SWIGG

SWIGG: Swirly, Whirly Flow Before Its Time

In the early 2000s, Makara Peak was still in its formative years, overseen by the Kennett brothers and evolving rapidly thanks to club and volunteer efforts. Among those contributors were members of the Victoria University Mountainbike Club, including Sam Marx, Martin Tse, and Kelly Barclay. In 2001 or 2002, the trio proposed a new singletrack trail to replace the steep 4WD pylon road connecting the park’s summit to Starfish, the popular streambed descent.

Sam and Martin started by cruise-taping a short section through thick bush before running out of steam (and getting ambushed by gorse). That summer, Sam and Kelly returned with borrowed petrol-powered brush cutters and spent their weekends battling old-man gorse and chewing through machinery to carve out a rideable line.

Bringing Berms to Makara

At the time, most trails in the park were XC-style – narrow, technical, and switchback-heavy. But Kelly had other ideas. Drawing on his dirt biking background, he was determined to incorporate big sweeping berms – a flowing design that was virtually unheard of in Wellington trail building at the time.

This created some tension. When the Kennett brothers came to check on progress, they expected something tight and technical. Kelly, however, had found some promising natural embankments and wasn’t about to give up on his vision. The result was SWIGG: one of the first true flow trails in the city, complete with those now-iconic S-berms.

The flow worked – not just for the design, but in competition too. In the first ever Makara Peak Relay race, Kelly passed four riders on SWIGG to help win the mixed team event with rider Katie Collins.

Naming a New Style

When the trail was completed, the builders couldn’t agree on a name. Sam pushed for Green Goat, a reference to the bleached goat skulls once common in the gorse-covered hills. Kelly preferred Swirly Whirly, a nod to the new trail style and to Swirly Whirly World in Perpetuity – a 16-foot yacht famously sailed solo across the Tasman by Andrew Fagan of The Mockers.

After a couple of glasses of Emerson’s Whisky Porter at the old Bodega bar, compromise was found:

Swirly Whirly Green Goat – or SWIGG.

Secret Trails and Lost Lines

After Sam moved to Australia, Kelly quietly built two hidden side trails:

• The Half-men of O, named after a Maurice Gee novel, which ended in a strange circular bush clearing.
  
  
• The Big Marshmallow, a steep, fast drop into a natural depression that rejoined SWIGG lower down.

Both were short-lived and soon reclaimed by the bush – a reminder of how trails, like ideas, sometimes come and go. SWIGG, however, remained – evolving through the years thanks to volunteer care, and now enjoyed by thousands of riders who appreciate its early contribution to Wellington’s now-famous trail flow.