The Queenstown Mountain Bike Club is almost in the clear to start building several new cross-country trails in the area.
Club president Tom Hey told the Queenstown Times yesterday it was in the last stage of getting permission for both its planned Moke Lake access trail and an overall Department of Conservation (Doc) management agreement.
After several archeological inspections of the route of the proposed trail, parallel to Moke Lake Rd and 7 Mile Creek, the club is now waiting for the New Zealand Historic Places Trust to sign it off.
The track would take riders near derelict huts and gold-mining tailing piles and it was hoped it would become part of a wider 75km network of cross-country trails proposed to link Queenstown's "scattered" trail network.
In the meantime, the final sign-off of the overall Doc management agreement would enable the club to start work on a downhill single track at Coronet Peak.
The new track would start at the bottom of the Greengates ski lift and take riders off-road to "where Skippers Rd goes up over the saddle".
Mr Hey hoped to have sign-off on either of the documents by next week to allow members to start work during their weekly Wednesday trail-building evening.
The club last month completed the new town-side entrance track into the Seven Mile track network, dubbed "B.o.B. - Built on Beers" in reference to the volunteers who made the track and a quantity of "cool old beer bottles and cans from when they built the GY [Glenorchy] road".
