Mountain Biking in Queenstown (and Wanaka)

As I mentioned I would be in my post about mountain biking in Rotorua, over my summer break I headed to Queenstown to spend about 10 days with my old mate Alex, mountain biking our way around the various trails in the area. Get yourself a cup of tea and get comfy, this has ended up being a pretty long post...

Packing my bike for air travel ended up being a lot more work than I expected. I ended up having to remove: bars, stem, wheels, rear derailleur, seat and post, pedals, and was just able to avoid removing the forks by letting all the air out and using cable ties to hold them fully compressed. Even having done all that, the box was bulging in the middle where the hubs protruded more than the width of the box.

Bike finally sufficiently compressed to fit in the box

I've been to the South Island several times (including landing in Christchurch just in time to experience the 7.2 earthquake!), I've never been to Queenstown or really any of the alpine areas near the west coast. Boy, had I ever been missing out

View of Lake Wakatipu from the Lake Dispute track

 I'm quite lucky that Alex is fairly well connected in the mountain biking world - he worked in bike shops around the North Island for about 12 years, including running his own in Wellington for a couple of years, and spent several months building trails in Chile with a bunch of other kiwis. Through his various mates who had rode in Queenstown, he was able to get the low-down on the various trails and parks worth visiting, and put together a decent list of rides for us to do. And as a bonus, his family owns a house on Lake Wakatipu

View from the house we stayed at, Queenstown is on the right

So, here's a bit of a rundown on the various trails we rode

Moke Lake > Arthur's Point (Moonlight trail) > Frankton
Distance: 28km, Climb: 1200m, Trail: Gravel roads, 4x4 tracks, singletrack (rocky)
GPS log here

This trail starts on a gravel/4x4 road, following the Ben Lomond track (I think...), before at some point becoming the Moonlight trail. There are several steep climbs - I've never done so much riding in my granny gear, and we even had to get off and push a few sections. When it eventually becomes single-track, which must've been after about 8-10km, it gets quite technical. The path is narrow and very rocky in places - really intended more for walking than riding. It was particularly difficult for me because: a) I suck, and b) this was my first time mountain biking with cleats, and I wasn't yet comfortable with quickly unclipping when I lost my balance, so I was quite on-edge for a lot of it.

Stopped for a break

Looking back, the trail we were riding is on the left

 

The Shotover River ahead, and Arthur's Point

One of the Shotover Jets in action

The descent down toward Arthur's Point was a combination of rocky, technical sections and fast single track. After a very small jump I found myself caught in a rutted out channel which lead to quite a high-speed bail onto a graveled path. A few scrapes on my leg, arm and shoulder, but nothing too nasty. Shortly afterward the trail turned from a dry, exposed path on the edge of a mountain to a very lush, green area dense with foliage, which was nice.

The second half of the ride, from Arthur's Point to Frankton, was largely on gravel roads - still reasonably fun and a lot faster than single track, but a bit tedious. We pretty much followed the Shotover around to Frankton, where we parked up at the local pub for a delicious meal and a jug of beer each (this was followed by a very ginger 7km ride home)

Fern Hill Loop (not loop) (Skyline)
Distance: ~7km, Climb: ~550m, Trail: Mostly single-track (dual use), some gravel road
GPS log here

So the trail is called Fern Hill Loop, but we went to the top and then turned around, rather than doing the whole loop. This trail starts at the midway point heading up the access road to the Skyline Bike Park. Unfortunately there is no vehicle access to that point, so you get to begin it with a ride up a very steep gravel road. The climb up Fern Hill is very tricky at times, lots of step sections annoyingly covered in roots, rocks or both. Fortunately the entirety of the climb is well shaded by dense forest, so it's relatively cool. Toward the top we reached one of the most insanely rooted areas I've ever seen - even pushing the bikes up got too hard so we ended up carrying them. It must have continued for around 300-400m I think, before we reached a very abrupt clearing into tussock, with the top of the trail coming shortly after.

