18 Aug 2017

Christchurch Adventure Park promises to rise from the ashes

From Checkpoint, 5:50 pm on 18 August 2017

A $20 million adventure park for mountain bikers that was forced to close after the Port Hill fires, is planning to re-open this summer.

Two fires tore through 2000-hectares of forestry on Christchurch's Port Hills in February this year, destroying 11 homes, and was only tamed after a large-scale firefighting operation.

One of the fires is being treated as suspicious and police are investigating.

The cost of fighting the flames and replacing damaged homes topped $18m.  

The adventure park had a network of trails complete with a chair lift, flying foxes and cafe. The blaze forced it to close just eight weeks after opening.

The park's operations manager, Mike Johnstone, said the cafe and flying foxes would be the first things to re-open.

"It's a start/stop situation with the logging going on, we're working around the loggers, but they're working well with us. There is a lot of work to do, so we will have trails, we are just not sure what they will look like yet."