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Howard
@sensom
Went on a bit of a last minute adventure up to Mount Buller here in Victoria, to take on recently constructed 'Epic Trail' rated extreme. All well and good except I haven't been on a mountain bike in at least 15 years, and even then it was just in a car park.
He works for Spesh out here, so we were both on some pretty serious machines...
We got to the ski resort near the top of the mountain at around 9:30AM after a drive up from Melbourne, and pumped shocks/put on clothes to suit the 2 degree temperatures. I was pretty badly prepared, having almost no MTB cycling clothes (and I still don't own a winter riding jacket for some reason). I opted for SPD's as I had some SIDI mountain shoes which have previously only seen use on my track bikes.
We got rolling and I immediately learned how taxing things would be - right off the bat the trails were steep, and a night of rain on the mountain meant everything was slippier than a slag's waffle iron(?). It was a very pretty mountain though.
The first few rocky downhill sections were terrifying, and I was chasing my friend's 650 Enduro at a fair old speed, squeeks brakes and from my own lungs as I went. I was on an aptly named Epic, and it didn't take long to work out that I was riding an absolute weapon, even if I wasn't exactly pushing its capabilities.
Fixin'
The elevation really started to pick up along the Stonefly route, and we covered about 3km in what felt like a decade, churning up sodden, rock filled pathways. I struggled with adapting to staying sat down when the bike was almost completely in the air, and ended up flopping over sideways like a complete twat on more than one occasion until I got used to things.
After a few routing conundrums, and a shit load more climbing, we reached this absolute brute of a hill:
Doesn't look like much but after thirty something kilometres it was enough to push us both into dangerous near-bonk territories. Then descending the other side, this:
He'd cut right through two pretty jagged rocks in front of me, causing a hilarious sounding pinch flat. Funny until we realised we had no tire levers and some very tightly fitting rubber (oo err). About 20 minutes of faffing and grunting later, we'd swapped it out and were descending for what felt like only the second time.
A while later we passed a sign etched into a fallen tree that simply said "Enjoy!", denoting we'd reached the pay off for all of the effing, jeffing and sweating - a 20 minute tits out descent which can only be described as a jungle scene from Indiana jones on acid, and it was fast as fuck.
I crashed pretty hard twice, the first of which was caused by a recently fallen branch which ran parallel to my wheel, sening me sliding off the side of the bike and bending my saddle off to the side. The second time I was riding pretty close to my buddy, who called out on a particularly nasty corner a bit late and I came face to face with an ominous tree stump, bending the rear derailleur slightly.
Ten more minutes of incredible rolling, swerving track we hit a fire road which brought us out at the river, which we rode along for another couple of easy, weary and beautiful kilometres.
All in all, and despite being a terrified wreck for some it, it was some of the most fun I've had on a bike. Time for a drive-thru beer.
Strava doesn't seem to wanna embed.. https://www.strava.com/activities/292613299