Sunday Morning, Nelsonia tough stuff

Delivering the niece and nephew to their home in Nelson, drove up Saturday and home on today.  Took the Spot and Jet the dog and made contact with Ian for a ride.  Met him and Leigh (and her dog Middy) at the entrance to Codger's at 10am, and off we trundled.  Up the main trail, left on Pipeline, then up Jack's Track and around to the top of Turners.  Here Leigh and me and the dogs headed down Turners, and Ian headed up to grub a new line at the start of Lollipop.  Turners is big and wide and swoopy.  If you knew it well you'd catch massive air on it.  Was pretty good, I lost my chain half way down and had to keep the pace to roll up a few bits and I recognised the bottom half of it in some gums.  We rode it back in '05 (referred to there as a "new track" off Fireball...).  At the bottom, there's a nice wee climbing track (called Take Me To Your Leader) that'd been started by Ian and friends, granny pretty much the whole way, lots of switchbacks, in the native (with one or two old man pines too).  The top of this is a skidder site from whence we headed to the right and up an access road to a corner, then up a steep wee grunt (i walked, but Leigh cleaned it.  At the top there's a picnic table, and the dogs had a really good play up here while they waited for us.  Looking down the trail I was greeted by a taste of things to come.  STEEP and a bit greasy too.  Ian led off ahead and cleaned everything, stopping every now and then to let us catch up.  I walked heaps, and Leigh cleaned most stuff, but walked a few spots too..  It was SO steep and some of the corners just so dodgy.  So many bits that I'd barely ever be able to ride...

At the bottom we headed back up the climbing trail again and from the skidder site in the opposite direction (back towards Turners) to the next small saddle and up a steeeep ass and greasy thawed-frost access track that we all walked.  At the top of this started what began as a wickedly good track, apparently called Smasher.  Off camber, through dark forest, douglas fir mostly, and big swoopy corners.  First section was great, then it crossed a fire-road and was rideable for a while, but the lower it got the steeper it got and was a bit mental, in a completely different way to the mental that was Lollipop.  Walked a bunch of this track, too, but rode out the bottom and we were down at the Maitai River Sunday Swimming Hole.  From here we cruised down the Maitai track and back to town.  I got back to Flamedaisy about 12.30.