Cragieburn Mountain Biking Road Trip

So, as you may remember from some of my earlier posts, I’m currently working at a bike shop in Wanaka. This means that every day I talk to people that have been riding in all different places throughout New Zealand. One of the places that came up again and again in conversations was Cragieburn. Everyone that has ridden there raves about how exceptional the riding is and how it is totally unique from anywhere else.

Cragieburn is an area just west of Christchurch and is about 5 hours drive from Wanaka. After hearing about it over and over again, a friend from work (Alex) and I decided to take a few days of and head there to check it off of our lists.

We took off one day after work and drove through the evening to reach a place called Springfield around midnight. Springfield is about 30 minutes from the trails and we booked a place through Airbnb there (the place that we stayed in was called the Springfield Cottage).

Before heading up to Cragieburn, Alex and I talked to some friends that either lived or had ridden in the area so we had a general idea of where to ride, but by far the biggest help for us finding our way around was an app called Trailforks. It had all of the major trails on the app and we never lost our way when we were using it.

The Biking Trails in Cragieburn:

The terrain in this area of New Zealand is really unique and scenic. It’s mountainous with wide valley floors that have been carved out by glaciers and the mountain sides are covered in ancient beech forests. Hilary and I had actually driven through this area on our way across the South Island initially but we never had time to stop and explore as much as we could have.

It was a totally different experience coming back and spending more time in the area and it gave me more of an appreciation for how gorgeous this area is.

There are a few small towns in this area of New Zealand, but for the most part, hardly anyone lives in the area so it has a very remote and backcountry feel to it. Coupled with this, the trails in Cragieburn take you far back into alpine basins, over high saddles, and through thick beech forest, so it feels very isolated and rugged. I don’t have many pictures of the riding in the beech forests as there was very low, scattered light so it was difficult to capture. We were also focussed mostly on riding so I only snuck in photos when I had a chance. But either way, I hope the photos showcase a bit of what we experienced during our trip.

The whole trip encompassed 2 days of riding where we rode each day until we were exhausted and started quite early in the morning and rode until dark. The riding is basically split into two different areas so the first day we rode a trail called the Edge track that takes you deep into an alpine ski field and then follows a benched trail all of the way back, crossing scree slopes and steep cliffs. It was really unique and different than any other riding that I’ve done. There were also two trails called Luge, Helicopter Hill, and Dickson’s that we rode several times.

The next day we rode a few trails that start from the access road to the Mount Chesseman Ski Field. These trails were called Cockayne Alley, K-Line, the Dracophylum Track, and Cuckoo Creek. They were all through wet, slippery and fast beech forest, but each one was slightly different and totally different from lots of the riding that I’ve done in the past.

And throughout it all, we were surrounded by amazing scenery with fresh snow on the surrounding peaks and perfect clear skies and sunshine. All in all, it was an amazing riding trip and some of the best mountain biking that I’ve ever done. If you ever find yourself in New Zealand and happen to like mountain biking, you should definitely put this one on your list.

There isn’t much else to tell about this particular trip, but I’ll leave you with a few more photos…