Pie Eater 1.01.SE – Ride report: Part 5

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Link to  part 2:

Link to part 3:

Link to part4:

Once we hit the fire trails, my mood was buoyed as I could at least ride these bits. There were some serious fire road climbs to get across to Killi and I attacked them with gusto since there was at least a chance I might make it up them.

Riding Killingworth again was just a revelation. The trails haven’t changed one bit. They are still fast, flowing and technical with the odd rock or two thrown in. In fact, with high pressure tyres and all the bumps, it became too much for my frame bag and the Velcro undid. I stopped, hooked it back up again and continued on at mach 2 between the trees – simply awesome.

We arrived at the car park and realized my frame bag had again undone up the top and was now serving as a bottom bracket bag and I hadn’t even noticed it was there. Even after all the logs and bumps I had ridden over! Some trail side cable ties soon ensured there was no way the bag was coming off again and we set off for the last climb of the day.

The old downhill track at Killingworth climbs right up to the top of Sugarloaf Mt. I managed to climb 90% of the way up and was only defeated by some wheel spin near the top. Along the way we were discussing how rednecks loved to take 4×4’s up here and we were greeted by several 4×4’s attempting to climb what amounted to a staircase on steroids. Somehow they managed to get the cars up there which left us scratching our heads about why you would bother…. I am betting they were saying the same thing about us after we went past.

We popped out at the summit of sugarloaf and rolled down the road before taking more fire trail to link up with the Tiny town of Stockrington. At this point, I finished the last of my food and we mounted up lights for the run back into Weston.

We followed the old rail corridor and passed through the old train tunnels as we rode through boulder fields, quick sand and all manner of puddles and trail nasty’s. The rail corrdor popped out on George Booth Drive and we single filed along the road with me at the rear since I was the only one with a red blinky light.

Brad was pushing the pace along the road and I as completely spun out at around 130rpm desperately trying to hold onto the group.

We picked up a fire road which brad affectionately called ‘the yellow brick road’ that led all the way back into Kurri and got us away from the hordes of P platers that were intent on harassing us at every opportunity.

From there, we linked up random ‘back yard trails’ of Brads and bits of rail corridor before arriving at Weston station and the end of the trip. Beer, food and a heater at Brads house were all gratefully received before I dropped AK home and then got to finally have a shower.

I awoke at midnight with stomach cramps and waves of nausea – not good. It was a rough night and when i weighed myself in the morning, I was 5kg’s lighter than before starting the ride. I was sick all Monday and finally started to come good on Tuesday morning. Since Neither AK or Scott were sick, but both Brad and I were, I am highly suspicious of giardiasis from contaminated water. Either my MSR water filter is a flop or the donkey water from the small stream brought us undone as Brad wasn’t well either.

So… What things did I learn from this?

1. Fully loaded with bike packing kit and running small block 8’s – my bike is like a lead tipped arrow downhills – Everyone else had to pedal to keep up with me 🙂

2. Don’t use a 200km bike packing trip as your first test ride on a questionable tubeless coversion. Just because it holds air sitting in the house doesn’t mean it will do so after pounding through a rock garden.

3. Don’t pick the depths of winter on some of the coldest nights to test your summer weight bike packing gear.

4. Make sure you give it a go. Despite all that went wrong – much much more went right. The days were warm, the trails were awesome and next time is going to be even better

Happy Trails

p.s As with the last time, the GPS route file is available upon request – just email me.

Pie Eater 1.01.SE – Ride report: Part 4

Link to  part 1:

Link to  part 2:

Link to part 3:

Eventually I awoke to sunlight and found a couple of hot coals in the fire place that I used to re-start the fire. I sat around for a while warming up and said gday to the riders who were blasting down the trail next to where we were camped and then proceeded to pump up my front tyre!

The tent formally known as. Time for a bivvy bag!

Brads tube tent

Morning coffee production

Campsite 4 meters from the single track

Coffee for breakfast, a change of clothes and then we were off to the build day. Four hours of swinging tools and I was starting to feel a bit buggered. Thankfully, club el presidente Tim had brought the BBQ and some water. After stocking up on water and steak sandwiches, we were joined by Scott and AK who couldn’t make the whole trip but were keen to do Day 2.

This time we were determined to find all the missing bits of trail that had eluded us in the dark on the first pie eater expedition.

