Yesteday I went on an awesome but very tiring muni ride with a group of mountian b!kers. I was picked up at 5:20am and then taken on to meet up with everyone else. We then drove about 1hr 30mins to Blenheim where Mt. Fishtail, our planned ride, was. We got to the carpark, not quite at the foot of the mountain, and the mountain b!kers (all a lot older then me by the way…) pointed quite far off into the distance to the highest rockiest looking mountian…Mt. Fishtail. It was going to be a 4-6 hour tramp up the very steep hill to the summit, then awesome, steep, technical downhill. It started off with a river crossing so straight away my feet were wet, then about 30 mins to get to the foot of Mt. Fishtail. I was advantaged on the climb because I only had my 7kg muni, while some of the guys were hauling 25kg+ downhill bikes, there was one guy doing it on a trials bike though so before long me, him and another guy with his bike strapped to his pack were in the lead. From the start I could see it was going to be a very interesting ride, it was very steep, very rocky and very technical. To cut a long story short after 4hours of steep tiring uphill pushing me and the guy with the trials bike reached the top, very hot, very tired and very sweaty. It was probably about another hour before the last ones arrived (I think there were 8 of us all up - including a girl who was running it) we rested on the top for probably over an hour, enjoying the amazing view and resting our allready very wary legs. We weren’t quite at the summit but were over 4,000 feet high. Where we were we had broken the bush line and it was all shingle, we had planned on leaving the bikes there and walking to the summit - but after 4-5 hours of pushing didn’t really have the energy.
Anyway at about 3pm we began to head into the downhill (just down the way we came). It was a challenge for all of us, especially me, but I could ride a lot of it, for those NZ riders who know Veritgo - the medium difficulty stuff here was about the same as the really hard stuff on Vertigo! The guy with the trials bike was having a blast and the bike was gong really well, but then he snapped his back break cable (near the top) and that was it for him. I took just over and hour to get down, the guys on the bikes not so long. Overall it was a very cool track, VERY steep, VERY technical (lots of rocks, logs, root, slippery). There were only a few mild crashes and no-one got too injured, I got flipped onto a pile of rocks at one stage but that only resulted in a few cuts on my elbow.
From the time we set off from the car park to back to the carpark we had been riding/pushing for 8 hours. And from the time I left home to the time I got back I had been away for 16 hours. I was absolutley buggered but it was an awesome ride and an awesome day of muni. Oh and we also figured we were probably the first people on wheels ever to ride the track.
Sounds like an amzing day. Please tell me you’ve got photos! What length cranks are you running? Without a brake, right?
Andrew
Yeah the b!kers got some photos - I didn’t get any myself but if Im lucky they might send me theirs. They also did some filming, but on a really old video camera so Im not sure if the footage can even be trasnferred to a computer.
I’m running 152mm cranks and yeah with no brake. This made a lot of the downhill really difficult because it was so steep, so now im keen to get a brake put on.
152mm isn’t horribly short though, I think it’s actually quite close to the brake-less length I’d prefer (that being 160mm…which is also the ‘brake-ful’ length I’d prefer and will have). 
Andrew
Re: Crazy 16 hour day of insane muni!
That must have been a lot of fun! Good writeup too. What elevation did
you start at (that puts the 4,000 feet of the highest point in
perspective).
I hope you get those photos and post them!
Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
people who unicycle are shyly exhibitionistic - GILD
Sounds like an awesome epic Pete!
I wish I’d brought my unicycle to Blenheim when I was there a couple of years back- there’s some really great riding there.
BTW, are you up for the Rainbow Rage ? Still a few places left.
Nice ride. I like to hear about you tearing it up on the tiring uphill, which I still don’t understand so much. I would think that it would be difficult to use less energy because your pedaling will include some pressure that is only used to fight the other foot to keep balance. That sound right?
Not really. If you’re going up steep stuff, you don’t need any pressure on the back pedal for balance, all of that is done on the front foot. The only pressure on the back foot is to keep it from floating off the pedal but with a good pedal and matching shoe that can be quite low.
Klaas Bil
Re: Re: Crazy 16 hour day of insane muni!
I’m not entirely sure but pretty close to sea level, we hadn’t driven up any hills to get there.
I wasn’t riding up! Just walking up carrying my uni - that why I was advantaged having something so light to carry! I don’t think many/any people could’ve ridden up there.
wow.sounds tireing.and fun.did the mtbers take off ahead of you on the downhill?
sounds really cool. ive done a good bit of hiking but have never doen any muni. iplan to in the next month or so.
We all sort of stayed together going into the downhill, rode a section, waited for everyone, rode the next section - this was mainly for filming purposes. Then the bikers were getting tired of all the stop starting so they raced off ahead. I kept up with 2 other bikers - the guy with the broken brake and another guy (his brother) who was also having brake problems, but yeah mainly they raced ahead - which I didn’t mind.
Yeah it was quite cool intergrating the two activities, so it didn’t feel as much ‘gotta push to the top just so I can ride down’ but more like the tramping up was just like a fun part of the journey aswell. I’d recommed if anyone ever goes for a tramp up a mountain or whatever to take you uni along and then ride back down:D
damn sounds awesome pete, and you bet my solid trials riding record by 2 hours…i shall have to make an 18 hour trials mission
haha - Im in! 