Today is Wednesday and time for the 2nd gravel ride in Queenstown. Today I jumped in the car and commuted to Cromwell about 56 km away and takes nearly an hour on highway 6. The trail links Cromwell and Clyde townships following the edge of Lake Dunstan. Based on the Great Rides app most tourists do the trip in one-direction and get a van ride back to the start point. I decided that I would ride out and back as it was only 26 miles one-way and I figured I could take it easy and make it a recovery ride. Here’s the route captured by Ride with GPS.
This turned out to be a harder ride than yesterday! There are two significant climbs as the profile shows, and a lot of up and down the rest of the time. Some recovery ride… this was an all out effort on the big climbs on loose gravel, so definitely tested the endurance on the 50+ mile ride with 95% or more of it on gravel.
The views were amazing! Here are some shots I took on the outbound leg. Click on the image to view it full size, then go back to this page.
The trail is plenty wide in most of the sections, but every now and then it gets real narrow and 2 bikes cannot pass each other, so the protocol is to stop dismount and walk by. There were not that many people out on the trail today so I only met a handful of other bikers. You have to remain alert continuously as there are blind corners and you could have a biker coming right at you on your side of the trail! There are signs everywhere about “keep left”, but its not always possible in some corners.
There are some challenging sections of the track, where its narrow and there is nothing to stop you falling off the edge and going for a swim, potentially doing a free-fall first in some places! Definitely don’t day dream while riding the Dunstan Lake trail.
There are two steep climbs that are marked “Intermediate – Grade 3” and you need to be a confident bike rider to attempt the climb and the descent. There are some fences in critical areas to prevent you falling to your demise, but there are many more areas that are not fenced and you don’t want to go over the edge. On the steepest descents/ascents I found the deepest gravel – go figure! Some of the slopes the bike was sliding not rolling through the corners due to the gravel but its manageable – just keep the speed under control at all times since once the momentum has built you will not be able to stop quickly on this loose surface.
In about four places they had to build a cliff boardwalk supported on metal beams embedded in the rock. There was no path so they built one hanging off the cliff. These are well protected and are easy to ride.
Arriving in to Clyde you transition from gravel to the back roads for a mile or so to get into town. On the way you go past the Hydro Plant, where they built a dam to create Dunstan Lake as it is today, and to provide clean electricity generation.
For lunch I ate at the Old Post Office, a historic building that had been converted into a restaurant and lodging. It had a large garden out back and plenty of tables indoors too. It was a great day so I stayed outside but under shade as the New Zealand sun is strong. The sunscreen that I am using is doing a good job preventing sunburns and damage, I use it everyday for these rides. Lunch was a pulled pork BBQ sandwich and fries – it was delicious and I would definitely return here in future.
After about an hour for lunch, I got back on the bike around 3pm for the 26 mile ride back to the car in Cromwell. I had two large climbs ahead and the Hugo bridge to cross once more. The advantage for the return journey was I had a tailwind 🙂 and since it was getting later in the day I was not expecting any riders to be coming the opposite direction so I could go fast in some sections. There was a Wine Tasting farm about 2 hours away right on the trail and I planned to stop there for a drink if I could get there before they closed at 5pm.
All the way back, the Dunstan Lake was on my right and this time I was not as close to the edge so confidence was high that I would not depart the trail! Yikes!
In summary, this was not a recovery ride due to the 4 significant climbs that had to be powered up, and safely descended. The 52 mile round trip didn’t sound that much at the start of the day, but I had changed my mind on this point and was glad to see the car at the end! The headwind on the outbound leg was strong in places but it gave back for my return journey literally pushing me up some of the climbs.
The trail is fantastic and I’d ride this again.
If you want to view some of the raw GoPro footage then some of the “exciting” moments are in these videos. You may want to download them for better playback as these are being served from my cloud account currently.
- https://1drv.ms/v/c/7c925d6b6cb43b66/IQD0HKZXHhU9RZ2-gnXyTV8PAScx7XFbrsz_4aK7nMUtDYI?e=nCI6kR
- https://1drv.ms/v/c/7c925d6b6cb43b66/IQDfbQSgyjTrQrdrepyUF-bVAYEOwHhkjQWvvj1VeLhNH60?e=i7h71f
- https://1drv.ms/v/c/7c925d6b6cb43b66/IQCnOUEE0wESSK7D0Dv1v8WLAVg88ojAUQmRXdilmLu0dZ8?e=WmfSBC
- https://1drv.ms/v/c/7c925d6b6cb43b66/IQDS2aQc1DPyQpk9pGLtjyFaAaQv5Uz1zS04GengwTwGScM?e=eCyp4U
- https://1drv.ms/v/c/7c925d6b6cb43b66/IQD_2HlYFQj_QKore6xmuZzLAUUBw-WjAqIQLblYJDS2X54?e=SowXjA
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