|
If you're wondering what sort of country the WATRC rides cover, you just have to look at the hills around the greater Wellington region. If you're conditioning a horse for a ride, you need to be riding those hills. The rides for the most part are on well formed bulldozed tracks. In most cases the tracks are suitable for at least quad bikes. Some have sections that may be a little rocky, but generally the going is hard packed clay with or without grass cover. After rain, bare clay can be a little slippery. There may be small stream crossings. The tracks may pass through bush, scrub, forest, and pasture. Most rides involve some significant hill climbs, with 300 vertical meters climb and fall being quite common. The going can be steep, and in places it may be prudent to get off and lead your horse down a grade (it also helps keep their heart rate down). That said, the tracks are safe provided you exercise due care and ride sensibly. Through the use of portable / wearable global positioning systems (GPS), WATRC is accumulating a number of maps and profiles of selected trails.
Altitude profiles were originally created by importing the GPS data into Microsoft Excel and using the graphing facilities there. However, as this feature is duplicated in TUMONZ, more recent profiles are now generated without the need for conversion. The trail maps are produced by importing the route points into TUMONZ. There's a little bit of pre-work required to convert the data into suitable import formats for any mapping product, but fortunately there are tools available to simplify the job. The basis for "selection", both of trails and event grades, is based solely on whether a competitor at the event and in that grade used a GPS, and was prepared to make the data available to the club. Alternatively, some trails have been hand drawn in TUMONZ based on mapped trails or inferred from partial GPS data. Novice rides are generally about 15 km. The tracks used on a given property may vary from year to year, so these graphs are not a reliable planning guide, but they are indicative of what you can expect in terms of terrain and distance for a given venue and grade of competition. GPS data is generally accurate to about 10 meters, but there can be some variability when the unit does not have direct line of sight contact with 3 or more satellites. We've found the unit we have access to is most accurate on rolling country in pasture and light bush. In mature exotic forest or through deep valleys or gorges the unit may lose the satellites for a time and the trails tend to lose detail. In those circumstances, it's little more than an expensive watch! |