Taking a knife to a gun fight was Dave Benson’s apt description of taking a cyclocross bike into serious singletrack. Seeing Teva roll up on his awesome Yeti for our overnight excursion into the Waitakere Ranges  made me wonder what I was getting myself into. But the weather was crystal clear and not too hot, so off we went.

The last time I rode this trail, it was really boggy. I’d hoped the week or so of fine, dry weather would have dried the trail out and made it more ridable. It hadn’t.

After bashing through mud pits, bogs, mud holes and some fun sections, we came to a junction. The choice was blast down a trail that put us 5kms from Bethells Beach or try to find a sneaky route through some private land that would spit us out a bit closer. We tried the latter. It wasn’t all bad. The downhill at the start was rad. It was fairly wide but with deep rain ruts snaking all the way down. Negotiating it was a process of trying not to slide into and out of the ruts. Too much fun. This was the wrong way though, so we had to push back up the other side. After a lot of bike pushing we made it back to the junction.

The blast down the last downhill through the bush was the best part of the ride. I got caught out by the rocky sections, blowing through my inch of Continental Cycloking travel at the front and pinch flatting. The pic above is me pumping up my front tyre at the end of the trail. I’d have to do that another half-dozen times — knife in a gunfight.

The Waitakere Ranges at the end of the trail.

We made it to Bethells Beach eventually and then over to Oneil’s Bay where we made camp among some old pohutukawas just off the beach. I got to try out my Hennesy Hammock. I took a bit longer than the dude in the video to set it up, but it happened.

Teva went ultra-light with this snazzy paracord-camo tarp bivy set up.

Cooked a feed, drank some whisky, chilled out.

Thanks for the photos Teva!

Edit: that’s the last photo i took of the evening that i forgot to send justin -teva-