Bottle Lake Forest

This is Bottle Lake Forest in Christchurch, New Zealand, about 10 kilometers northeast of the city center. This forest makes up most of the Bottle Lake suburb.

It's a production forest, mostly made up of *Pinus radiata* trees, planted in the early 1900s. It covers 800 hectares, stretching from Burwood to Spencerville and out to Pegasus Bay on the East Coast. The trees here are felled and logged in a 30-year rotation by the Selwyn Plantation Board.

You'll also find a lot of native understory plants, with indigenous moss, lichens, and common ferns like bracken, pigfern, chain fern, and water fern covering the forest floor. Closer to the coast, there’s marram grass and tree lupin. In the autumn, the wood mulch and pine needles create a habitat for several mushroom species. There are different kinds of birds here too, and the bird life changes depending on the stage of forest production. They have a trapping program to reduce pests like cats, ferrets, possums, stoats, rabbits, feral cats, rats, hares, and stray dogs.

This isn't just a production forest; it's also a free recreational park, getting over 400,000 visitors every year. There are lots of tracks throughout the forest, some going all the way to a coastal track with ocean views and beach access. These tracks connect with those at Spencer Park, which is directly north. The tracks include logging roads, which everyone can use, and dedicated tracks for hiking, walking, horse trekking, or mountain biking. Right by the visitor center, there's a BMX course and a trials setup.

The mountain bike track system is pretty dense and diverse. Some tracks are one-way to prevent collisions. The singletracks are usually narrow, bordered by trees of different ages. The surfaces vary from hard-packed soil and gravel to loose sandy sections, and they can change with the weather and how much they're used. Since it's a production forest, tracks can be significantly changed or closed during logging operations. Even though there aren't serious ascents or descents, the narrow tracks, high speeds, and curvy layout through the tree plantations make it a popular and distinctive riding area. They even hold racing series here, with the "Twilight Series" being particularly well-known.