December opening date for Adventure Park

The Christchurch Adventure Park will re-open its doors 10 months after it was badly damaged by the Port Hills fires.

The Park will re-open its café, chairlift, sightseeing, zip line tours and a coaching mountain bike trail on Tuesday 5 December, almost a year after it originally opened.

The Christchurch Adventure Park is re-opening in December but it will look very different.

Christchurch Adventure Park Spokeswoman Anne Newman said it had been a "really tough year" but it was exciting to be able to give the community some good news.

However, she emphasised the Park now looked very different to how it was a year ago.

"Not only have we had to deal with the fires and rebuild we have also had one of the wettest winters on record. This has meant that the logging and subsequently the trail building have been significantly impacted."

The Port Hills fires in February saw the Park close for 10 months while logging of about 600 acres took place. The 26 tonne haul rope for the chairlift has now been replaced along with all four zip lines while park staff continue to rebuild the existing mountain bike trails. A significant section of the park has been replanted already. The village containing the café, bike rental and guest services escaped the fire.

Removing such a large volume of trees had damaged the trails, Ms Newman said. 

“What we have been left with is a hillside that is totally unrecognisable.  It is really important for the public to understand that it will take some time to rebuild all the trails we had prior to the fire. When we re-open we will have the coaching/green trail available and we’ll re-open other trails over summer as they are finished.  We’ve also planned some spectacular new trails for the public to ride. But it will take time.

“We’d like to thank the community for their ongoing support, it has got us through some dark days and we know they will be understanding as we gradually reopen trails as soon as they are rebuilt."

The Christchurch Adventure Park officially opened on 16 December 2016 with the country's longest chairlift at 1.8km long and New Zealand’s longest and highest zip line. It was open for eight weeks before it was closed down due to the fires on 13 February. In its eight weeks of operation more than 50,000 visitors went through the doors with the café serving over 3 tonnes of fries and 35 kegs of beer.

From Tuesday 5 December the Park will be open from midday until 7pm daily.