Wednesday, August 07, 2019

Wednesday Night Uplifts and Downdrafts, 1080

Good spin tonight. Left Nelson's place and headed around to the Park. He'd bought a Winter pass, and so had 7 (of 10) lifts left on a card, which they kindly transferred to me and we headed up.

First round, into Yeah Yeah Gnah, weird in the dark, and pretty rough in spots, but fun.  Nelson put on speed but I didn't trust tires or myself and kept mine on the lowdown.  At the mid point a couple of guys he knew pulled up on DH rigs.  We led them into Handle, and half way down my battery strap snapped dropping it into the front wheel.  "WTF is that!?"  Pulled up; Nelson taped it onto my stem and off we went again.  Good blast the rest of the way and we made it to the lift just in time to be the last uplifts at 7.  Johnny accompanying us for the up.

At the top we went our separate ways from Johnny, him down the park, and us down Slummit Connector, new bits to play on (big doubles), and then all the way out to the road.  Puffy up this to top of Nun. Fun Down, quite greasy in spots, so I's watching out for myself all the way down; pumped and tired as at the bottom.

Across Dyers Pass and up the Scummit Rd into the top of Vic.  Took off for the Traverse, and the first rocks biffed me all over the place, nearly dropping me.  Continued on and failed to chase down Nelson who powered off ahead, leaving me to struggle up the ups and ease into the downs.  Regroup at the midpoint, then again, he slowly left me behind as we cruised round the rest. 

Brief discussion whether Lavaflow as the go, but decided against it, and headed for the Huntsbury Downhill track, apparently called Fourpause (in Trailforks).  Nice bomb down here, though I wasn't overly trusting of the greasy dirt, then I bailed on the final jump.  New section through the tussocks beside the landingstrip, and then all the good lines from there down to Old Skool.  Took off into this, and around the first face I rolled up and find Nelson off the track grasping his knee.  He'd clipped a pedal on a rock that'd thrown his knee into the stem and him and bike off the track.  Yowch.  I was tired, so a bit slow on down, wary of all the little rivulets of stream across sections of the trail.  Final blast down, all good and out, then back to his down around the river.

A worthy 29.03 kms, with a grand total of 1133 m climbed...  (obviously, 800 m of that was on the lift)

Just noted, this is auspicious post number 1080.

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