Along Jenkins trail I attempted to bunny hop a large puddle and it got ugly – resulting in a massive pinch flat. So 5 minutes into the days riding I was again playing around with tubes and pumps – it was starting to loose some of its humour value. Thankfully the camera was now out of batteries and Brad couldn’t record it for posterity.

We linked up a few trail but still couldn’t find the missing link and so had a short road stint to freemans water hole. While AK went off to find some water, I decided I would put yet more air in my front tyre. This is where things went horribly wrong. I was using a lezyne pump with a screw on fitting. Unfortunately, mavic removeable valve cores often unscrew when you try to take the pump back off. After some swearing and cursing, I managed to rotate the entire valve inside the rim so that I unseated the valve and breached the seal. I pumped it up again but watched as sealant bubbled out around the valve and knew things were going bad.

We rode off and my front tyre was holding air and we followed some single track next to palmers road until we reached the paint ball venue. Now my front tyre was completely flat again and I was at the point of throwing the whole set up in the bush and calling wifey to come and get me.

So I abandoned the ill fated tubeless setup on the front and went back to tubes. Now we were all out of tubes so Brad had to patch one while I got set up to get it installed. Since this was our last tube, I inflated the tyres to about 50 PSI each as I couldn’t afford another flat. This was when it became really apparent that I was riding a full rigid bike. I was taking a beating, but at least I didn’t have to worry about tyres any more.

There was a section of sneaky motorbike trail that ran around the ridge and joined some fire trail that would get us to killingworth. This motorbike trail would have been brilliant in the other direction, but was all but impossible to ride since it was ridiculously steep. Brad, Scott and myself were off and pushing while AK made a truly stunning attempt to get up them and was virtually defying gravity as he climbed bits that I was having trouble walking up.

I think trudging up this section was my lowest ebb. I was pissed about my tyre woes (self inflicted as they were) and now I was pushing my bike up god aweful hills. I was ready for it to be over.

to be continued….

To Part 5

Pie Eater 1.01.SE – Ride report: Part 2

Continued from part 1:

We followed the GNW through to Millfield and then did some road touring as we rode through to Congewai. There was some beautiful scenery along the way with wide open pastures, lagoons and amazing escarpments that hemmed in the valley.

Ellalong lagoon

Some 12 years earlier, Brad had ridden a section of the great north walk from to top of barabba spur down to Congewai and remembered that it was going to be “uppity” with some hike a bike sections. Engrossed in conversation, we were thoroughly distractred by the scenery and sailed right on past the turn off.

We stumbled across a little stream which looked postcard perfect so Brad decided it would be suitable for drinking water. I was a little dubious and refrained from drinking any since I didn’t really want to get sick so soon into the journey. Brad was washing his face, filling his bottles and telling me how wonderful the water was when an unholy racket started up across the paddock. It sounded like a donkey trying to excrete a watermelon. To top things off, it was coming from upstream. I quickly decided that the disgruntled donkey was sick due to the water and left Brad to frolic in the stream while I attended to my front tyre this time…… DIY tubeless be damned!!!

Donkey stream crossing

More pumping

We motored on and were now on the hunt for the trail junction (not knowing it was several kilometre behind us) and rode until the fire road petered out. A quick cross check of the topo map and the GPS soon showed us the error of our ways and we made our way back to the trail junction.

We climbed the fence to access the GNW and there was a barely discernable trail meandering through the paddocks. It was amazing riding! From this point, the trail began climbing. Slowly at first, as we followed the invisible trail through the paddocks and then more steeply as we linked up to a fire road. I managed to clear most of the climbs on the fire trails however, there were a couple of spots where I stalled and had to push up.

Trail by brail

GNW fence crossings

Soon the fire road gave way to what can only be described as a goat track. This bit was a killer. There was no other option than to get off and push. We climbed a couple of hundred meters and eventually approached the summit where the climb eased off and we could re-mount and continue riding.

Hike-a-bike

The photog using a photo as an opportunity to have a rest from pushing

Finally we could start riding again

Late afternoon sunshine

Mid trail obstacles - quite a challenge in full bike packing kit.

