing to the start of trails at Whautopoko Reserve. Photo / Chris Taewa
Construction of an easier climb to the top of Gisborne’s Whataupoko Reserve mountain bike trails could start in spring and be finished by year’s end.
Grants totalling $67,125 will provide over two-thirds of the quoted cost of a new climb-trail solution.
Gisborne Mountain Bike Club administers and maintains thetrails under an agreement with the district council.
The park has 14 downhill trails of varying grades of difficulty, but the climb trails that get mountain bikers to the start of their ride are too steep for many, club president Dan King says.
While recent coaching clinics focusing on 8- to 15-year-olds were popular, feedback from children and parents indicated the existing climb trails were so difficult and steep they were a barrier “not only to entry, but also to continued use for younger (and some older) users”, he said in a funding application to the New Zealand Community Trust (NZCT).
This week, he described the club’s idea to fix the problem as “a kind of Frankenstein” solution.
“Our proposal is to get professional trail builders in to piece together several existing portions of easy climb trail and then stitch them together with new, easy linking portions of trail to make a single, more user-friendly climb trail.”
The quote for an all-new trail was around $130,000, so the club went for the blended existing/new option with a quoted cost of $92,125, King said.
Grants of $32,125 from Grassroots Trust Central, $20,000 from the Eastern and Central Community Trust and $15,000 from the New Zealand Community Trust would be topped up by additional funding yet to be procured.
The club wanted the trail widened to broaden its reach to include – among others – parents with tow ropes pulling their children uphill, and adaptive bike users, King said.
Climb trails also served as walking tracks, so the upgrading would make the park more usable for walkers, including those older and less ambulant, and those with prams.
Trail-building contractors were in heavy demand throughout New Zealand, King said.
Brody Bell, son of Gisborne Mountain Bike Club committee member Matt Bell, enjoys the type of trail riding (in Rotorua) envisaged for the planned climb trail in Gisborne's Whataupoko Reserve.
“Trying to find a trail builder to come to Gisborne is like trying to find a unicorn.”
It took almost two years to get a contractor to even visit Gisborne to price remedial drainage work required in the Whataupoko Reserve as a result of Cyclone Gabrielle.
That work – funded by Trust Tairāwhiti – has just been completed by Velo Solutions, a national company with a locally based staff member.
“We feel this is an excellent opportunity, while we have a good working relationship with them, to double down on making the park more usable for our community,” King said.
Work on the climb trail would most likely start in spring and be finished by the end of the year. The park could be kept open to the public, but with some restrictions.
“It’ll be like the recently completed drainage project,” King said.
“They’ll have a digger up there, they’ll fence off the area where it’s working and when they’ve finished that part they’ll move on to the next one and repeat the process.”
King said the aspiration was to have a trail like Apumoana in the Rotorua Redwoods – “a nationally renowned piece of trail building with a smooth, gentle gradient that makes it accessible to one and all”.
