Snow Shredding with Blenki

I’d been chewing over the idea of a photo shoot above the snowline with Sam Blenkinsop for his Australian-based clothing sponsor LKI Clothing for some time but the weather in the New Zealand’s South Island Alps is a fickle brute at the best of times. Conditions can change in a matter of hours with little to no warning but as soon as Blenki returned from Val di Sole, the impetus ramped up to nail everything before the snow melted away completely.

After some recce missions into the Alps I’d found a couple of banger spots around the Mt Hutt skifield that were going to look amazing for a unique mountain-bike shoot.

There were a whole gaggle of hurdles and hoops that needed to be negotiated though: the killer spots I’d pinpointed were on government land where bureaucratic approval was needed, they could only be accessed by using the Mt Hutt skifield then hiking into the back-country, the weather had been a horrible cocktail of constant drizzly cloud and northwesterly winds, and both Sam’s and my schedules were hectic.

Trying to marry up the perfect weather window with commitments before the snow disappeared was tricky to say the least, but we finally found a sketchy little window of opportunity to make it happen and the plans sprung into action.

An early morning start after a big weekend in Queenstown was a struggle.


We were greeted to a crystal clear and windless morning when we arrived at Mt Hutt and the staff happily put us on the first chairlift of the day to the summit of the skifield. From there we left the ski area and hiked down through a wide saddle to our photo shoot location and began ripping through the shots.

First chair up, bluebird day, no wind. What could possibly go wrong?


The day was off to a flying start: Sam bombed a couple of steep snowy slopes, the sun was beating down and the backdrop was jaw-dropping. About four runs in Blenki’s front wheel found a soft hole in the snowpack and cartwheeled him over the bars and onto rocks, serving as a warning shot that the snow was softening quickly. We took heed and hunted out harder pockets of snow for the remainder of the day.


Our next spot was perfect – a snowy ridge that overlooked a huge valley pockmarked with snow-filled gullies and desert-brown ridges. All we had to do was wait a small cloud to pass away from the sun. We waited...and waited as the cloud rapidly grew bigger and greyer, until it was drowning out the sun and descending onto the highest peaks around us. The weather had suddenly taken a huge turn for the worse, and about four hours ahead of the forecast.

Blenki two-wheel drifting before the sun disappeared completely.

With time and the weather suddenly against us, we began working in a frenzy. Sam threw his bike into manuals, wheelies and two-wheel drifts time and again across the snowy ridge, often threatening to slide hundreds of metres off the side of the mountain in the process.

Looking out over the fog-clogged Canterbury Plains.


If a rider of Sam's calibre hits the dirt regularly, you know conditions are tough.

We quickly scouted out and shot a bunch of other spots, both shale and snow-based as we chased diminishing pockets of sunlight around the mountains, but the unusually warm temperatures were softening the snow up rapidly, making it harder and harder to ride consistently and safely.


Shale runs high above the braided Rakaia River.

By noon the sooty grey clouds had choked out the sun completely, so we hiked back to the ski area and returned to the base for lunch and wait and see what the weather would do.


It soon became obvious the weather wasn’t going to improve, so we exchanged bikes and cameras for snowboards and skis and snuck in a handful of incredibly fun runs slashing up the soft spring snow, although the final run was through a painful hailstorm that peppered our faces like air-rifle bullets.

On the way back down the mountain road, we pulled off and scoped out an old DH trail that Sam had ridden a handful of times. It looked promising and we punched out a couple of extra photos on some beautiful sections of trail, but the weather continued to close in on us and we eventually conceded that we’d milked the day for as many shots as possible and it was time to pull the pin.

Blenki pulls his 2017 Aurum out of the Hiace for a quick look at a picturesque, hidden DH trail.

Insert your own engine noise here.

For all the ripper shots we rattled off for LKI (what you're looking at are essentially B-roll images), Blenki and I both left the day feeling as if there’s some unfinished business up there. Snow or no snow, we’ll be back for a second helping sooner rather than later...

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