The Timber Trail

The route

North-east to south-west, Pureora to Ongarue, and there is a practical reason rather than a preference behind it.

Ridden this way the trail climbs once, early, and then trends downhill for the rest of its length: 1,412 metres of climbing against 1,765 metres of descent, a net drop of a little over 350 metres from one end to the other. It is also the direction every operator has built its logistics around. The daily shuttles run from Ongarue up to Pureora, which is why most riders leave the car at the Ongarue end, ride away from it, and find it waiting at the finish. Ridden the other way you would be climbing the long descents and arranging your own transport out.

In order, and this is the map in words: Pureora, the crawler tractor, the forest-edge shelter, Mount Pureora and the high point, the Bog Inn Creek and Orauaka Stream bridges, the Stump House, Piropiro, the Maramataha bridge, the Tramway Terminus, the Mangatukutuku bridge, the Ongarue Spiral, and out through farmland to the Bennett Road hub. The stage table below gives the same list by kilometre. The official end of the trail is another two to three kilometres past Bennett Road, in Ongarue township opposite the school, but the shuttles wait at the hub and that is where most trips stop.

How long is it, though? The New Zealand Cycle Trail says 85km, and so does the trail's own frequently-asked-questions page. The trail's own home page says 84km, twice. One of the shuttle operators calls it 82km. We have gone with 85, because it is the only figure that reconciles with the published stage split of 40km and 45km, and because two separate official pages give it. Treat the difference as noise rather than as something you need to resolve before you go — nobody is measuring your day to the kilometre.

Getting there is the part worth checking properly. The nearest airports are Auckland, Taupō, Palmerston North and New Plymouth, all within about three hours' drive. Auckland to Ongarue is 260km and around three and a half hours; Taumarunui to Ongarue 24km and twenty minutes; Te Kūiti to Ongarue 64km and about an hour; Ongarue up to Pureora 36km and about forty-five minutes. The one figure we cannot settle is Taupō to Pureora. The trail's own directions page says 81km and an hour; its own frequently-asked-questions page says 132km and two hours. Both are published by the same organisation. If you are driving from Taupō for a morning shuttle, budget the two hours and be pleasantly surprised.

What the riding is like

We have not ridden this one. What follows is drawn from the trail's own description of itself and the New Zealand Cycle Trail's, and where it describes a place rather than a fact, we say so.

The first fifteen kilometres are the work of the trip: gentle in gradient, long in duration, sidling up the flank of Mount Pureora on a surface that never gets technical, through forest that dwarfs the trail. This is the part the protesters saved — rimu, tōtara, miro, matai and kahikatea, some of them centuries old — and after twenty years of predator trapping the dawn chorus is loud enough to be startling. Three kilometres in, a turnoff leads to a crawler tractor abandoned in the bush by a man recovering tōtara for fenceposts. The trail's own pages date it to the 1920s in one place and the 1940s in another; the 1920s has two sources behind it.

From the high point it is downhill, over the first two big suspension bridges and out onto pumice and gravel to Piropiro — which in summer is busier than anywhere else on the route, with riders, walkers and hunters converging on the same flat clearing.

Beyond the bridge a steady half-hour climb reaches the Tramway Terminus, and from there the ride changes for good. The rest of it runs on the old bush tramway, so the gradient was engineered for steam locomotives a century ago and is almost perfectly kind to a bicycle: long, flowing kilometres through cuttings blasted into rock, then the spiral, then farmland.

The stages

Two days, split at Piropiro, because Piropiro is the only place on the trail with a bed in it. The kilometre markers below are the trail's own, and they are painted blue and orange along the whole length.

Day one is 40km; day two is quoted as 42, 43 and 45km by three official sources, the difference being whether you stop at Bennett Road or ride on into Ongarue. Hours are equally elastic — four to six, five to seven and four to seven, depending on the page. Take the longer figure of whichever pair you like and you will have time to stop, which is the entire reason for two days rather than one.

