Mountain Bike City Nelson

With the completion of Involution Track on the outskirts of Nelson in December mountain bikers and walkers now have nine kilometres of local tracks to choose from.

Nelson Mountain Bike Club President Chris Mildon led the project: “As a club, we couldn’t have done all the work on our own. We greatly appreciated the help of Don Kivell and the community work teams because it was very hard work, with steep terrain and dense bush.”

Community Work Supervisor Don has been involved with the creation of the mountain bike tracks since the start in 2008. He says that the latest tracks are located up Marsden Valley, about 2 km southeast from Nelson. “That’s the beauty of it and why the tracks are used so often. People just cycle out the door and onto the track. And being on public land means it is accessible all week at all hours, without the restrictions we generally have with working forestry areas.”

Chris explains how they created the trail: “I found the line I wanted to follow for the track, after working my way back and forth through the bush. Then cleared a corridor through it with a chainsaw and a machete, marking the actual line of the track with fencing pigtails placed every two to three metres. The team of offenders on community work sentences followed that line, digging and benching of the hill to create a trail of about a metre wide. It would take me a day to cut and mark 200 metres of trail this way. They would then take two full days of digging to form that same piece of trail.

“Time on the job would have equated to around 3,000 hours for offenders completing community work,” says Chris. “To put that in context, the top half of this track was built by machine (a council contractor) while we worked up from the bottom by hand. We linked up quite close to the middle, and the contractor cost us around $24,000.”

Beautiful views
Before the project started there was only one main dirt road up to the top of the Barnicoat Ranges. Now there are different levels of tracks leading to beautiful views. “The new track provides an exciting intermediate mountain bike trail,” says Chris. “The upper levels of the track wind through matai and beech forest.”

“It is a beautiful track,” agrees Don. “And for the community work teams it’s so rewarding to see the tracks used!” “People rave about this trail,” says Chris. “It’s made to a very tight design standard (a recognised mountain bike specific international standard) and has worked out just right!”

Making Nelson a true mountain bike city means there is still work to do. Chris explains: “Stage Two of this project involves a major traverse from the top of the Barnicoat Walkway, across to a point about a third of the way down Involution. This is scheduled for roll-out this winter, and I’m hoping to run this one with community work teams again.

“Long term the potential up here is endless. A private community-based trust is investigating the feasibility of installing a chairlift on this hill, which would increase accessibility in a big way.”