In the late afternoon, we reached barabba trig camp ground. We ate some food, put on some warm clothes as the evening chill was beginning to descend and I re-inflated my front tyre yet again. Brad had decided by this point that he was going to photograph me everytime I got the pump out so my humiliation was complete.

I'm starting to get a bit camera shy with a pump in my hand

Barraba spur was our first camping options as it has the most amazing lookouts and one of the best campgrounds I have ever seen! Since there was still plenty of light left, we decided to push on to Awaba and get some water along the way from one of the tanks at Heaton camp ground.

View from the main campsite on Barraba trig

The fire trail to Awaba was up and down as it followed the ridge line and there was some tough climbing mixed with some fast rocky descending. I burped my front tyre yet-again and needed to stop and pump it up – much to the delight of a Brad with camera in hand.

Not funny anymore!

to be continued…

To Part 3

Pie Eater 1.01.SE – Ride report: Part 1

Another epic ride was had and hence, another epic write up should ensue. The last pie eater was a single day ride with an ambitions agenda of linking three well known local XC trails. This time, the ‘special edition’ of the pie eater was an overnight bike packing adventure as we aimed for a big loop that would include Awaba and Killingworth.

I arrived in sunny Weston around 8am much to the delight of Rocky who showed off his beloved racing Ralph which he adopted on the last pie eater. Amazingly, I am pretty sure you could still get this tyre to inflate despite Rocky chewing on it daily for the last month. This is a dog who can chew through anything! Who said Racing Ralphs were flimsy?

Rocky checking the integrity of the tyres' sidewall

My bike and associated kit

Brads weight weenie kit

We set out into the brisk morning air with the plan of making awaba by night fall. Brad showed off some more of his local trails including Kitchener reserve which is signposted as a MTB friendly site. It may well play host to a HMBA social ride at some point soon as the trails were amazing.

Hooray - a national park area that actually permits mountain bikes

Getting closer to Cessnock

Tom foolery

Brad powering ahead

I was having trouble keeping up with Brad as my bar bag was impinging on my brake cables and levers. I could pull brakes on, but would have push the levers back out by hand to get them to disengage. This was proving to be a tad hairy in some of the tight technical sections (lets face it, most things are ‘technical’ when you have 5-8ks of gear hanging off your bike) so we stopped to sort the problem out.

Cables on the wrong side of the bars but at least they were working again

Testing the new brake setup

Some impromptu cable re-routing and some quick lube to the cables and we were in business. Now I could keep up with Brad again as we made our way to Bimbadeen lookout. We zig zagged through all manner of bush trails, a short tarmac stint or two and tonnes of single track. Somewhere admist this, we followed the moto trail which went over a damaged fence. I looked down as I was riding over it to notice it was barbed wire. 30 seconds later and I was riding on the rim. Cursing my own stupidity, we stopped for tyre inflation number one. Not realising at this point what an omen this presented for the remainder of the trip.

The first of many flats

As it later turned out, the barbed wire had nothing to do with my flat. It was the high speed kookery that immediately followed which pinch flatted my tyre, I thought the trail went right, set myself up for a high speed turn, only to realize that wasn’t the trail at all and proceeded to plow my way through all manner of debris trying to get back on track.

Our first serious climb for the day was up to Bimbadeen lookout. Brad had warmed me that this climb was pretty horrible, some of the steeper sections were walked to save the legs, but it was actually a lot better than I had expected. At this point, we had ridden ‘off the map’. We knew there was a section of the Great North Walk (GNW) that linked through to where we wanted to go but we hadn’t ridden it so were unsure what to expect. As it turns out, this was one of the highlights of the trip.

sunshine and wide open spaces

Half way up Bimbadeen

Food time at the top of Bimbadeen : We were heading for the mountains on the horizon

We were expecting to find narrow hike a bike walking trail with stairs and unrideable sections everywhere however we stumbled across a long downhill section that had everything. Wide open flowing fire trail, water bars, rock gardens, tight single track i.e It might turn out to be a suitable super D course!

To be continued.

Pie Eater 100: Part 5 (the finale)

continued from part 4:

Down and down we went, getting massive air over water bars while worrying about where the hell this was going to take us. After what seemed like an age, we saw house lights on our right hand side. Then more houses and our hearts sunk as we had accidentally picked up Lieberts lane and had come down the wrong side of the ridge line. There was no way we were pushing our way back up that hill again, so the call was made to head home via the road.

