The below is a living document we hope to add and continue to update as we grow and find out more about our past and future!

Although the majority of people haven’t been aware of biking at Mt Hutt until recent times the first mountain bike races were held in the early 90’s with a hill climb starting at the base of the hill at the bee hives and finishing at Scott’s Saddle.

Later there was a downhill event ( The Eliminator ) utilising the road from around the land bridge section of the road to the info booth.

This was run for two years by a group based in Ashburton. The second year there was a section of trail cut into the forest off the road. This is where the first trails started in the Mt Hutt Forest.

After this Fuzz ( Tim Johns ) started building a trail in the forest running alongside the road. Fuzzy to my knowledge was training for the winter olympics in the freestyle ski class when a knee injury took him out of the running to compete. So then he put his time and talent into riding mountain bikes as well as building a trail in the forest that ran parallel to the access road. He built a trail that was full of berms and doubles plus the odd wooden feature thrown in. This trail would have tested riders today but when I first rode this it was in 1999. The current Fuzz trail is in some form the only part of this trail left at Mt Hutt but without the trees and features he built it seems a lot simpler while still being great fun to ride.

With this trail available to ride the downhill riding scene was small but was gaining popularity. One of these riders was a young apprentice electrician called Bob Anderson. He was one of the most keen to ride here as well as anywhere there was a gravity trail to ride, the guy who would offer to help with anything bike related from building trail, repairs on bikes and organising excursions to ride areas. All around good bugger. In 2000 Bob was diagnosed with leukaemia and passed at a young age 23, as a memorial to Bob the bridge that joins the park from north to south was named after him “ Bob’s Bridge ” recently a new trail that continues on from this bridge carries the name “ Bob’s Bridge Extension “ 

In 2002 a section of the forest that contained the majority of Fuzz original trail was logged and was lost, but luckily the section that is the current Fuzz single track trail was not logged so remained in tact. This was reopened by myself with the help of many to be enjoyed again. Later this was logged also, luckily the trail was saved in close but not exactly to its current form.

In 2003 I a group of friends started rebuilding a trail out of the logged ground. With utilising the remains of the old trail ( almost nothing ) logging tracks and building through logged ground we managed to get a trail established ( DHNZ ), then with utilising the ski field road we could shuttle this trail and start adding to the trail network. 

Soon after the reopened and not yet logged was added giving Mt Hutt the luxury of having more than just one option from a shuttle road, something that wasn’t common in the early 2000’s.

From here building continued with the linking of logging tracks and hand-built adding to the riding available at Mt Hutt .

Soon it was possible to choose from 

DHNZ

Fuzz

Blues

And an early and very raw trail “ Trig “ on the hill that now has the trails wright’s, meadow maker, fluffer etc.