North shore for sure?

Last thursday's night ride was sacked off due to various ailments, jogging commitments and poor weather. I had also missed out on a weekend ride as I'd taken my wife away for the weekend for our wedding anniversary. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy time with the wife but mountain biking it ain't.
So on arrival back home on monday lunchtime to bright conditions I was pleased to run into Mark G who despite various DIY emergencies was up for a blast.
We put the bikes into Mark's extremely handy "Bike Transporter" van and drove up to Coldharbour saving our legs and a fair bit of time. We parked up near Heads Roll and started off with a bit of jumping and dropping, sessioning our favourite kicker with Mark demonstrating his new skills on the 3 ft rooty drop into the bombhole. We then did a few door jump runs (It's set up on the bottom double at the moment) and I pondered whether to go for one of the big doubles I haven't yet tried. In the end the decision was to go for it so Mark set up his phone and prepped the medical kit. I hit the jump and managed to land respectably - and immediately went back and did it again.
We headed up into Redlands to ride Wave of Mutilation down to the fallen tree. I'd heard rumours and seen a photo on the Nirvana website of some North Shore that's been knocked up around there. Having spoken to Roger at HftH on friday I had a fair idea where it was and we quickly found "Mangrove Alley" as the trail is called. It's basically a loop back to WoM over some fallen trees at the end of a trail which used to just peter out. The first bits of Shore are fine, followed by a slippery, muddy climb and it finishes with a pretty hairy section of Shore with a 90 degree turn in it. As Mark painfully found out it's best not to use your rear brake as the risk is you will just slide off!
Next we picked up Sweet Sweet Bulbs and during the climb back spotted another trail we hadn't ridden high up on our left. We couldn't find the start of that one but did find another trail. This starts with rooty off camber singletrack, dropping into the woods before falling into a bombhole and traversing a series of bombholes and gulleys via a couple of big berms. We took it pretty easy but I think it could be a really good trail once you've ridden it a few times. We climbed back to the top of Redlands again and rolled back down to the road for a couple more jumps before packing the bikes back into the "magic" van and driving home.
Simon I'm looking forward to seeing the Zesty - definitely not designed for "bomb holes, drop offs or jumps"...........