Pikowai Road is believed to be impassable due to a major slip a few hundred metres from it’s southern end. If you find that this has been repaired please let us know, however we expect that it won’t be.
Pikowai Road is next to the popular 4 wheel drive track of Porters Road near Lake Rotoma, East of Rotorua and can be accessed from the Lake Rotoma backroads route.
Unless you are on small light bikes I’d highly recommend only riding Pikowai Road in the North to South direction. The Northern 3/4’s of Pikowai Road consists of forestry roads and it would pay to keep an eye on the track on your GPS as there are a few junctions to go through, some of which are not obvious.
The Southern end follows a very narrow water runoff with steep sides downhill, so narrow that in places you may have to pull your feet right up off the pegs up to get through, this combined with steps almost a metre high in places would make it very difficult to ride from South to North.
Contributed by: @brainflex
Track type: Dirt track
Track composition: Rough, Loose, Undulating
Slippery when wet?: Yes
Suitable for bikes <650cc? Intermediate
Suitable for bikes >650cc? Experienced – North to South only
River crossings? No
The southern kilometre or so of Pikowai Road riding North to South. I wouldn’t recommend riding it South to North unless you are on a small bike.
I rode the complete length of Pikowai Road over the weekend and I’ve added video from riding the southern end in the page above. I’ll have an updated track log loaded in the next few days.
@Brainflex the gates you came to seem to be to stop vehicles going North to South, I think you were already in the logging area.
That’s good to know. Great little track at the end isn’t it?
Haha. Cool vid! i used to live next to the Manawahe Hall, in the old rabbits cottage there.
I rode that track a lot, and all over the place up there. Best time I ever had. I rode an XT225.
Did a fair bit of deer hunting in there. What a great place! I might have some pics somewhere.
Thanks for the awesome video. Looks like a great track – not road! Is now on the to ride list albeit maybe with an XT250 with nobbly tyres instead of the DR650 with dual purpose tread.
Pikowai Road now has a huge washout 100 metres from the southern end of the track. When Brainflex and I were there it was 5 feet deep and about 8 feet wide, if there is any more decent rain it may get even larger.
We managed to fashion a crude bridge of sorts and get across but others may not be able to and given that this section of Pikowai Road appears to be unmaintained it may or may not get repaired.
I finally got around to editing my GoPro footage of the ride
Damn, who’s that handsome devil in front of you? lol. Great video Eddie.
Definitely looks an Airhead kinda road. Was it just the camera, or was it downhill most of the way? And I’m betting that in the winter its a stream bed.
Yeah, downhill all the way. Already had a friend on a HP2 go down it and yes it does get a little damp in winter. Problem is the washout that runs across it creating that big hole we had to cross.
That washout is now impassable! I was in there last week and it would be hard enough to get across without a bike.
I just watched the washout video & can’t decide if you are brave or foolhardy? You would have been in shit creek if the bike had tipped over onto the person standing below. But neither did so you must be brave.
Similar predicament here at 6m 19s. Continue ahead or turn back?
https://youtu.be/OZQiIaDSDMs?t=6m19s
Sometimes the video looks worse than it is, while it may look dodgy it felt pretty safe. But I know what you mean.
Great video.
At the start of pikowai is a massive washout. I’ve tracked new routes from near the end of pikowai track over towards porters track and on to pikowai and back to top half of porters. Is a days worth of trails. Some photos attached. Sorry I don’t take a lot of photos. But there is an awesome view near end of pikowai u can see.
How do I get to this track please coming from Tauranga