We had stayed the night at the North Mavora Lake and were embarking on a trip to Walter Peak Station on the southern shore of Lake Wakatipu. It's quite a hike from Mavora Lakes, especially if you're going to do it by mountain, bike so we'd planned to cheat a little and take Rosi part way.
The road into the Mavora Lakes is long, gravel and rough. You'd think that, as you proceeded further from civilisation, it would deterio
rate further. In fact as you leave these lakes, as we did quite early in the morning, and travel further up the Oreti valley, the road improves markedly: probably because it sees little traffic. The day was a stunner, although it took a while for the sun get high enough to shine on the valley floor. After about 18kms travelling up this wide flat valley floor (see pic) the road started to descend the side of a much steeper valley, the South branch of the Von river. After descending faily steeply for about 3kms we were appreciating the advice to drive to the bottom before starting our ride. At the bottom of the hill is a track heading left and back towards the river. This is where we partked Rosie and mounted the bikes. After only 300m we found a far better place to stop, at the confluence of the North and South branches of the river - in all this is about 21-22km from the entrance to the Mavora Lakes.
