March Newsletter — Trails Wellington

Behind the scenes of Trails Wellington

The aim of Trails Wellington is to provide new and upgraded trails to the good people who enjoy getting out in our backyard. A key part to our work is advocacy. For us riders living and breathing mountain biking it seems obvious to us that a large portion of Wellingtonians love riding! However to the Wellington City Council it is often hard to get the number of riders across to them.

We are keen to work this number out, how many people get out and enjoy the trails in Wellington? To date we have had around 2,650 members of TW. However, we think that this is only a fraction of the people who mountain bike. We want to be able to accurately say that the rider numbers in Wellington are huge and growing, as it helps highlight why the Council should be putting more funding and resources into our sport.

Rider: Rosara Joseph | Photographer: Caleb Smith

As a first step to try and get a read on rider numbers we thought we would look at the trail counting data, as well as Strava, to see how many people are riding at Mākara Peak.

Every time you ride into Mākara Peak through the Koru, St Albans Road, or the Mākara Road saddle entrances you go past a smart trail counter. These counters know if you are on a bike or foot, plus which direction you are going in. We combined this data to determine the total number of people going into Mākara Peak on bikes each day through these three entrances. While we are missing those people going into the Park through Arlington Road, this is pretty minor in the overall scheme of things.

The following graph shows the last rolling 30 days, with the highest data point being 11,095 people entering Mākara Peak through these three entrances in the 30 days ending 8 February 2022. A quick glance at the chart reveals that the Covid lockdowns makes it difficult to see the overall trend. To take this into account we looked at the averages for different shorter periods which excluded when Wellington was in lock down. This helps highlight that there has progressively been quite a big jump in the total number of riders using Mākara Peak each day. The average for the most recent set of months (roughly October through February) is about 33% higher than what it was back in 2019 which was pre Covid. It’s also good to see that mountain bikers are pretty compliant, as you can see that almost no one was riding during lock-down.

Once we had this data, we thought it would be interesting to look at what portion of Wellington’s mountain bikers use Strava. We did this by comparing the daily count from the Council’s Koru counter with what Strava was saying. We have shown the result of this in the following graph.

A quick glance at the data suggests that there is a strong relationship between the two sets of data, which is confirmed by calculating a correlation of 0.93 (which is strong). When we dug into this we can see that 28% of the people riding up Koru are using Strava, and that this is pretty consistent (as a ratio) each day. Strava said that they believe globally the portion of total riders who use Strava is about 30%, which seems to hold true for Wellington.

This provides us with a valuable way of estimating how many people are riding different trails in Wellington, reflecting that Strava data exists everywhere that people ride.

We will continue to look at what insights we can get from the data, as we want to highlight to the Council how big mountain biking is as a sport in Wellington. The most direct way that you can help us with this is to make sure all of your friends are paid up members of Trails Wellington. Get them to download and sign-up to the app today!

Waimapihi Enduro

In their ninth season the Wellington Enduro Series has been better than ever! Even with strict red light protocols the team has still made it work - a huge win for the local scene!

The 2022 Waimapihi Enduro is set to be an awesome day riding the swooping trails the reserve. For the intermediate course expect a mixture of the classic trails and for the hard be ready for a couple OGs trails to be thrown into the mix!

As mentioned there is an intermediate and hard course option. The hard course will be longer, have a bit more climbing, and counts towards Wellington Enduro Series points.

Intermediate - will be suitable for riders happy with intermediate level trails
Hard - Faster, harder, and a wee bit more of an adventure. Anticipate a little bit more riding

There is limited entry spots so get in quick and give enduro racing a go!

Click HERE to enter!

WES - Underground Series

Want to race in your own time or after work? Well now you can! Local legend William Johnston has setup a QR code race for the community to get amongst.

The concept is simple, from Monday 7th you've got two weeks to complete a run down Karori's K-Hole Downhill track, scanning in and out on the provided signs to record your time.

To race, download the free app "WEBSCORER RACE TIMER" create an account and register for the race. Then head over to Karori to complete a lap, scanning in at the top and out at the bottom - this records your race time.

You can do as many runs as you like over the coming 2 weeks and your fastest will count. After the two week period keep an eye out for the next track announcement!

Categories have been setup so everyone can get amongst some friendly competition!

U17 Men and Women
U19 Men and Women
Open Men and Women
Masters Men and Women

Stay up to date on the WES Underground Instagram page!

Wellington Rescue Squad Appeal

When neither an ambulance nor a helicopter can reach you, the Wellington Free Ambulance Rescue Squad will be called in to help.

The Rescue Squad is a team of 37 amazing paramedics specially trained to get to, treat and extract patients in hard to access locations like dense bush, cliff faces and rugged coastal locations. They are on call 24/7 if someone is hurt or unwell and lost in the bush, injured on a mountain track or down the side of the Rimutaka hill after a vehicle crash.

The team at Wellington Free Ambulance need to raise $276,000 to purchase a new, custom-built, modern and reliable rescue vehicle, and they are asking for our help.

They are currently reliant on a 16-year-old Mitsubishi Triton to respond to emergencies, one of three in the rescue fleet. Over its 16 years on the job, it has helped many patients in extreme and life-threatening situations. Now the time has come to retire it and replace it with a new reliable, fit for purpose rescue vehicle so the Rescue Squad can continue to be there for patients when no one else can.

Please click HERE to support or find out more about the Rescue Squad and how they rescued a mountain biker called Merwyn from Makara Park. Last year our Rescue Squad attended over 500 biking accidents all over Wellington, Kapiti and Wairarapa.