Door to Door
'Finding challenge and adversity on the doorstep'
Words by Joe Sutheran
Photography by Peter Mitchell
Two mates, find a lot more challenge than they bargained for...
The plan for this trip materialised long before the weather forecast for it did, but only moments before the idea of blogging about it. We’re creatives - so now you’ve got Pete on photos and Joe on words - we are two mates who love riding bikes and live in one of the best spots in New Zealand to do it.
The plan was simple - ride our (matching) Marin Nicasios from our own front doors in Wanaka, to the 32-bunk Aspiring Hut and stay the night, then ride back.
Riding from door-to-door was one of the things that got us most excited about this trip. There’s something pretty cool about getting out into the wilderness under your own steam and remembering you did it from home - and then riding all the way back again! It's often easy in this day and age to seek adventure further afield, jump on a plane or drive many hours to your start and finish point, when often adventure and challenge can be found not too far from your doorstep, especially where we are lucky enough to live!
At just a touch over 60km each way, the distance wasn’t enough to worry us. We knew it was about 25km of sealed road, 25km of mixed quality gravel, and the final 10km of trail between Raspberry Flat car park and Aspiring Hut, about which we’d heard mixed rideability reports. We knew even if we had to walk it, we’d get there.
As for the accommodation, we’ve both spent plenty of nights in backcountry huts. By usual standards Aspiring is the Ritz. What we hadn’t really bargained for was the velocity and direction of the winds forecasted for both our ride in, and our ride out.
We were (Pete was) partly to blame for this - we ended up doing the trip on a different weekend to the one we’d originally planned due to a promise he wanted to keep. I couldn’t argue, dependability is hard to come by. I supported his decision. (Honest I did!). So we rescheduled.
LandSAR volunteer is just one of a bunch of cool feathers Pete keeps in his cap. He’s also a guide and an instructor, a white-water kayaker, a youth mentor, the navigation guy, and by extension, the weather guy. I barely thought to check the forecast - I figured we’re doing it anyway, and Pete knows weather well enough to flag it if it’s a bad idea.
With that, we mounted our aeroe Spider Rear Racks with our 12L aeroe drybags and our front fork luggage systems, lubed up our chains and went for it - grabbing something for dinner that night on the way through town.
Our gravel rigs are Marin Nicasios - I said that already. Without luggage, they’re around 13.5kg of steel beauty, with 1x9 drivetrains and literally the worst brakes known to man. With luggage, they weigh and handle roughly the same as stubborn adult donkeys. We absolutely love them. To the world of Gravel riding it doesn’t come any more entry level than this, but their simplicity makes them easy to fix (not that they break), and means you don’t really worry about how you treat them. Which is perfect for a rough and ready trip like this into unknown terrain.
It’s not a coincidence exactly that we have the same bike - Pete bought one, I saw it, he told me how cheap it was, then I bought one.
Because we’d agreed to do something creative as a way to capture the experience, Pete brought his DSLR camera along - we were beyond the point where weight was a consideration. After some obligatory setup and departure snaps, we left Wanaka on the road towards Glendhu Bay - and immediately noticed the wind. Whitecaps on the lake at this point, this early in the day (10:30am), should have been a red flag. But our positive pants were on, excitement levels were high, and neither of us voiced our concerns.
We made easy progress and ignored the wind, to the bottom of the Treble Cone ski field road, where the tar seal ends and the gravel starts. By pure chance, our good friend and aeroe ambassador Toby rode out from the TC road just as we were passing, so we stopped for a chat (and a photo). He’d been out longer than us, and gone up higher than us, so when he said “Aspiring? Bit of wind about - you boys are going to have a war on riding that way." We slid silently and separately from naive optimism into fear, then regret, and finally acceptance of our future reality. It was going to hurt.
Toby grabbed a quick photo for us and rode off towards Wanaka with the tailwind. “Ain’t nothing to it but to do it” I said to Pete, which raised a smile, and we were on our bikes and off into the abyss.
“Next job” is a concept that stuck with me from rugby days - on the rugby pitch if something goes wrong, there’s always the “next job” by which to right the wrong. It’s a way of not allowing yourself time to reflect much on a failure. It also works for just not dwelling on the past regardless of its colour - positive, negative, neutral, scary, boring, whatever. For us, the next job was 25km of headwind hindered gravel. So we got on with it. As the bigger bloke with more flatout power, I was on the front with Pete tucked in behind. The fact that the closest he ever got to riding on the front was to ride alongside me, didn’t bother me at all. Not at all. Not one bit.
The gravel was dry and dusty, so as we rode the wind would whip up dust clouds we had to pedal blindly into and out the other side of. Even at this, neither of us voiced our anger or frustration at the extent of the wind. We were determined to not fan the flames started inside each of us by Toby’s brutal honesty. We just buried our heads and turned our pedals to the tune of constant bloody-minded progress.
I kept my feelings to myself because I knew Pete would already be feeling terrible that we rescheduled this trip to this weekend in this weather - he’d be worrying that I was having a horrible time. I was. But I wasn’t about to make him feel worse.
We’ve since debriefed about this silent understanding there seemed to be between us, that neither would give voice to the suffering we were enduring on that 25km section of gravel, even when the rain joined in the punishment. We’ve laughed about it since.
Eventually, following several photo stops, featuring water top-ups and silent contemplations, we got to Raspberry Flat car park, where we agreed to spend ten minutes out of the elements.
