Death Ice at Coronet Peak

(Photo above: Jimmy Carling ripping it up - hard to see in this but he's got a pretty decent roost of snow going on this icy-as-hell corner).


(Photo above: Coop. Even pushing your bike was tricky in these conditions!).

Death Ice at Coronet Peak.
I got a text this week from local mountain biker Graeme “Coop” Cooper saying he was keen for a ride and that Dirt were after some photos for their website.

So when I woke up on Sunday morning after an extremely stormy night to see fresh snow coating the hills, I thought to myself "This is the perfect day to ride Coronet Peak!".

After all, what better way to capture the spirit of mountain biking in Queenstown in winter than a bit of bikes-on-snow action?

As it turned out, the trail conditions were not exactly what I thought they would be and we had a rather interesting time of it…the XC trail was covered in ice rather than the lovely soft fresh snow we were all expecting!

It was so icy I fell over just trying to stand to take a photo! As we did our valiant best to pedal up the trail we were sliding, foot planting and falling off the bikes left right and centre. And that was just on the uphill!

The back wheels were getting pretty good traction and not slipping out at all really but our front wheels had minds of their own – as soon as the trail got even slightly off-camber your front wheel would take the path of least resistance and just slide sideways no matter which way you pointed it.

It was a little bit sketchy but we weren’t in too much danger of nailing ourselves on the way up the hill, but I must admit to being mildly terrified (even though it was my idea) at the thought of trying to ride down this skating rink of a trail!

Anyway, I can’t say too much more or show you the best shots yet but I’ll leave you with a few images from the day. We survived the downhill without any injuries or too many crashes and had one hell of a lot of fun doing it…and who knows, we may see photos of our beautiful back-yard gracing the pages/web-pages of Dirt in the next wee while…I'll keep you posted.