About two months ago I bought my first mountain bike and since then I’ve dug up as much information as possible on Mountain biking in and around Christchurch. I’m putting together what I’ve found into this simple Christchurch Mountain Biking Guide to give you a head start.

You’ll find out about Mountain Bike Tracks, Clubs, Resources, Where to buy and Repair Tips, let’s get into it.

Christchurch Mountain Bike Tracks

We’re lucky that we have so many mountain bike tracks around Christchurch for all levels of fitness and technical difficulty, through winter it’s important to find out which tracks are open or closed before heading out. Riding on wet tracks damages the hard work people have put into building them, so make sure you know which ones are open before loading your bike up.

The most up to date website for this information is Season of Cycling run by the Christchurch City Council, it gives track status, length, maps and grading for 22 different Christchurch Mountain Bike Tracks. The CCC also keeps the Track Status on their main website on the Mountain Biking Page.

Chris Brown has also put together a great site for Mountain Bike Tracks in Christchurch, Canterbury, Queenstown, Hanmer Springs and Nelson at the website: On Your Bike. Each track contains photos, maps, fitness level, technical difficulty and a fun factor rating, he also explains the track in detail so you know what you’re in for before heading out.

The hub of Mountain Bike Tracks in Christchurch seems to be the Port Hills Mountain Bike Park, from here you can find a maze of different tracks going all over Victoria Park, down Bowenvale Valley, Kennedy’s Bush and Worsley’s Spur- Download the map from the Christchurch City Council – Mountain Biking Page.

Oh, and the Canterbury Mountain Biking Club has a Track Database worth checking out, some of the data needs updating but for an idea of what’s out there it’s really good, more about them below…

Canterbury Mountain Biking Club

It’s the off season at the moment, so not the best time to be reviewing what they do, but they seem an active bunch with rides scheduled at least once a week.

There’s a ride organized every second Sunday which can be local or not too far from Christchurch (Eg Hanmer Springs) and two weekly rides, one on the Tuesday up Rapaki and one on Thursday evening through Bottlelake forest.

Membership is a measly $15 per year, so well worth joining up, you get access to their weekly mailing list and get to join in on those club rides.

Books on Mountain Biking

The Christchurch City Libraries have a ton of books on Mountain Biking, I hired out Bill Strickland’s “Mountain Biking, The Ultimate Guide to the Ultimate Ride” and Tim Brink’s “Complete Mountain Biking Manual” and both were fantastic reads for the beginner.

You can search the database online at the Christchurch City Libraries home page, or just head down to the main library and browse the 796.63 series on the first floor, as I said… tons of useful information all for free. I’m pretty sure they also have a subscription to a mountain biking magazine too, which could be interesting.

Apple Mountain Biking

If you own an iPhone I can recommend buying Trails, it allows you to record, import and export mountain bike tracks using the built-in GPS. It didn’t work so well going up Rapaki but on my other excursions it’s worked exceedingly well, and the more people that start to use it the more tracks we’ll be able to trade.

Check out Trails on iPhone here.

The two main websites for sharing tracks (in GPX format which Trails uses) are Bikely.com and EveryTrail.com

Links to:

Mountain Biking Maps for Christchurch, NZ on Bikely.com
Mountain Biking Trips for Canterbury, NZ on EveryTrail.com

I’ve also created a Dashboard Widget from the Season of Cycling website so I have the up-to-date status for all the tracks around Christchurch on my Dashboard. I’m not too sure how to share it, but easy to create, just use the Snip tool in Safari and select the track status column at Season of Cycling.

Mountain Biking Events around Christchurch

Craig’s just told me about this little gem of the net: Christchurch Single Track Club, they have the most up to date events calendar which you can check out right here.

Blue Dog Events holds the day/night 12 hour race that runs around McLeans Island, I’ve heard they change up the course every year so it’s always fresh.

Buying Mountain Bikes, Parts and Repair

I’ve been to a couple of bike shops around Christchurch, the two that really stand out, in terms of people knowing their stuff are Basic Bikes in Sydenham (where I bought my sons bike and had my road bike serviced) and Chain Reaction Cycles in Riccarton, where I bought my mountain bike (Giant XTC 2.0).

I’ve also been looking on TradeMe, Trade and Exchange, Buy/Sell, and SuperShed, out of the second hand ways to buy a bike you’ll get the best selection and prices on TradeMe, however it can take awhile for one in your size to pop up- here’s a link to the TradeMe Mountain Bike section, make sure you filter for Canterbury | Used, not many people are willing to ship the bike to other cities.

When checking out second hand bikes it’s always good to have a second opinion, for this I use the Mountain Bike Review Database, it’s probably had around 70% of the bikes I’ve wanted to lookup and is a great indicator of whether a brand of bike is to be trusted and what you can expect for your money.

Ground Effect, which is a Christchurch Mountain Bike Clothing Store, has a good set of articles including how to buy a second hand bike and some repair tips. Check out their articles at Ground Effect Tech-Tips.

The Father of Bicycle Repair has to be Sheldon Brown, I wouldn’t be surprised if he gave birth to a bike one day… absolute genius- check out his website here: Sheldon Brown.

And for spare parts and crazy specials you’ll want to sign up for Torpedo7 Daily Deals, they have a huge range of bike parts in their online shop and offer cheap/fast delivery, good for upgrading your old bike or building a new one.

Well, that should about do it for now, happy trails or something.