Maidstone DH

Hutt Valley, Wellington, New Zealand

Downhill MTB track from Maidstone Ridgeline to Maidstone Park.

Advanced

Bike (Under construction)

This is a purpose-built downhill track, complete with: jumps, tabletops, drops, gaps, chutes, big berms, and wooden structures.

The track builders have focussed on making it a skill based track for everyone to develop the skill needed for downhill racing. Therefore, there are nana lines around all things nasty and most jumps are rollable. Nonetheless, this is a steep and gnarly track, with substantial jumps and drops – tackle it with due care.

Some of the features have adopted names, like: Top jump, Mini Double, Ladda Splat, The triple t (which is a table top that has 3 different sized jumps on it), Wild Drop, and The Rockstar.

Towards the bottom there's an extremely steep chute that takes a direct path straight down the hill. The main track takes a much longer zigzag path, crossing the chute along the way and rejoining just before a wooden drop on to the grass park area.

At the bottom, after cruising along a flat section adjacent to the forest edge, there are two alternative paths:

The left-hand path goes up and then down a wooden ramp.

The right-hand path drops off the end of a wooden structure.

The main track, excluding the extremely steep chute shortcut, is 1.10km long, having dropped about 90m from the top of the ridge.

Top is on Maidstone Ridgeline, behind a picnic table about 50m up from the top of Maidstone West.

If you don't have the luxury of a shuttle then park your car on Park Road, and bike up King Charles Drive and to the very end of Seymour Grove, and into Maidstone Ridgeline; the ride while initially steep will only take a few minutes, and will avoid the dozens of steps found if you travel up Maidstone East/West tracks.

Bottom is next to the Pétanque piste, near the bottom of Maidstone West.

As of early 2010 this track is being re-constructed after the top section was messed up by logging in mid-2008. For updates on the construction process, see Latest news on Maidstone Downhill rebuild.

1.19km

Single track

96m 161m 65m

18 Jan 2011 by Sigurd

Ian