Ranger Mark has been busy working with our local emergency rescue personnel to make it quicker and easier for emergency services to help those in need. The improvements won't necessarily help you stay upright on your bike but, in the event you don't stay upright and need proper help, that help will now make it to you more quickly. Check out this article from WCC and make a note of the emergency location markers around the park.
Remember - pre-ride, re-ride, free ride. And stay safe out there.
Click here for a copy of the 25th edition of the annual report of the Mākara Peak MTB Park Supporters Club. Enjoy the read.
On Saturday 11 May, we are celebrating the park’s 25th anniversary with a wee party. Fancy a great night out with like minded souls who have a passion for Mākara Peak? Click here to find out more.
The official opening of Mākara Peak as a mountain bike park was celebrated 25 years to the day on the 11th of March 2024 at a wee gathering of past and present visionaries and sloggers who have been involved in the creation and evolution of the Mākara Peak Mountain Bike Park over the last two and a half decades. Lots of stories and Simon Kennett's photo album were shared, reminiscing of how far we have come. As well as birthday cake, the evening culminated in the planting of two Tōtara by Miro Kennett and Mark Kent to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the park. Planted just in time to provide some shade at the 50th anniversary!
Back when downhill bikes looked like this, the Mākara Peak Mountain Bike Park was born.
2024 marks the 25th anniversary of the Mākara Peak Mountain Bike Park. There was a small ceremony on the 11th March 1999 that marked the occasion when Wellington City Council and the Mākara Peak MTB Supporters Club officially designated the Mākara Peak reserve as a mountain bike park.
Tracks at the time consisted of Starfish, Ridgeline and Snake Charmer! Missing Link was in development and Koru was still a dream. Most of the terrain was covered in grass, scrub and pine trees, with only a few pockets of forest starting to regenerate. The park has come a long way since then!
There will be a series of events to mark the 25th year so keep an eye on the Mākara Peak Supporters Facebook page.
Mākara Peak now has a merchandise store (hosted by Digitees).
We are kicking things off with t-shirts featuring the five most popular trails in the park. Over time we will add more designs and other merch.
Thanks for supporting. All sale proceeds go back into trails and conservation at Mākara Peak.
Most people’s first experience of the Mākara Peak MTB park is the Koru trail - a meandering grade 2 trail that take riders and those on foot from the main park entrance through lush regenerating forest deep into the park.
Koru has served the community well for the past 20 years, with tens of thousands of riders, runners and walkers enjoying this iconic trail every year. However the trail was starting to show its age and had crept out of grade in places.
Thanks to funding and coordination from Wellington City Council, Koru has been given a significant makeover, bringing the trail up to scratch to meet national grade 2 trail specifications, with a new trail surface, widening, drainage improvements, renewal of structures and improvements to the rest areas along the length of the trail.
Thanks for your patience while this major project has been undertaken.
Reproduced article: Building offcuts repurposed for mountain bike park
The Living Pā is an innovative build project at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington that is aiming to meet the Living Building Challenge® certification. The summit of regenerative building, the programme includes stringent targets for the recycling, reusing, and tracking of waste.
Published 3 November 2023
As part of this process, the Living Pā has donated timber piles to the Mākara Peak Mountain Bike Park for use in their many development projects, including new bike stands and seats around the park, including on the recently upgraded main entry trail to the park - the Koru Trail.
The goal for the Living Pā is to significantly reduce or eliminate the production of waste in the first place, but when that isn’t possible, it needs to be managed to make sure it doesn’t end up in landfill. For timber, 90% of it must be upcycled or reused, and that’s where groups like the Mākara Peak Bike Park Supporters come in.
“The Living Pā’s building contractor, L T McGuinness, reached out to our volunteer group with an opportunity to repurpose the material and not send it to landfill. The Mākara Peak Supporters have been longstanding volunteers, some for 20 years, and they have a number of projects on the go over the next year,” says Mark Kent, Park Ranger at Wellington City Council.
The Mākara Peak Bike Park has the largest trail network in the lower North Island. Trails weave through 250 hectares of regenerating native bush, and conservation is an important aspect of the park. The Mākara Peak Supporters plant one tree for every metre of new track to offset the impact of bush clearance for track building. Tens of thousands of trees have been planted since the Park was opened in 1998.
Some of the large timber piles from the Living Pā will be used to create bike stands at the beginner’s track, as well as being used for seating in the park. Some of the longer piles will be used for retaining walls across the park, and the timber has also been used to create a vehicle grate over a culvert.
“The Mākara Peak Supporters group are looking at doing a new design for the skills area to give people the opportunity to ride over the logs,” Kent says. “It’s designed in a certain way to enhance skills.”
Kent says not needing to buy timber for these purposes means they can use that money to help with other things like surfacing tracks or supporting other conservation efforts in the park.
Rhonda Thomson, Living Pā Project Manager, says the design consultants, construction and project management team are having imaginative conversations about what they can do with construction materials—conversations well beyond what would typically happen for a building project.
These conversations are about more than meeting the requirements of the Living Build Challenge, they’re about advocating for advanced benchmark practices, change and supporting local initiatives.
“Waste is actually a precious thing,” Thomson says. “Landfill represents a lazy attitude to resources that come from the whenua. The kaitiaki role is about taking responsibility, and it’s this kind of viewpoint that the Pā encourages us to explore.”
The recycled timber represents around 35 tonnes of material that would otherwise have gone to landfill. Some of it has been reused on site, and some of it has been donated to groups like the Mākara Peak Mountain Bike Park for the community to use and enjoy.
Click here for our 2023 Annual Report
It’s been another big year at Makara Peak with the park continuing to develop and evolve as the ten-year master plan is implemented and efforts continue to re-establish the native forest and wildlife.
