Peter Cocker has no goals of slowing down. The mountaineer, rock climber, cross-country skier, and original founder of K7 Adventures, has just been gifted a mountain bike from his partner Acacia Rose, and he's 85 years young. "Acacia bought me this bike and I thought she was wasting her money, [but] I cannot believe how good it is, I just love it," Peter said with the biggest smile as he stood at Gravity Eden MTB park. "It's the best exercise, [and] during the week there's nobody here and you have all of the trails to yourself just about," he said. "It's almost as good as skiing." READ ALSO: Adventure has always pulsed through Peter's body, ever since he made the promise to himself as a school boy in London that his life would never be as boring as school again. At the forefront of the ANU mountaineering club, Peter in 1978, at the age of 39, was expedition leader when a team of 15 undertook the 7066 metres of Mount Dunagiri, two members reaching the summit. "When he came to Australia, Pete was actually kind of at the cutting edge of rock climbing in those days where they didn't have a lot of equipment, and we didn't have sports climbing," Acacia said. "He was at the forefront of the ANU mountaineering club and led Australia's first really official expedition to the Himalayas in '78, and he's been rock climbing for his whole life. "Yesterday, we were scrabbling a little bit on rocks out at Pambula." There's always been an element of adventure to Peter's life, from climbing over a spiked gate at the service entrance to the City of London School before he traversed 13 metres up a cast iron drainpipe to get to his classroom, to how he became closer to his partner Acacia in 2005 during a blizzard at Mount Kosciuszko. READ ALSO: "Peter said it was the first time he's had an unplanned bivouac in his life, and he's done a lot of walking and outdoor stuff, but the storm came in and we had to bivouac," Acacia said. "That's what we call the Kosciuszko factor that put Pete and I together." Using what Acacia described as her NASA space blanket, several huddled together allowing shared body warmth to keep each other safe, while their feet were in their packs. "In the morning, we climbed up and out from the bivouac, and the sky cleared and we immediately recognised the architecture of the Kosciuszko cornice, and so we [were] on our way back to the summit and back to Thredbo," Acacia said. At the age of 85, Peter has only recently added mountain bike riding to his list of adventurous activities, his beaming smile evident he was just getting started. He sat on his Trek Powerfly 4 electric bike at Gravity Eden, a new set of mountain bike trails providing 56km of premium singletrack filled with berms and bumps. "I love the trails down here, one goes across a couple of creeks, bridges and things, it's very pretty," Peter said. Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can access our trusted content:
