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

  

2011 North Shore Coastal Challenge, race report

What an amazing race to write my first race report on here for. I'm going to format this in a way that gives all the useful facts and information first, followed the long-winded tale of the journey for those who want the full reading experience.

Race: North Shore Coastal Challenge, 33km Full Monty event
Date: Saturday 5th March, 2011
Race Description: 33km adventure run down the coast from Arkles Bay on Whangaparoa Peninsula to Windsor Reserve in Devonport, featuring considerable wading, rock-hopping, and a few swim sections.
Time: 4 hours, 10 minutes, 37 seconds
Placing: 49th equal of 118
Weather: Varied from overcast to heavy rain, temperature low 20's

Pre-race nutrition: Cup of coffee and 4 pieces whole grain toast for breakfast (2 peanut butter, 2 marmalade), 700ml of Powerade
Race hydration: Carried a 2L Hydra-pak (consumed ~1.7L), 150-250ml of Vitasport at each of 4 aid stations
Race nutrition: 1 GU Jet-blackberry gel 10 mins before race start, 4 Leppin Squeezy sachets, total ~2000kJ (plus Vitasport) and 480mg of sodium

Physical exertion: Hardest thing I've ever done.
Mental exertion: Right up there, pushing through the pain for the last 10km or so took some massive willpower
Would I do it again? Definitely.

The Race:
This race was recommended to me by my friend Lucy, who had done one of the shorter events previously (they also offer 6, 11, 16 and 22km races). Lucy has been quite a useful person to know as I've been getting into this competitive athletic lifestyle, she's done a few various runs, triathlons and such, and she always has some useful advice for me, and being recently incapacitated by impregnation she's been a spectator/supporter at a few events too (it's always nice to see a familiar face in the crowd when you're suffering through the last few kms of a hard race!).

The event website has a detailed description of the first 11km - the leg you only get to do if you're doing the 33km, and it sounded like a load of fun. There was also a recommendation from someone that you decide which distance you think you can do, then do the next longer one. I figured I could do 22km, having done a half-marathon a few months ago, so it seemed the only option was the full 33km - it can't be that hard, right?

Supplies taken on the run (ditched the sunscreen though)

For a change, I managed to have a pretty good sleep the night before, probably nearly 6 hours before waking up at 4:45am to get ready. Picked up my partner in crime: Ollie, who I had conned into running it with me, and headed to Devonport. The organisers put on a bus from the finish up to the start, to avoid the logistical issues of a point-to-point race, which unfortunately meant being at the venue two hours before race start. We arrived at Arkles Bay as daylight had just about fully taken hold, but with the overhanging gloominess of heavy rain clouds and light rain. The make-up of the fellow competitors was somewhat typical: mostly males, and mostly aged between 30 and 50 - that's not to say there wasn't still a diverse minority present; plenty of much younger, older, and more attactive faces in the bunch too! Everyone looking in good shape and all that we spoke to were friendly and in good spirits, despite the miserable weather.

Rounding Arkles Bay

At 8:30am, about 20 minutes before high tide, the hooter went and we set off along the beach, toward the first spit (I had to look this up to confirm I had the right terminology). Almost immediately we came upon what I had already discovered to be the most annoying of obstacles during the training session we'd done the week before: submerged rocks. There were significant wading portions throughout the race, and you would frequently be blinding stepping forward, not knowing if you were on a large rock and about to drop, or standing on a flat and about to trip over a rock. The first 4km was almost entirely wading in water between knee and waist deep, with a couple of short sections of rock-hopping over some very slippery rocks.

The nature of the course means that you're frequently moving in single-file, which in the first few km - before the group of 150 entrants had shuffled into order of pace, meant quite a bit of time stuck behind slower/less confident people, and some interesting/dodgy manoeuvres to get around people. This was actually quite fun, scrambling around the un-favoured path to try and get beyond someone before you reached the next point where you were reduced to single-file again.

Looking back across the first swim

In the water, part-way through the second swim

We hit the first of the two major swim sections at around 20 minutes in. It looked like probably 70-80m across - not much of a hurdle but pretty slow going when fully clothed with a backpack and running shoes on! Me and Ollie had both taken goggles with us so we could swim properly with our heads fully submerged for a nice, efficient body position. The hard part with this and the following swim was knowing at what depth to stop wading and start swimming, with swimming being marginally quicker once you got deeper than about your navel, but seeming to use more energy. The second swim came at around 45 minutes in, and was much longer - it looked like at least 200m to me. In both swims we seemed quite a bit quicker than those around us, largely I think because of our reasonable proficiency in swimming and the fact that we elected to swim a lot more where others would wade until they couldn't touch the ground. The second river crossing still took about 10-15 minutes (amazing considering I can do 200m in a pool in around three and a half minutes). Some cheeky bastard got picked up by the IRB (inflatable rescue boat) and ferried to the other side for both swims, despite the course descriptions being adamant that you should be capable of swimming 2x 200m if required.


We hit Long Bay, the 11km mark at around 1:30. My memory of many of the sections of the run is quite hazy, but I do remember there were a decent number of people gathered along the beach, huddled under raincoats and umbrellas, to cheer on the competitors - that kind of thing really makes a difference to me, I always get an amazing buzz and my spirits pick up immediately when a complete stranger is encouraging me (this was one of the things I loved about the Melbourne 1/2 marathon). At Long Bay a young fella, probably 13 or 14, started his leg of a team's relay as we were coming through. It can be quite humbling doing events like this, and having someone so young out-pacing you, but fortunately I'm pretty used to it. The little guy did slow down a lot once we got to the more technical parts shortly after Long Bay, we (mostly Ollie) helped him over a couple of tricky parts, but he disappeared some distance behind as the terrain got worse (he did eventually catch us sometime later). There were some very deep wading sections around rock faces between Long Bay and Browns Bay, with the tide now on its way out there were some quite strong currents to content with (we commented a few times that we didn't think the little guy would get through them, but apparently he did!). The other occurence that became increasingly regular on this section, as the rain began to come down a bit heavier, was falling of rocks, dirt and debris from the cliffs on our right. We were showered by some lighter stuff, and witnessed a few football-sized rocks come rolling down in front of us, which made us a little nervous.

I think it was shortly before we reached Brown's Bay, the 17km mark, that one of the more memorable events occurred. I was following Ollie along a narrow shelf of rock, elevated about 1.5m above the water and rocks below. Suddenly I heard a rumble and stopped just in time to see an enormous rock, roughly the size of a beach ball, come tumbling down from above and land directly at my feet, breaking in two. The rock and the debris it brought with it hit me in the arms on the way through, and scraped my leg, leaving me with a few minor cuts and bruises. It was a very terrifying moment, particularly as I began to consider the consequences had I not stopped in time, or if it had fallen just a split-second sooner or later. We continued on, a little shaken and a lot more nervous about getting too close to the cliffs.

Doing my best to look happy, 25km in

As we continued on we came across more and more of the slower runners and walkers doing the shorter distances, so many that it became a rarity to spot someone else doing the Full Monty - easily identified by the pink wrist tags we were wearing. We'd usually have a bit of a chat when we saw another Monty, check how they were doing, ask if they'd done it before - bit of small talk but noone really had the energy for much more than that.

We hit Milford Beach, the 22km mark, at about 3 hours. There was a short crossing there that is very deep to allow boats to get in and out to a slightly inland marina, and the current was absurd, I must've travelled at a 45 degree angle as I went through. I remember thinking that if this was the end, I would be very glad to stop running about now. 3 hours beats the longest I've done an athletic activity continuously by a good hour or so, and my legs were feeling very heavy.

The run from Milford to Takapuna is around 5km, largely along beaches and walkways, and despite suffering most of the way, it seemed like the time passed very quickly. I was surprised when we reached Takapuna beach, and actually thought the organisers must've screwed up the distances because I was sure I hadn't done 5km. Just by the Takapuna boat ramp there is a small camping ground, and again my spirits were lifted by a number of people sitting outside their tents and caravans, cheering us as we went through.

I do that a lot with my hand when I run

I barely remember anything between then and making the turn off the beach and onto the road for the final 1km or so. I do remember commenting to Ollie that I was really pleased that despite having been running for so long, and my legs feeling absolutely ruined, we were still regularly passing people and, important to me, I was very pleased that I hadn't given in to the pain, and was running all run-able sections.

It felt great to hit the road for the short final section, to run on some nice solid ground that doesn't slide away underfoot, or have an angle left to right that puts more weight on one leg. I tried not to think about finishing and stick to the mental strategy I've settled upon for long runs and swims - assume you're just going to keep going indefinitely and don't consider the thought of finishing until you have a minute or less to go. Finally, the finish line was in sight, I mustered all my remaining energy and picked up the pace a bit for a good finish.

Crossing the finish line was such a huge relief, I was immensely proud of what I had achieved, and greeted the ground with enthusiasm as I collapsed onto a nice soft patch of grass immediately after finishing. We stayed on the ground for probably 5 or 10 minutes, shared congratulations with a few competitors we'd chatted to during the run, and generally enjoyed the feeling of not being on our feet!

The run was a great experience, everything it promised to be, immensely challenging and accordingly rewarding. I'll be back next year, and hopefully with another year's endurance training I'll be ready to smash some time off this year's effort too.

Me, Ollie and one of the buddies we met along the way - enjoying the ground.