We’re extremely grateful for everyone who volunteers their time, signs up to become a Supporter, or donates when we ask for help funding our major projects. There are thousands of hours given to the park by people planting trees, trapping pests, building track, back office work, and a wide range of other tasks and projects. Thank you one and all.
Thanks to the Supporters management committee for your hard work, dedication and good humour - Andrew Cooper, Clint Brandon, Evan McCarney, Kerei Thompson, Mark Kent, Peter Leman, Simon Kennett and Stewart Glynn. Committee meetings are never boring! We continue to have a great partnership with Wellington City Council and the Parks team in particular. They do a huge amount of work, and keep things ticking over in the park.
There’s still a lot of potential for better engaging park users around our vision for establishing a world class mountain bike park in a restored native forest. This won’t be achieved without the support and input from the community. With track counters estimating around 70,000 park entrances a year, if everyone who used the park became a Supporter (just $30 a year!) then we’d be able to massively speed up the implementation of our plans. Something we’ll be working on in 2020 along with quite a few exciting projects.
Pedal on
Simon O’Brien, Chair, Makara Peak Supporters
On the tracks side of things, volunteers completed the rebuild and extension of Starfish which has quickly become a favourite trail for lots of riders. TGL built a new section of SWIGG that weaves through the trees and down to the main entrance, and a short but important section of track was built to connect Aratihi to the summit which cuts out the blustery and boring section of 4WD.
Entrance upgrades - the entrance on Allington Road was recently upgraded, with a new concrete ramp, retaining wall and safety rails thanks to a grant from Four Winds Foundation and our cash reserves. It’s now much more fit-for-purpose for beginners and new riders who use this entrance as part of the kids loop.
On a totally different scale, a major revamp of the main entrance and carpark on South Karori Road began in Spring, with work scheduled to be completed in late January. This project is being funded and managed by WCC.
Maintenance work is on-going – with such a big trail network we’re always working to ensure tracks don’t degrade too much. Retaining walls have been replaced on Koru, the middle section of Aratihi was rebenched, Peak Flow got some love, rock breaking continues on North Face, bridges have been replaced on Nikau Valley and the Wild at Heart bridge had its regular check-ups.
The skills park was completely rebuilt by Southstar and opened just before Christmas. This project was only possible thanks to the 238 generous people who donated to our Givealittle campaign, plus grants from Karori Brooklyn Community Charitable Trust, New Zealand Community Trust and Teriwhiti Charitable Trust, and a sizeable contribution from our cash reserves. There’s still some work to be done with seating, signage and generally tidying up the area which will be done in the new year, but judging by the crowds of people testing their skills on the weekend, it’s already proving to be a hit.
Summit project - a team is working away in the background on a project that will see the summit area revamped to tell our story to visitors to the park – including the history of the area, the development of the park and conservation progress to date.
Kohanga a porokapa – work has begun on clearing land at the south end of the park in preparation for planting a lot of podocarps in 2020. Thanks to Meridian and ACC who donated volunteer days that have helped kick off the project. We’ve received grants from Wellington City Council, Trees That Count, The Greenwood Trust and Wellington Zoo Trust towards the costs of this project.
Zac’s track and surrounds - we received a generous grant from the Ian ‘Zac’ Pearson Endowment Fund which has enabled us to make a good start on upgrading the track and its environs. The fence has been upgraded to make it goat-proof and we have planted 700 shrubs in areas adjacent to the track.
Another 1000 odd trees and shrubs have been planted this year by committed and enthusiastic volunteers. Some were planted alongside new tracks like the new Starfish, others in-filling holes in other areas. We are on track for our commitment to plant a tree for every metre of new track built.
Transpower completed their maintenance on the powerlines, which despite some inconvenience to park users, went as smoothly as could be expected.
Kohanga a porokapa more work will be done to prepare the site for planting, with new access and fences installed to prevent pigs and other pests from eating the podocarps when planting begins next Winter.
T3 will be reborn as a grade 3 intermediate level climb. Expect this to be reopened in late Summer or early Autumn.
Zac’s track will get a refresh and changed to downhill only. When combined with T3, riders will have a short loop option in the Northern end of the park.
Summit to North Face - a short new link track will be built from the summit down to the start of North Face and Trickle Falls. This is scheduled to begin in February and is part of a re-jig of the tracks that link the summit to the tracks in the northern end of the park.
North Face to Starfish - the tracks team have marked out most of a new grade 4 trail that will take riders from the end of North Face, over towards where Starfish meets Snakecharmer. There’s some potential for another outstanding grade 4 trail in a similar vain to Starfish - look out for dig days kicking off in late January.
T3 downhill - one of the next tracks to be built will be the new grade 4 to replace T3. Using the first 50 off metres of T3, it will then branch off and head all the way down to the water tank at the bottom of Varley’s.
Track upgrades - having seen what’s possible with the new section of SWIGG and Starfish, we’d like to look into upgrading and updating some of the existing tracks. Lazy Fern, Smokin and parts of North Face could do with a bit of modernising. Fundraising will dictate what we can achieve.
Southstar have finished the upgrade to the skills park, which is now open for your riding (and jumping!) pleasure. Judging by the crowds on the weekend it’s already proving to be a hit.
This work has been completed thanks to grants from Karori Brooklyn Community Charitable Trust, New Zealand Community Trust and Teriwhiti Charitable Trust, plus a sizeable contribution from our cash reserves.
There’s still some work to be done with seating, signage and generally tidying up the area which will be done in the new year.
Massive thanks to the team from Westpac who did a day of volunteering in the park on Friday. Lots of tweaks and improvements were made to the middle section of Starfish including a new easier drop-in off Snakecharmer.
If you’re a corporate group and would like to do some volunteer work in the park, drop us a line and we’ll sort something out for you - https://makarapeak.bike/contact.