We road another 15k’s along tarmac and then we were in Kurri and Brad showed off some of his local trails to get us back to Weston. What a change from the Watagans. This suff was hard and fast and oh so flat, we took turn after turn and I was thoroughly lost. I know we passed a train station in the middle of no-where, and there was some kind of old smelter or something, but other than that, we could have been on the moon for all I knew.

Eventually, we crossed some train tracks and popped out at a set of traffic lights in downtown Weston. Brad and I had both found our second wind and could have happily kept riding however dinner was calling and my trip to NZ was getting dauntingly close. So we rolled into chateua de Mertens and feasted on the BBQ goodness that awaited us. Scott was sitting by the fire and the Rocky the dog was happily chewing on the old Racing Ralph that had let me down at the Dirtworks earlier this year.

I ate, I showered, then said my goodbyes and hi-tailed it home having completed half the set course. Brad the crazy bastard had AK heading out for leg 2 of the ride the following day. Scott quickly ruled himself out citing irreconcilable differences with his saddle. Utlimately, I would guesstimate we covered 160k’s although that is pretty rough once the cycle computer stopped working.

So some additional exploration is going to be required to ensure we don’t miss any turns when this ‘event’ is next held. It was gutting to miss riding Killingworth and completing the trifecta of race circuits.

This ride was truly and adventure. Self supported through some seriously difficult terrain. No idea about how the day was going to turn out, or even, if you were going to make the distance. It was one of the best rides I have ever been on and I can’t wait to do it all again!

Disclaimer: I haven’t posted a GPS log of where we road as I don’t know the exact legalities of all the places we went through. I don’t think anything was of concern, but it is better not to publicly advertise it in case I am wrong. If anybody wants an email copy, let me know on pi11wizaard@gmail.com

THE END

Link to Part 1

Link to Part 2

Link to Part 3

Link to Part 4

Pie eater 100: Part 4

continued from part 3….

I had to stop at this point too as I was starting to hit the wall. I inhaled yet more food (god I was sick of eating by this point) and then soldiered on with the thought of the Oak Milk Bar at Freemans waterhole drawing me onwards.

With the sun having set, something had come over B-rad. It was like it had awakened the monster inside him and he was riding away from me. He was just standing and smashing anything that resembled a hill and I was grovelling along trying desperately to hold his wheel.

Somewhere in the dark, we missed a turn off and popped out on the ashphalt road prematurely, so we rolled along the black top into Freemans waterhole where we stopped for yet more food. Caffeine and a sausage roll were inhaled and then we were back at it again.

We picked up yet more single trail that paralleled the main road and followed it unti we reached the paint ball field. Here, we turned off and followed a fire road looking for a branch that would lead off to Killingworth and our third XC track for the day.

The fire road started climbing and we plodded along looking for this side branch. We climbed and climbed and looked and looked but this side branch was no-where to be found. We realized that we had missed it, but having climbed so far already, we didn’t really want to double back in order to try and  pick it up. Clearly this wouldn’t have happened if we still had Scott’s Trail Divining Banana Compass to lead us through the dark.

Our hand was forced, Killingworth clearly wasn’t going to be successful. So we figured our fire trail would climb up to the sugarloaf ridge line and we could follow it across to the old rail corridor, thereby linking up the abandoned tunnels under the hills and take it all the way back to Weston.

Well, we climbed, then we climbed some more, then we climbed some more and every time you thought ‘this can’t possibly go on any longer’, it would pinch and climb yet more steeply. By this stage, we were off the bikes and pushing and even that was almost more than I had left. You would crest a climb only to look up and have your lights illuminate yet another near vertical climb up towards the clouds.

It was now around 2000hrs so we had been riding for 13 hours. AK called Brad on the phone to see how our day had gone and was stunned to hear that we were still out there in the cold on the side of Newcastles biggest hill.

At a T-intersection, there was a decision to be made as to whether we continued climbing on the left branch or followed what appeared to be a descent on the right branch. We knew we were aiming for the ridgeline so figured the climb on the left branch was the most likely choice.

After an age, we finally reached a plateu and then before we knew it we were descending. A little at first, but soon after, it became hair raisingly quick (particularly with only a single bar light on low) and it began to dawn on us that we were descending far to much for this to be the right track.

