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Next time, make a trip to Nelson with the trail bike. It's the sort of place where locals do black diamond trail rides on their lunch breaks. And with no gondola or chairlift riding, and poor road access to a lot of the DH trail heads, everyone is surprisingly fast at climbing as well (well, until e-bikes came along, now they're even faster).
You're totally right though, when I was there I wasn't as actively seeking out the gnarly stuff as I would now, as I was mainly riding/racing XC at the time.
number21
I think you have to want too ride that terrain. But if you do having it there makes a massive difference- speaking as someone who lives somewhere very, very flat.
I hit 55km/h on the Skyline green, for example.