Knocked off work early and met Nelson at Sefton at 4.30. Transferred to his car and headed around and up the hill. Got riding at 5, up the steep bastard singletrack that climbs up the front. Not quite so bad once you've pushed up the steepest bit, it starts to do these biiig long zigs and zags, progressively shorter til we hit the Lookout tower. Then I pushed and he rode about half of the singletrack up from here to the road, and then we were onto the singletrack that sidles along the eastern side around and up to the summit. Awesome techy interesting hard and fun climb. Took about an hour to the top where we had a rest facing the sun out of the wind (once we'd cooled down a bit) - and noticing a stickiness collected on our left arms from the broom on the way up. This way up is only 4.3 kms, whereas the usual way
Into the down, brakes honking(!) to start with. Trail basically dry, but some deep ruts, and the usual wet bits were sloppy. Awesome riding, down through the few switchbacks on this open section, then into the bush, and Switchback-City. Native Clematis was in flower the upper switchback section, with sprays of it visible in the canopy of the forest - quite beautiful. Cleaned a some switchbacks, and getting well practiced in the foot-down,-nose-pivot,-swing,-roll-on- ones we weren't cleaning. The open boggy section was still pretty boggy, but starting to dry a bit, and the forest below this also had a lot of soggy wet bits, but also starting to harden up. Lots of fun tho, techy rootsville. Finally out the bottom, before 7.
And the climb began back up the road to the car, which I reached about 7.10pm. Nice 2 and half hours spent damned well.
Into the down, brakes honking(!) to start with. Trail basically dry, but some deep ruts, and the usual wet bits were sloppy. Awesome riding, down through the few switchbacks on this open section, then into the bush, and Switchback-City. Native Clematis was in flower the upper switchback section, with sprays of it visible in the canopy of the forest - quite beautiful. Cleaned a some switchbacks, and getting well practiced in the foot-down,-nose-pivot,-swing,-roll-on- ones we weren't cleaning. The open boggy section was still pretty boggy, but starting to dry a bit, and the forest below this also had a lot of soggy wet bits, but also starting to harden up. Lots of fun tho, techy rootsville. Finally out the bottom, before 7.
And the climb began back up the road to the car, which I reached about 7.10pm. Nice 2 and half hours spent damned well.
13.8 Kms, 679m climbed, mostly steeply.
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