We gratefully accepted biscuits (and kudos for facing the wind) from a Christchurch family who’d been hiking the trail, and got started on what we knew could either be the best or the worst 10km of the ride.
Turns out we needn’t have worried. For anyone considering this mission, it’s all rideable even to a novice, aside from the first few hundred metres after the car park, which we had to carry our bikes through due to the steep rocky sections.
The trail to Aspiring Hut is a mix of 4WD track and grassy sections, with several gates to pass through and styles to clamber over. There’s one steep pinch in the middle that someone with stronger legs and more favourable gear ratios than us could have ridden. Our only minor mishap was an error of judgement on my part. Coming down a slight descent on the 4WD track carrying decent speed, I saw the puddle ahead across the whole road. I plumped for the middle where I figured it’ll be shallowest and still firm. It was neither.
After cleaning the mud and cowshit out of my cassette and disc rotors using stream water and my drink bottle, we knocked off the last few kilometres with high spirits in anticipation of a warm fire and a cup of tea.
We got to the hut around 3:30pm, and were surprised to find it empty - unpacked, put the stove on to boil, and lit the fire. For a while I lost myself in Hall & Ball - a book about the two famous Kiwi mountaineers who climbed all over the world and all of the highest peaks. Big mountain stories always pull me in. “Because it’s there” was George Mallory’s famous response when someone asked him why he wanted to climb Everest.
I realise we’re not climbing Everest here, in the grand scheme of things it wasn’t even Scafell Pike, but voluntary challenge and learning to prevail amidst adversity is important to me. We made dinner - freeze dried in all its glory, and went to bed - but not before two women who had ridden in from the carpark on mountain bikes showed up and showed us up with their two course dinner and drinks!
After a decent sleep, interrupted only once by the unmistakable sound of mouse feet pitter-pattering along floorboards and bedframes somewhere close to my head, we tucked into breakfast. Hot porridge, banana, and a cup of tea. We talked optimistically about how still it felt outside compared to yesterday, we even briefly got a view of the lower slopes of Mt Aspiring further up the valley in the clouds - that naive optimism was back in spades. It couldn’t be worse than the ride in.
We saddled up and made short work of the first 10km back to the carpark - taking a lot more care and a lot less risks than we were prone to on the way in - walking around several stream crossings and muddy puddles this time. We’d resolved to ride the steep pinch on the way back out and both succeeded - and burnt more matches than we’d have liked so early in the day!
After Raspberry Flat carpark the going on the gravel was good - there was wind around, which this time we acknowledged out loud - but nothing like the day before.
Unfortunately for us, there’s a sharp right hand turn around Cameron Flat, which puts you on a fairly straight-shot to Treble Cone. Turn a corner we did, but only in the navigational sense. Metaphorically we were kicked in the guts. Yesterday’s north-westerly had given way to the forecasted southerly, which became bitterly cold and dragged claggy mist up the valley to infiltrate our optimism.
The war was on again - we won the battle yesterday. Today we were openly voicing our feelings about the situation, which probably didn’t help either of us. In hindsight, I don’t think Sunday’s wind was stronger than Saturday’s, but its effect on us was the same or worse.
The wind and the cold were causing our spirits to creak - I was back on the front and we tried to rally. Encouragement a-plenty, sandwich stops occasional, we made steady progress. The mist had closed in and there wasn’t much to look at, so I focussed on the speed on my head unit - doing far better than our average of 12km/hr at the worst moments yesterday, and I tried to feel encouraged by that.
Methodically opening and closing the fingers of each hand inside double-gloves, to try and retain the dexterity to change gear when required - the kilometres ticked away. We’re two blokes who love riding gravel, but the celebrations we had when the gravel ended and the tar seal started again could have fooled you into thinking otherwise. Home straight. What we wouldn’t have given for the previous day’s nor-wester then to push us home!
Nonetheless, on the new surface we made good time - no mucking about now. We agreed on a celebratory lunch at a cafe back in town, and we’d committed to meeting my partner there at 12:15pm.
Pete commented on me “putting on the afterburners” up the only noticeable climb back to Wanaka, just before Roys Peak car park. I think by this stage I just wanted it to end! So yes, I was pushing.
We’ve since been informed that another friend and fellow-graveller saw us near Glendhu Bay on our way home, and described us as “miserable-looking”. No arguments there. We ducked down Ruby Island Road and did the last section on the trail towards the Wanaka Tree to avoid the worst of the wind - and finally rolled into Kai Whaka Pai for lunch, a defrosting and a debrief.
My partner’s first words to us were: “Pete - I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so defeated.” Defeated we were - but elated too. Our smiles returned and we reflected on how it’s possible to have a horrible time on a bike for large swathes of a trip, but still say that on balance it was a great trip.
This was a great trip full (almost full) of horrible times. But getting to where we got to on the bikes we got there on, and in the weather we got there in, was an achievement. In the end - success amidst adversity and a good story over a beer, are two reasons we all love riding bikes aren’t they?
A reflection on trips like this one, is that it's easy to let your mind slip into negative states, and self talk, and wondering 'why on earth would I volunteer my weekends to put myself through this'. Something that we keep in mind is how lucky we are to have the opportunity to put ourselves through this. The bikes, the terrain, the time, and a little bit of 'know how' are all things we don't take for granted. Bikes and mates were the winner on the day, as they usually are, with many more adventures to come!
To find out more about the Racks used on this adventure - Click below 👇