View from the top

Coming back down the trail was way more fun! It was mostly quite fast, despite being very technical in some places. Did have to watch out for walkers but we only went past maybe 2 or 3 groups on the way down. Once you get back to the start of the trail, you have the option of jumping onto one of the purpose built mountain bike trails to descend the bottom half of the hill, or you can head up to the top of the Skyline access road for more sweet DH action! We chose the latter :)

Queenstown Bike Park (Skyline)
Website 

Queenstown Bike Park is a purpose-built downhill mountain biking park, usually serviced by the gondolas which run from bottom to top (where there's a cafe, luge, paraponting and other fun stuff). Unfortunately during the period that we were in town, the gondola is closed to mountain bikers, supposedly to reduce the mayhem that could occur on the trails if they operated during this busy period of the year. This meant we had to ride/walk to the top, so we only did 2 runs down. The trails we rode were Hammys, Vertigo and Original. They were all good fun, lots of jumps and nicely bermed corners as you'd expect, plus a number of structures. For someone relatively inexperienced like myself, it would've been great to be able to do several runs down each to build confidence and familiarity with the tracks, but as it was it was still a blast. The trails were pretty dry and dusty, which made things a bit slidey but it was pretty manageable. All the ones we did could easily be ridden by riders of almost any skill level and still be a lot of fun.

7 Mile Bike Park
 GPS log here (I didn't log the whole ride)

Entering from this end = kinda annoying, although the ride back out is pretty cool

7 Mile is a small bike park about 6-7km out from Queenstown on the Queenstown-Glenorchy road. There's two carparks - you're much better off going to the furthest one rather than the one closest to Queenstown, as it's much closer to the trails.

The trails are laid out around two hubs (called "The Hub" and "Eagles Nest" from memory), with several trails leading down to one up-trail. It was all a lot shorter than it looked on the map. Our favourite trails were Kachoong, Grin and Holler 2, and the dual use trail back to the carpark was nice and technical/fun too (apart from the climb at the end!). The up trails were very exposed and pretty steep, which made the ride back to the top an obscene sweat-fest on the hot, sunny day we rode there.

The downhill trails from The Hub had a lot of nice jumps and were mostly pretty fast. Some areas were carpeted with small pine cones which were like riding over marbles and quite hard to deal with at times.

Sticky Forest (Wanaka)
GPS log here (didn't log the whole ride)

View from the carpark

Sticky Forest is another bike park, this one situated near Lake Wanaka. The trails are mostly laid out heading down either side of a ridge which has a fire break running through it, lots of downhill trails and just one or two ups on either side. On the side of the ridge which faces the carpark and Lake Wanaka, the trails were quite dry and dusty; these seemed to be more frequently ridden as they had big tracks worn into them in a lot of areas. The ones on the other side we found to be a lot more fun - the trails were a lot less dusty, had more jumps and other fun stuff, and I think they weren't so steep so you didn't lose hard-earned elevation too quickly.

Our favourite trails were down the left here

The worst thing about Sticky was the lack of any sort of trail maps. Apparently you can get them from somewhere in Wanaka, but there's absolutely nothing at the park itself. We were lucky enough to get some directions from some locals, but even then we got lost on our first ride down, and ended up doing a bit of a loop around the edge of the lake. Here's a quick video of Alex hitting some doubles at the bottom of a trail called Kooza. They look a lot smaller here than they do when you're approaching them on a bike :)

Arrowtown > Macetown
No GPS. Distance: 35-40km (return), trail: mostly 4x4 track, 20+ river crossings each way

Disappointingly, by the time we got to this ride it had been three days since we'd slept anywhere with power and all my electronic devices were dead - so no GPS and no photos. Arrowtown is a former mining settlement, now a small town that seems like it's mostly a tourist spot. Macetown is another former mining settlement, now a historic site with numerous preserved/restored miner's huts and equipment. It's a cool place to look around and there's lots of information boards telling you about the history of the area.

The ride out was a blast, lots of ups to test your fitness and downs to test your bravery. In a few areas the road got pretty sandy which is quite draining on the energy. The real highlight is the river crossings, there's supposedly 21 each way between Arrowtown and Macetown, but we went further up the road to check out an old quartz battery which sent us through probably another 5 or 6. Some people warn against riding through the crossings due to the damage the water can do to your componentry, but we rode them all; we did have a bottle of chain lube which between all these river crossings and the other dusty trails we rode, we almost used up during our trip.

