Born to share. Born to ride.
The location. The Legend.
Nestled amongst the wonderful town of Wānaka, tranquil waters of Glendhu Bay and Mount Aspiring National Park, Bike Glendhu was born to be tackled by two-wheeled explorers and shared by all who are willing to earn it.
Mother Nature spent the last 250 million years crafting her canvas into a mountain bikers’ paradise – our job was to add the finishing touches without ruffling her feathers and lay down a few rules to guard it for generations to come.
Starting with the most important part, our pedal-only mountain bike trails have been designed alongside ecologists to work within the natural typography including kanuka scrub, wetlands and rivers. We thought you might also like somewhere to share tales, refuel and refresh, so have built an off-the-grid hub that borrows and blends with the epic landscape.
Got a spare minute up your sleeve? Why not learn a little more about how Bike Glendhu came about and what goes on out here.
Picking up where nature left off
Our Story
It was here in 2015, on this stunning piece of land, that our two John’s met and Bike Glendhu began. John McRae, an out-of-the-box farmer who was always hunting for ways to utilise the land in a way that respected and preserved the natural environment, and John Wilson, a corporate come health and wellness expert with a love of mountain biking.
After attending a wedding at Glendhu Station and hearing the owner was keen to build some trail to offset his fencing plans, Wilson knocked on McRae’s door to ask for access to his land to guide riders. The two blokes discovered a shared passion for the outdoors, all things sustainable and a vision to create Wanaka’s first purpose-built mountain bike park.
The deal: if Wilson made it happen then McRae would lease him the land.
This was sealed with a handshake, and the work began. Three years of researching, concepting and environmental impact-analysis led to consent for 50km of trail and a base building being granted in May 2018.
In 2019 we announced Bike Glendhu to the world and were pretty stoked with the support that flooded in. From local grommets to international athletes, every two-cents, thumbs up and pat on the back fuelled the fire – which came in handy over the winter trail-building months. Bike Glendhu was set to open in December, but after serious flooding in the region caused extensive slipping and trail damage, opening was pushed out to late January, 2020.
After only eight weeks of operation Bike Glendhu once again closed to the public after New Zealand moved swiftly in to Level 4 lockdown to combat the spread of the global pandemic, COVID-19. After kiwi’s kicked isolation out of the ball park, we opened once again in May 2020.
Today we are proud as pie to invite you to enjoy the fruits of our labour, ride the trails, join the community and share in the land that inspired Bike Glendhu. We’ll see you up there.
– The two Johns
BASE 334
You can’t have a community-focussed bike park without a sweet hang out spot. Where would everyone share their tips, quips, scrapes-stories and two-wheeled and (probably very) tall tales of their day?
Base 334 is our off-the-grid hub where you’ll find our friendly staff milling about ready to give you all the info you need for an epic day out. Our retail space is where you’ll get the low down on what trail is where, have an opportunity to stock up on Mons loot, and if you play your cards right, they might even give you a sweet sticker.
Round the back you will find the workshop, and the rentals team beavering away on keeping our rental fleet up to scratch, or working on customer’s bikes. They’ll probably have some advice for you too – whether you want it or not. You can also give your bike a quick spruce with the bike wash supplied by our mates at Krush.
And the name? That’s a shout-out to the history of this epic piece of land. Glendhu Station was initially surveyed as Run 334 or ‘Roy’s Run’ back in 1859 by John Roy of Wellington, so we’ve named our base as a nod to our history.
Velo Cafe
Velo: meaning ‘Bike’ in Latin.
When we were forming the idea of what Bike Glendhu would look like, community was always at the forefront. We wanted an awesome space where our biking family could hang out, tell tall tales and share a beer or coffee after a hard day’s riding.
Velo is a comfortable and open space for everyone to enjoy and Head Chef Evelyn has created an epic menu to match (all executed whilst managing the solar-power levels!). The coffee is Off. The. Hook. Supplied by Dunedin-based Common Ground coffee it’s fair trade and organic, and creates the perfect flat white.
Their range of food available is next level (give the pulled pork, apple & fennel pie a try!). All made with love by Evelyn, all the meat is free-range and each item is methodically prepared to offer the perfect combination of textures, flavours & nutritional benefits.
Jesse, Evelyn and the team at Velo are environmentally focussed in their own right which works for us! You won’t find takeaway packaging here. Keep cups are welcome but we think it’s just an excuse to make you stay and chat. And to be fair, after a ride it’s exactly what you need. A bit of a chin-wag and a glorious view to boot.
Looking After Mother Nature’s Masterpiece
Our Environmental Promise
We know how lucky we are to be able to ride this epic piece of land, and we’ll do our damndest to make sure it’s preserved for generations to come.
We; the staff, ambassadors and shareholders of Bike Glendhu are continually working to educate ourselves and are working with our partners, suppliers and you guys – our customers to build systems and processes that minimise waste, reuse where possible and recycle everything we can. We challenge ourselves and suppliers to work with materials that can be reused, and we aim to eliminate single-use plastics across our operation. We will have conversations with suppliers about their packaging and sustainability goals, as every conversation is a step in the right direction.
We are certainly not perfect! But it is our promise to continue to grow and learn. We encourage feedback, collaboration and communication in order to continually improve our behaviours. So if you have idea or advice – hit us up!
As a business we aim to balance our carbon usage by carefully considering where our outputs come from and continue to look at ways to improve and offset. Below is an outline of the initiatives we are working on and thier status.
SOLAR. Our solar scheme plays a big role by saving nearly 3 tonnes of carbon per year from being released into the environment.
PLANTING SCHEME. 4500 natives were planted in 2019, contributing towards our goal of planting 30,000 on the Bike Glendhu site by 2025. We are looking to build on this scheme in 2020, so if you are a business or individual looking for ways to offset your carbon emissions, please get in touch at info@bikeglendhu.co.nz
SINGLE USE PLASTICS. We try to eliminate single-use plastics where possible. We don’t sell single-usewater bottles (a big ask when we’re asking people to pedal up-hill!); customers bring their own and fill them up at water stations across the park.
CAFE. You won’t find takeaway cups here, and the team are working hard with their suppliers to eliminate unnecessary packaging. You’ll find the compost out the back.
RECYCLING. We work with the legends at Wastebusters to recycle anything that we can, and being clear what these things are so we don’t contaminate or create more work. In our first (short!) season we recycled 4.25 cubic metres, with the plan to smash that out of the park in the 2020/21 season.