Bikes, bags and booking

The trail itself is free. Everything that makes it practical — the shuttle, the bed at Piropiro, the bike if you do not have one — is not, and all of it should be booked before you arrive.

A well-maintained mountain bike is the recommendation: full suspension or hardtail, knobbly tyres, and enough mechanical skill to deal with your own punctures, because nobody is coming. Gravel bikes have done it and bikepackers may have to take panniers off at some of the barriers. E-bikes are popular and charging exists only at the two commercial lodges, so plan the battery across a 40km day with 1,400 metres of climbing in the first half of it. Wheelchairs and recumbents are not recommended; off-road adaptive bikes have completed the trail, and the trail partnership will arrange keys for the final exit.

Both of those rises are dated 1 October 2026, which is why this page carries two figures for so much. If you are reading it after that date, take the higher number as the starting point and check it at the booking page rather than assuming it stopped there.

If something goes wrong

There are three road access points in 85 kilometres and one of them is the middle. Everything else is forest.

Coverage cannot be relied on. It is good between the 9km and 18km marks and near the Mount Pureora summit, with signed hotspots at 68km and 72km, and there is guest wi-fi at the lodges. Carry a personal locator beacon, one per group — operators and the local i-Site hire them — and tell somebody when you expect to be out. In an emergency dial 111 and give the nearest kilometre marker: that is what the blue-and-orange posts are for.

There are no shops or cafés on the trail. Stock up in Te Kūiti or Taumarunui before you drive in; the lodges feed their own guests and will sell food to through-riders by arrangement. Take water from the streams, boiled, filtered or treated. There are no rubbish bins anywhere, so everything you carry in comes out with you.

The weather is the thing most likely to change your day. The high point is sub-alpine and can be genuinely cold, and the trail's advice is to carry warm layers and wet-weather gear whatever the forecast says; sections turn muddy after rain. Hunters work the surrounding forest, especially in spring and during the Roar in March and April. Dogs need a DOC permit and horses are not permitted.

One live caution. Black Fern Lodge, at the 35km marker, is open — but the official partner listing still says the track from the trail down to the lodge is closed by storm damage through the pine forest, and that the notice was expected to be lifted by the end of January 2026. That date is now well past and the wording has not changed, so we cannot tell from published sources whether the track is open or the notice is simply stale. If you are planning to reach Black Fern from the trail rather than by road, confirm it with the lodge before you commit to the detour. Check the trail's own status page before every trip in any case: at the time of writing the trail is open and riding well, and a magnitude 5.9 earthquake 30km south of Ongarue in July 2026 damaged local roads but, on DOC's inspection, not the trail.

Shorter versions, and longer ones

Three road access points means three out-and-back rides, and they solve the shuttle problem by not creating it.

From Pureora, the Crawler Tractor Loop is 7km and one to two hours at Grade 2, out to the tractor and back on a gravel road, and it is the one ride here that suits families and nervous riders. Extend it to the forest-edge shelter for a 16km return, or all the way to the summit for 30km. From Piropiro, it is about 9km return to the Maramataha bridge and back, one and a half to three hours, which buys you the single most spectacular thing on the trail for a morning's work. From the Bennett Road car park at the Ongarue end it is 8km uphill to the Ongarue Spiral and 16km return, or 30km if you carry on to the Mangatukutuku bridge; either way the ride home is downhill.

The best half-measure is day two on its own. Take the shuttle from Ongarue to Piropiro, ride the 43km back, and you get the Maramataha bridge, the tramway, the cuttings and the spiral in four to five hours without booking a bed. The trail's own advice to walkers is the same: with only two days, walk this half.

In the other direction, fit riders do the whole 85km in a single day in eight to fourteen hours, which the trail acknowledges without recommending. Walkers should allow four days. And the trail does not have to stop at Ongarue: the Timber Trail Connection carries on 26km to Taumarunui as part of Tour Aotearoa, and at the northern end the Centre of the North Island connector links Pureora to Mangakino and the Waikato River Trails.