Paul Petch

Heli biking at Taupo – North Island

Well the weekend finally arrived to do our Heli lift downhill ride near Lake Taupo on the North Island, with Helisika.

This was booked almost a year ago when I was still living in Spain, so was great to finally use it with Momentus. It was his partner whom bought it for him for his birthday last year, of which you needed to book 2 peeps.

The weather this week as been not the best, but we opted to go with an 8 in the AM departure on Saturday morning. Hindsight is a great thing, cause by 11 in the AM is was poo’s. The weather was showery to say the least, but still some great blue sky when the showers past, it was a cool temperature too at around 6 deg C (42 deg F). But once up the top, the wind chill was really nasty. Keep in mind you lot in the Northern Hemisphere  that we are heading into our winter here in New Zealand.

Getting ready to depart it was clear that  Momentus was not fond of flying at all, and he has not been in a chopper before. I have to say he did real well, because it was far from fine weather for flying! It was a 16 nautical mile flight in, so not to far really. We flew over the top part of the trail, and it looked hawt with a little light fresh snow up top.

The trail terrain was a little like we rode in the Alpine Epic race in the South Island, New Zealand a few months back with typical tussock and high land plants etc. The trail was very wet as we have had loads of rain over the past week and it was clear that next time I would come in summer. On one ridge, it was focken windy, and am not just saying that, it was a little scary actually. I got a little air, 1 foot say and the wind caught me, and it was not fun.

Once at the bottom we went back up for a 2nd run, not all the way to the top though due to weather. We had a blast of a day, but it would have been cooler in better weather, but all the same, a fantastic day Heli Biking!

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 1st, 2009 at 7:08 pm and is filed under Bike Rides and tagged with epic, MTBNZ contributors, nicolai, North Island, Taupo, Trails & Rides, whafe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.