To be continued….

To Part 5

Link to Part 1

Link to Part 2

Link to Part 3

The Pie Eater 100: Part 3

Continued from part 2…

After bottoming out in Martinsville, we took the main road through to Cooranbong. It was now about 1600hrs and we found a general store that was open and we trudged in like refugees and our eyes lit up with the sheer enormity of choice available. Everywhere Brad looked, he would let out an “Ooooohhhhhhh” and then turn and find something else that took his fancy and then say it again. We filled our bottles from the taps, ate our fill and then wearily climbed back onto the bikes. At least that was the hard part over as 10 k’s in the Watagans feels like 20k’s anywhere else.

We rolled along a backroad in Cooranbong and then Brad took a sneaky side road that led into a gap between properties used for livestock passage in the ye olde days. This turned out to be some great, flat and fast riding and we were smoking along. Another couple of sneaky access trails and turn offs and we were entering a section of trail called ‘Bangalow’ which is also some kind of wildlife preserve.

Brad and I had motored on ahead seeing who could climb up the ridiculous pinch climbs so we stopped for a break. We caught our breath and then Gaz caught up and we chatted away for a while before I realized “where’s Scott?” I decided to double back as we had ridden some sketchy descents and was starting to get worried. Thankfully I saw Scott coming the other way however he was covered in dirt and had leaves and sticks coming out of his helmet so he had obviously hit the ground pretty hard. On the worst of the descents, he had washed out and stunned himself when he hit the ground and he wasn’t quite sure how long he had been sitting there before he got back on the bike. He seemed coherent enough and said he had o injuries other than pride but it was a close call none the less.

We motored along through Bangalow, popped out the other side and we were at Awaba…. Hallelujah! That sounded like a massive achievement having ridden from Ourimbah to Awaba, then it dawned on me that Weston is still a hell of along way away. We sat down in the car park at Awaba as Gaz had pre-arranged a rendezvu and a ride home. My speedo showed 101 kms so Gaz had done his first century and certainly done it the hard way.

We watched the sun set while we chatted and put our lights on. I had no idea how much longer we were going to be riding for so elected to only mount the bar light. I would use it until it died and then mount the helmet light if needed so that I could effectively double my run time.

We set off to complete our lap of Awaba and then move on to Killingworth although we elected to run the Blue loop since the climb on the red loop just wasn’t appealing after 100k’s in the legs. It was at this time I noticed my speedo had stopped working. I was checking the wheel sensor and scratching my head and it wasn’t until many kilometres later I realized it was the Magicshine light causing interference with my wireless cycle computer. Alas, I now knew I wasn’t going to be able to get a final tally on the overall k’s for the day.

We snuck out of Awaba on Frogmouth rd and then followed Jenkins trail and Becks Rd out towards Freeman’s Waterhole. At this point, Scott was running on fumes and knew he wasn’t going to be able to finish the ride. Admirably, he elected to ride back to Weston on the asphalt rather than call in a lift home. So we parted company at the junction with another sneaky B-rad single track.

to be continued….

To Part 4

Link to Part 1

Link to Part 2

The Pie Eater 100: Part 2

continued from part 1…

Red Hill Road was a serious climb as we gained around 350 meters in only a couple of kilometres. Brad was running 32×18 on the 29er single speed and was in the hurt box right from the get-go. He had to be motoring up the hill to stay on top of the gear so we quickly gapped Scott and Gaz. You could tell Gaz was behind us somewhere as there was an unholy coughing fit going on that sounded like a 3^rd world smoker with tuberculosis. I commented on it and Brad just smiled and said that Gaz was sounding good today…. eek!

We rolled across the top of the ridgeline and then linked up to a section of the great north walk. This was a magic bit of trail. There were a few hike a bike sections but there was also some of the prettiest and best flowing single track around. Soon after it widened out slowly and began descending and it just went on and on. I didn’t think it was ever going to stop.  We popped out and rejoined Bumble Hill Rd(?) just as a group of roadies were passing and they were rather surprised (“where the hell did you guys come from?”).

At the bottom of the hill, we reached our first optional re-supply point. There was a small convenience store at a petrol station but we were all still right for supplies and elected to keep on rolling.

