Cairnmuir Mountain Trail

The Cairnmuir Trail is a challenging 35 km, 1000m climbing day out in the beautiful Cairnmuir Mountains 30 minutes drive from Queenstown. The ride starts on an easy cycle trail to the start of the 2 hour climb. This is a challenging climb in parts and at times we were in boost on our Orbea Rise's - the Rise handles the steeps easily but you earn your lunch on this ride. Once at the top it's a ridge ride at 900 meters with amazing views and easy terrain to then join a track that takes you on a long descent back to the start at Bannockburn. I rode an Orbea M10 and Lyn rode an H30, we both had the clip-on additional batteries for the first time to see how they performed. The ease of use and feeling of no battery stress outweighs the additional 1.5kg of weight and we both returned with 3 bars remaining on the internal battery - the Rise uses the clip on additional battery first. We could have easily turned around and reversed the ride with the amount of battery we had remaining and we weren't scrimping on battery usage with the climbs involved. If we were to do it again we could easily do without the additional battery. As a full day ride using both internal and add-on battery it would be an epic day out and probably more than the body could take. This is a perfect E Bike trail where the motors come into their own.