Day 5 - Mt Cook to Twizel 75 kms
The day started at about 6.30 am with the new group organised structure working as follows:
All of us at Mt Cook at the start of the A2O ride
Sample of the early part of the trail
Me with the mountains behind me!
Our bikes going by helicopter transfer
The first group loads up!
More of me and the views
Couldn’t miss putting this in the blog!
Rob Baker in charge of breakfasts
Phil Eager in charge of the van including loading the van
Ellio Stocco in charge of loading and unloading the trailer with bikes
Peter Harrison in charge of laundry
John Aldis in charge of weather and start times each day
Steve Seymour in charge of finances
Ian Hollebon in charge of driving the van
Chris Jones the tour leader and in charge of accomodation
This all worked well for the day today which meant we had a great on time start for the van trip to Mt Cook
The weather was a lot better today with high cloud and sunny breaks although we had some rain showers and towards the end of the day we even had some hail.
After arriving at Mt Cook we had a short 7 km ride to the Mt Cook airport where we had helicopter transfers to the next leg of the Alps to Ocean ride. From now on I will abbreviate this to A2O ….
The helicopter ride was about 10 minutes but gave us all a wonderful view of the mountains near Mt Cook… Mt Cook was not able to be SEN due to cloud cover unfortunately.
The first section of the trail after the helicopter transfer was quite difficult and slow due to the rough terrain with loose rocks on the trail. After this we were on a gravel road which again was slow going due to the road surface
At one stage we had a 5 km of paved road which was a godsend!
Lunch was by the side of the road with sandwiches purchased before we left Omarama. This was timed almost perfectly to coincide with some heavy rain.
The ride in to Twizel was great with the wind behind us
Tonight we are at a backpackers hotel which is housed in renovated accommodation housing originally used by workers on the hydro power projects on the area. It is quite comfortable for us all,
The day’s highlight for me was the wonderful scenery of the mountains and torquise lakes and the significant investment NZ has made in hydro power
The dinner this evening was a roast pork meal at the local pub which was lovely
Another great day for me riding . I enjoyed being the nominated whip or tail end Charlie for the day and talking to those at the back of the pack
All of us at Mt Cook at the start of the A2O ride
Sample of the early part of the trail
Me with the mountains behind me!
Our bikes going by helicopter transfer
The first group loads up!
More of me and the views
Couldn’t miss putting this in the blog!