There was no way to do the next section on single tracks so far as we were aware and rode the tar and gravel roads through the valley and then stopped for a break at the bottom of the next big climb. This was of similar height to Red Hill Road, but was a little less steep and with some conversation to pass the time while we suffered, it was soon behind us.

B-rad and Scott at our first rest break.

Now we were up into the Watagan Mountains ‘proper’ and some sweet single track beckoned. By this point Scott and Gaz were starting to feel the heat of the day and the unrelenting hills and while there was miles and miles of motorbike trail to ride on, the going was extremely tough. The general lay of the land for the next 10 k’s was a gradually climb, but it undulated with some steep pinches and descents so the call was made to ride uphill on the fire road and then pick up single track branches wherever the trail started to point downhill.

This gave us the best of both worlds and some of the single track was the best I have ever ridden. Undualating, technical, bermed, jumps everywhere – basically nirvana.

By the time we reached the pines campground, it was mid afternoon and we were all suffering. We stopped for lunch and my bag of twisties was summarily inhaled along with whatever else I could easily lay my hands upon including bananas, snickers and more chips. Unfortunately, the water here wasn’t suitable for drinking and the call was made to get water from Muir’s lookout as we had road-tested that water on an unsuspecting Landon a couple of weeks earlier. As far as we knew, he was still alive.

So we rolled the fire road to Muirs and then continued along Nationals and other various tracks which was essentially a 400 meter descent over a couple of kilometres. Just brilliant riding, words fail to describe what a fantastic piece of riding this is.

To be continued……

To part 3

The Pie Eater 100 report: Part 1

The Pie Eater 100 report : Part 1

What is the Pie Eater 100?

I guess you could just describe it as a rather large social ride. The plan was to complete 100 miles a day for each day of the weekend taking in as much single track as possible and linking Ourimbah, Awaba and Killingworth in the process. Then crashing overnight at Brads house in Weston before continuing the second day on some of Brads local trails.

With a NZ trip looming on the Sunday, I could only do Day one and I decided it would make the most sense logistically if I crashed in Sunny Weston on the Friday night so that I could hop a lift with the other riders out to the starting point.

Soon after arriving and having a fantastic dinner, I realized I had no food for the following day so I made a B-line for Kurri Bi-lo at 9pm. Let us just say there were some interesting locals out. I think every psychotic methadone patient in Kurri was in attendance with my favourite being a gentleman I mentally named “twitchy”. Twitchy was clearly on the lookout for the ‘fuzz’ and was as skinny as a beanpole, covered in tats and shuffled along like a man old before his time.

My choices of food were interesting, chips, twisties, muesli bars, bananas, mini snickers bars, fruit sticks (you know those things that are like fruit flavoured musk sticks and are essentially sugar in stick form). No energy gels and protein bars to be found in Kurri Kurri my friend J

Temps were in the single digits overnight and it was freaking cold packing the car in the morning. I put on arm and leg warmers along with a merino under layer hoping it would be enough to keep me warm until the sun gained some heat.

Where was the starting point I hear you ask?

Ourimbah at 0700 hours saw four intrepid soles front the starting line, Obviously there was B-rad (aka ‘QZ13’; aka ‘the pie eater from Weston’) and myself, however Gaz (aka Gazpics) and Scott (aka ‘ebuk’;, aka ‘Scott on the Scott at the Scott’; aka ‘the ninja’) were the only ones stupid… I mean brave enough to give it a go. There had been many fine excuses including groin injuries, apathy, working and house moving to which we all thumbed out noses.

We started off with a lap of the Ourimbah track where Scott employed an interesting banana holster. We decided he would be our navigator for the day, we would just ride in whichever direction the banana pointed.

It quickly became apparent that one of my bottle cages on my bike is all but useless as I reached down for a drink to find the bottle gone. I hadn’t even ridden a kilometre yet! Thankfully Scott picked it up so I stashed it in my pack.

I don’t think I have ever ridden Ourimbah at a social pace before and it was quite hard to wind back the pace enough as muscle memory just wanted to take over down the roller coaster. The lap was uneventful however I did get so see the mythical Ourimbah pump track and roll a few laps.

Lap complete, the hard work was about to begin as we were heading for Awaba and the only way to link it up via dirt was to tackle Red-hill road.