It ended up taking us around three and a half hours to ride out and back, after which we rode into the main street in Arrowtown and found a pub to get some dinner and a beer.


Remarkables DH
No GPS this time

We spent the good part of one day doing some shuttle runs on some of the DH trails around Queenstown. First stop was The Remarkables. I believe there's several trails here, running down beside the access road to the ski fields. The National Downhill Champs were held here the weekend after I left, bad timing as it would've been cool to go and watch. 

The trail we did was probably about 1-1.5km long, and was a good, challenging run.  The first half is very fast, has a couple of very steep descents and plenty of jumps, several times I found myself riding way too fast to be able to react to what was coming up on me (mostly because I'm a noob). Toward the end there are several rock gardens, which I have to admit are not my favourite features in the world, but it was a good challenge to navigate them safely. 

Coronet > Skippers
Distance: 3.5km, Drop: 400m
GPS log here

Another trail we shuttled. This is very fast, with the big limiter being bravery. Most of the way down you're riding in a trough worn by sheep, which is quite narrow and deep enough that you have to be very careful where your wheels are - touch the sides when you've got some decent speed up and it could really ruin your day. I had a couple of scary moments which convinced me to back off a bit. Good fun purely for the speed, the drive back up the road is fairly slow so we only did it once. The real fun is down the other side

Zoot Downhill
No GPS, Distance: 1-1.5km

This trail starts from very near the last one, but runs down near the road up from Queenstown. We shuttled this one probably 5 or 6 times, the drive between is very quick so it's a great one to shuttle. A great DH track that has plenty to offer the crazy fully armoured DH guys on their 20kg, 8" travel rigs, or people like me on cross country bikes who get excited every time they manage to land a small double. Here's a video I found

Moke Lake > Queenstown (Lake Dispute Track)
Distance: 22km, trail: single track, 4x4 track, some road
GPS log here

Another track from Moke Lake, this time heading in the other direction. The first part of this, up to Lake Dispute, is all singletrack and lots of fun. A wee bit of climbing but it's all very manageable. Eventually you hit some 4x4 tracks and some fast, rocky descents: plenty of opportunity for injury if you get too carried away with your speed going down, but all good fun. After a bit of the 4x4 track you return to single track, and after about 50 minutes of riding you reach the Queenstown-Glenorchy road.

After a brief ride along the road you can turn in at one of the carparks for the 7 mile park and ride through there until you reach the other carpark. Or, if you're a bit dense, you can do what we did and continue riding along the edge of the lake hoping you'll find the beginning of the trail that goes back to Queenstown. We eventually reached a point where we couldn't go any further without taking the bikes for a swim around some rocks and decided we'd bush-crash our way back to the road.

This was very hard work to get through with bicycles in tow

It took us about 45 minutes of frustration, we both got well scratched up, and I lost my sunglasses, but eventually we got to the road to continue our journey. After a bit more riding along the road, we found the trail we had been looking for and rode single track all the way in to Queenstown. After some delicious ice creams (can't remember the name of the place) we headed back to Kelvin Heights, where we were staying.

Kelvin Peninsula Trail
Distance: however far you want to go, trail: 1-2m wide gravel path
GPS log here

This was a trail I used frequently during my stay, thanks to it being directly outside the house. It was a busy track, used by many walkers, runners and cyclists staying in the area. In the direction in the GPS log, it's all pretty smooth and flat, with a few gentle ups and downs. Going the other way things get a bit more technical, with lots of sharp turns and several very rocky sections. I went for a great run along there one afternoon and really enjoyed those more technical sections, makes a nice change from the pavement pounding that most of my running constitutes. It was also great having the icy cold lake there to dive into at the end of each run. Nice way to cool down and get clean(ish) after a hot run, pity it was too cold to stay in for more than a few minutes.

Other Stuff
A couple of nights camping, a bit of a 4x4 trek through a high-country sheep farm in Wanaka, and a freakin awesome canyoning adventure in Mt Aspiring National Park added to the extreme awesomeness of my holiday, but I've already written far too much so I'm just going to drop some pics and leave it at that