March Pōhatu Update — Trails Wellington

New Trail Build - Pōhatu

We’re seeing awesome progress on the construction of the new Upper and Middle Pōhatu trails at Mākara Peak. These trails will complete an epic downhill run from the highest point of the park into the existing lower Pōhatu trail.

Some key stats

Grade - Pōhatu is a Grade 4 trail, with optional Grade 5 features.

Length - 1.3km of new trail!

Style - Technical, wide, fast with amazing rock work, combined with incredible engineered features.

Cost - Trails Wellington have donated $165,000 to fund this project.

Trail Builders - TGL. Ricky, Elliot, Pavel and Tryfan are taking the lead on this monster project.

By being a paid-up Trails Wellington member you are directly contributing to creating awesome new trails like this - so massive thanks!

Overview

Pōhatu is shaping up to be an EPIC signature trail for Wellington and Mākara Peak. Our team have worked in close partnership with the Mākara Peak tracks’ team and WCC to ensure Pōhatu is something new to the Wellington trail network. Think of this new trail as your own slice of Wairoa Gorge right here in the city’s backyard! This is no coincidence as both Thomas and Ricky of TGL learnt a lot of their craft as trail builders in the legendary Wairoa Gorge park. The trail is littered with technical features and incredible rock work, whilst having corners that support you, coupled with sight lines that allow you to carry speed throughout the whole track.

Progress

We’re still at least a month away from trail completion, with the previously dry weather making the finishing touches on the middle section impossible to complete. Please resist the temptation to ‘be a dick’ by sneaking in for a ride on the unfinished track. This reflects that doing this will cause irreversible damage at this stage, so please be patient and stay off it. The TGL crew are currently on the top section, navigating some serious bluffs and producing some incredible trail features. Dropping in from the high point of Ridgeline, the views and the new trail are both going to be hard to beat.

Funding

Trails Wellington’s funding comes from members like you, and directly contributes to creating epic trails - so massive thanks to the thousands of you who have joined already!

We then work with our coalition trail partners like Mākara Peak, Brooklyn Trail Builders and the Miramar Track Project to see where our funding can increase the quality of Wellington’s trails, or accelerate work that they have planned, but would have taken a long time to finish using volunteers. The Mākara Peak Supporters approached us with this amazing opportunity - being building Pōhatu, and we’re stoked to be able to speed up the process and hopefully deliver a world class section of trail. At $165,000 this is our most expensive project to date, this grade 4 technical trail highlights that it's not all flow tracks at Trails Wellington.

People

We want to offer a huge big ups to the TGL crew who are delivering this epic project. The terrain is super challenging and the work they are producing is to a brilliant standard. At Trails Wellington we’ve had our trail crew Bryn Dickerson and Scotty Newman all over this project, along with Tom Cappleman our new Operations Manager. Mākara Peak have had Andrew Cooper and Kerei Thompson heavily involved, whilst the newly appointed WCC Makara ranger Mark Kent is proving to be a brilliant asset to the Wellington mountain bike community.

Look out for news about this epic new trail opening in the coming months. Remember - The more members Trails Wellington has, the more epic trails we can create.

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 21st you've got two weeks to complete a run down Matairangi's Hippy's into V & A. 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 Matairangi 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!