To Part 2

Awaba to Killi and back – almost

Today didn’t quite end up the way I thought it would. I thought I might do a couple of k’s on the bike, perhaps a lap of awaba or two. In the end, I did do a lap of awaba… it was just a really big and really wide one. I even managed to rope in Danbot to join my enterprise.

You see, I started looking at prospective routes to link up some of my favourite single track areas on google earth. After about 3 minutes looking, I grabbed the phone and teed up Dan for a a ride. I even rummaged around the house and found a toppo map that covered about a third of the proposed route.

We started off on Mt Faulk road and straight into a very tough climb. Without knowing exactly from GPS data, the google maps data indicates it climbs 350m in 3.5kms. Around these parts, that is a pretty tough climb. I distracted myself from the burning legs by trying to take photos of myself on the bike with Dan in the background. Try as I may, my arms just weren’t long enough to manage it.

After 6 k’s of climbing through slippery mud and clay, we made our first turn off and we descended down to an amazing lookout that I never knew existed! Click for a larger version.

The view from the top

Shortly after the lookout, the map indicated the road turned into a leg of “the great north walk”. The great north hike a bike more like it! Completely un-rideable and difficult to even walk down, let alone man handle a bike through. I got a little brave and attempted to ride a section that was clearly un-rideable… the end result was inevitable – a hole in my nicks and skin missing off my leg.

who picked this route anyway?

Me trying to keep everything together.

When we re-mounted, the rest of the descent to the roadway was a screamer. My brakes were howling, my arms pumped from hanging on and my eyes as big as dinner plates as I hung on for grim death down the rutted and seemingly vertical trail. Dan estimated he had between 1.3 & 2.7% control down the hill but somehow we both kept it upright.

We rode through the town of Brunkerville, took a right and headed up Lieberts lane looking for a connecting fire trail called Brunkerville trail. From google maps, I knew it went right past the boundary of a house, and as we searched for the trail, it got confusing as every side road had a post box on it. We gambled that 48 looked like it might turn into a firetrail however we quickly found it was just a driveway that was jealously guarded by a BIG dog. Dan had to hussle to make it out in one piece!

It turned out that 52 was the right post box to turn at and thus began the second mother of a hillclimb for the day. I knew from looking at the topo lines on that road that it was going to be steep but I wasn’t quite prepared for what was to follow. The road would climb and then go over a small crest giving the false impression of the summit, then as you cleared it, you realized the next section was steeper again. This happened over and over again until I was in the granny ring and struggling for momentum and stalled…. IN THE GRANNY RING! So there were a few sections that had to be walked but we eventually dragged ourselves to the top of the hill.

Dan in the pain cave

By now, we were off the edge of my map. I was going by memory at the maze of interconnecting roads I had seen on google earth and knew the chances of me picking the right road were slim. So we chose the road that went downhill rather than uphill. Wrong choice. It was sign posted to Wakefield which we knew was in the ball park but after we descended for several kilometers (with my fork locked out – oops) we came to a locked gate and a dead end. Dan and I were now smoked and we hadn’t even done 25k’s yet. We evaluated whether we would climb back out and re-try for the correct path but Dan’s knee was suspect and I was running very low on fluids, so we pulled the pin and limped back to the car via the road.

Freeman’s waterhole milk bar was a god send. We devoured food and fluids and continued our slog back to the car. We took the back entrance into Awaba and were silly enough to attempt to ride the murderhorn. The uncompacted mud surface after 4 days of rain made it impossible although Dan made it about a meter further than I did.

Striking a pose outside our little oasis

Dan was now cramping like a cramp thing. He was completely leg locked but managed to hobble his way around all the way back to the car. He then reminded me he had ridden twice in the last 4 months and I suddenly felt a twinge of guilt about his re-initiation to the saddle. Then he mentioned he was starting to remember how much fun it can be to be in pain and I couldn’t agree more. It had hurt like hell yet it was still a good ride. Nearly 4 hours in total and about 50k’s all up. The hardest 50k’s I have done in a long time!

The most interesting thing about the whole day is the quality riding available in my backyard. There are thousands of kilometers of trails that I haven’t explored and no good reasons as to why I shouldn’t ride them all. Bring on the summer of exploration (and just a little bit of pain 🙂 ).

Our Route looked something like this. We nearly got to Killi but took a wrong turn somewhere near Albuquerque