No swimming

With two weeks off over the Christmas break there was going to be some riding to be had.  On the 23rd of December I ticked off the first one with a quick quad ride with Colin, Graeme, Geoff, Liam and a few others...

My memory for names is shocking but here's a nice blurry photo of someone on a massive 1,000cc quad

Driving down to Param I was a little worried when I hit some rain.  Rain and Maungatuks means mega slipperiness on the clay and this can also mean faceplant!

In the end we even got a reasonable about of drizzly rain throughout the day but I managed to stay on and even cross a certain stream without incident - bonus!

Here's the first little uphill section where you'll notice some of the quad riding maniacs disappearing up a slippery, snotty little climb that would have killed me.

I stuck with the more sensible riders (Geoff and Liam mostly) but still managed to find some slippery stuff on one descent which made be lower the bike gently onto it's side when I ran out of room.

Geoff

Liam

We figured we'd be ahead of the other chaps as they were taking a more adventurous route but once we arrived at the orange hutt we decided to head along the track that the others would be coming along and instantly ran into them.  Time for a breather at the hut then.

While we were there, some other guys (bikes on the right in above pic) arrived having entered the area from the Hutt side and they had some nice scary tales to tell us about one track they'd taken.  This of course peaked certain people's interest and after our break we headed up the below track (nice and rough in a few places) before Geoff, Liam and I turned back down to let the others go play in the mud.

Trundling down the hill again, we rode off to explore a few other trails.

Heading back towards the cars, I got away from the other two (they even explored some other stuff I missed), I was first to hit "that crossing".  This time around a got through pretty painlessly, parked up and sat under a tree out of the rain to await the other guys.

After a while they turned up and also had no trouble crossing the creek.

We then spent a bit of time waiting and listening for the sounds of the other guys coming.  They ended up taking a while and came with stories of getting stuck trying to get under fallen trees and a certain green quad throwing its rider off a couple of times - he should know better!

After our second stop at the orange hut it was time to head out and I even managed to stay on coming off the clay again.  Great little ride out just before heading away for Christmas!