Longboarding In The Remarkables NZ

Last October I made the trip from the UK to Queenstown, New Zealand for a 2 week holiday of mostly skateboarding. I knew about the Remarkables road from Youtube Videos by NZ locals and it looked incredible.

Fortunately a friend of mine moved to Frankton, Queenstown last year, Lexa, so I had a place to stay and just a short drive to Remarkables!

Almost every evening we were up Remarkables, myself skateboarding and Lexa on her Freebord. We also met up with a few friendly local skaters and Freeborders.

The hill itself is stunning, 8 corners of perfection, smooth surface, 8-12% gradient and very quiet car wise. Probably my second favorite hill in the world after Transylvania Downhill in Romania.

facebooktwitterpinterest Photo by Hilltrigger

After a few days skating Remarkables and other hills around Queenstown, Luke of Hilltrigger posted on the Queenstown Longboard facebook page that he wanted to film us one evening. We met up at the top of Remarkables the next day, where Luke proceeded to take some awesome photos and discuss some ideas for a video.

facebooktwitterpinterest Photo by Hilltrigger

The following evening Luke showed up with his friends/crew with what seemed like excessive filming equipment, but after one test run down, the footage looked awesome, 4k filming like I’d never seen before!

Luke and crew were mainly filming backwards from their 4×4 whilst I skated down behind, something I’d not done before, but they were very well coordinated and I felt safe doing so. After around 3 clean runs in the light, it started to get dark. At this point I put my head torch on my half shell helmet and Luke covered my Never Summer Deck in LED lights!

facebooktwitterpinterest Photo by Hilltrigger

After a few ‘posing’ shots with my Board glowing like a lighthouse, started filming runs in the dark in the same way, but also with a car behind helping me see the way! Fair to say it was a scary skate down, but fun none the less.

The end product amazed me and I’d love to do something similar again!

Words by Dale Goodwin