100 days to mountainbike park opening

Mountain bikers and thrill seekers will soon have a new playground with the Christchurch Adventure Park opening in just over 100 days.

The Christchurch Adventure Park is taking shape and on track to open in just over 100 days.

The park, which stretches over 900 acres of pine forest on the Port Hills, is on track for its opening date of December 16. Newsline has been given a sneak-preview of the $24 million development, which is between Worsleys Road and Dyers Pass Road, 5km from the city centre.

The project is about five months into an eight-month building process, and work on three machine-built downhill mountain bike trails is well underway. The green trail is suitable for beginners with a 3 per cent gradient, blue trail is moderate difficulty, and the black trail is for more advanced riders. A team of up to 50 local volunteers have been working on upgrading tracks in the surrounding area that will link to those in the Adventure Park.

Construction has also begun in an area called "The Village” that will eventually house a café and bar with seating for up to 200, a ticketing office, bike and equipment hire and a bike storage warehouse for up to 200 bikes. Prefabricated walls are being used so the buildings will be finished quickly.

Foundations are being built for 14 towers that will be part of a huge chairlift climbing 430 metres to the top of the trails. From there, riders will be able to choose their route down. The chairlift will transport up to 1200 people and their bikes each hour 1.8 kilometres to the top of the trails, a trip that will take about eight to 12 minutes. The towers that will support the chairlift are on their way to Christchurch by ship from Austria where they have been manufactured.

Christchurch Adventure Park spokeswoman Anne Newman said the goal of the park was to provide a place for the Christchurch community to “hang out in and play all day”. The park would help riders progress through the mountain biking sport, providing world-class facilities suitable for children and beginners through to advanced technical riders, she said.

"We want to be able to take kids that are as young as four years old down some of the tracks.” There will also be walking trails, a pump track and a skills centre. Coaching will also be available for beginner riders who want to improve their technique.

In a similar system to a ski field, mountain bike tracks at the park will be patrolled each day to make sure they are clear and safe to use. The park will be open from 10am until 8pm in summer and until 5pm in winter. "This will be the only purpose-built adventure park in the world that's open 365 days a year," Ms Newman said.

Ms Newman said the development was sympathetic to the local landscape. The land is owned by McVicar Timber but will be used by the Adventure Park under a 50-year lease agreement. The Canadian developers behind the park, Select Evolution, are predicting about 120,000 visits a year, leading to 30,000 extra visitor nights in Christchurch. But Ms Newman said these figures were "probably conservative".

Mountain bikers and walkers will be able to use tracks in the park for free but there will be a cost for riding on the chairlift and for the four-stage zip-line ride which will zig-zag its way up the hill. Riders will wear harnesses and be attached, flying-fox style, to lines that run at different speeds giving an adrenalin-charged airborne tour.

Work on the second phase of the Adventure Park will get underway next year, including building 84-bed accommodation facilities ranging from dormitories to more luxurious cottages, and a mountain coaster with open wagons riding on rails suspended above ground. Drivers will be able to steer the wagon and ride at speeds of up to 80 km an hour. More biking trails on the other side of the valley will also be worked on from next year, creating a range of new tracks, making it the largest downhill mountain biking park in the Southern Hemisphere.

The Government has contributed funding of $2 million to the Park and the same amount has come from Christchurch City Council through Development Christchurch Ltd, with the remainder coming from private investors.