Posts Tagged ‘queenstown’

Well there are two sides to Queenstown as a fitness destination. Good & bad. I’m leaving in a week after a 2 month stay.

I’ll tell you the bad stuff first. The air here is polluted. You wont see that in any article or official report but I have coughed my guts out the whole time I have been here – especially at first.

In the tourist village its caused by chimneys all over the place. Being an alpine village it often gets a bit chilly & folks just crank up the fire.

However on other trips I have stayed at Frankton near the airport & also coughed my guts out. Over there it was a dust bowl. So if the smoke doesn’t get you the dust will.

Up on the mountain in the trees however the air is clean & fresh. As it is most places around here just not where most of the people are to be found.

OK second thing wrong with the place is drugs & alcohol. The village is full of bars & drunks. At the backpackers here they are on LSD & god knows what. So many people come here to party not keep fit.

Finally this is not a town for bodybuilding & powerlifting. Of course you can do that anywhere if you want but it is not the focus here.

I joined the local gym which makes it pretty clear its a gay friendly gym. I am not gay lol but its the only place available to train without catching a bus. So I would have much more preferred to train at a hardcore body building / powerlifting nohomo gym.

There are a bunch of CrossFit & fighting gyms in town but again – probably not for heavyweights in this town.

Now for the “good” news – kind of

This place is a meca for endurance sports & athletes. There’s are so many super fit mother fuckers around here that kick my ass at endurance. Cycling – there are races all over the place, marathons – they just do it daily, not up hill, up mountain. Even many old people here are super fit, and the freaks on LSD are also very fit at endurance.

Suffice to say all of the folk hiking for days on end & zapping up mountains in 1/4 the time of me are skinny little runts with little fat or muscle.

I can beat them all up but they are kicking my ass badly at cardio. The consolation is that Queenstown is a special destination. People that come here to participate in the sports or great hikes usually have trained hard at endurance for months in advance. If you come here as a weightlifter & they kick your ass like me, don’t feel so bad. These fuckers came prepared.

So if you are cutting, losing some fat & building up endurance this is a great place to be for a while.

Yes finally my rotator cuff was healed enough to carry both my 120ltr bergen & small day pack at the same time.

Off I went for a 19 day visit. The plane landed at around 2pm. Weather was overcast and I booked into a private suite at Nomads Backpackers for the first night.

I had no idea if my tent would still be there as last year I did not get up the mountain.

I was pleased to find it on the first day after a two hour climb – that first climb was tough. The next day I cheated & took the big bergen up via the gondola. I set up camp & remained in tent for the next 2 weeks straight.

I climbed a total of 20,000 feet in those 2 weeks. Maybe lost a kilo – and I lost a clear amount of belly fat so I am looking pretty fit. It was a substantial body composition improvement.

My diet was chocolate bars, trail mix, nuts & delicious roast mutton which the local supermarket sells super cheap – fully cooked whole legs of lamb.

I had a couple of salads & took most of my supplements including Ginseng.

I went on a cruise of Lake Wakatipu & had a road trip to Mt Cook.

In short it was totally beautiful and again my friends the little birds sang to me every evening & came home to roost in the tree above my tent. I was pleased to see the wild goat family is still there too.

Next trip I want to hike up the remarkables which will be tough & require a healed up shoulder. I also want to do a few days at Doubtful Sound.

Yes I went again for a month this time.

I spent 3 weeks living in a tent half way up a mountain. The elevation was 1,748 m (5,735 ft) minus 1000 ft which is the altitude of lake Wakatipu.

That means every time I hiked up to my tent I climbed 2300 feet – I did this probably 17 times during the month which comes to a climb of nearly 40,000ft.

No wonder I got a bit skinny by the end of it.

Anyway here are the pix.

I also went to Milford Sound which was real kewl

Far too many pix to put here so look at my flickr page https://www.flickr.com/photos/freefitnessguru

Well I had seven days in the mountains. A truly beautiful land. The pictures are pretty much what it is like there in Queenstown. I climbed Ben Lomond from the lake to the top of the tree line and hid my tent as its against the rules to camp up there. My goal was to escape all humanity except my own for a few days so I had to bend the rules a little.

After the first night I was discovered by two local Kea’s at 5am. They have a reputation for destroying packs & tents and I had to go down for supplies so I was a little concerned. Luckily they left my pack unscathed upon my return. Carrying the 40 lb pack up the mountain was quite strenuous. The next day was very hot and by days end I had found a new & more secure tent site hidden by fir tree’s. I also had mild heat stroke, was exhausted after two days climbing and came down with diarrhea in the evening.

The next day rain was forecast so I rested with a crook belly and more diarrhea. I did recover from my previous two days exertion and went to get some food & med’s the next day in town. I also had a sore throat most nights and the place was swarming with blow flies. Apart from these things it was heaven. The birds sang me a beautiful serenade to awaken and fall asleep to, the sound of the wind in the trees drowned out the distraction of humanity as faint as it was in the town below.

The rest of the days I was fit and well. I climbed near to the summit of Ben Lomond but did not go quite to the top as I was perturbed by the large number of other hikers up there on that day. It was a very easy climb from above the tree line but the climb through the forest was strenuous involving rocky cliffs & steep paths all of the way to a 500m altitude above the lake.

Each night I lay in my tent with scenes of the beautiful mountains replaying through my mind. This triggered my subconscious to open my minds eye and mental screen. It was almost perfection. Perhaps a little further from civilization and human influence next time, my imagination may be freed.

I think I will have Queenstown fever soon – take a look at this video…

Click through here for my best pictures montaged: http://freefitnessguru.com/images/range_montage13.jpeg

I hope to make it to Queenstown New Zealand over xmas to climb Mt Ben Lomond

Its a full days climb to the summit & back down but I may take a tent & sleep high to see the night sky.

I’ve wanted to do this trek for 15 years so its time to do it.