Sunday Mt Quite Grey - BFe's First outing

Well.  Assembled the BFe Friday night and finished it off on Saturday night, ready for this morning's early start.  Left home about 8.10 and got to Sefton just after half past, waiting about a minute before Nelson showed up.  Transferred to his car and we zoomed round to Cramptons Bush Rd, noticing a Lake Janet access Closed sign early on...  Figured we'd just ride up, and did.  Parked at the gate (closed for fire risk) down low around 280m alt, and treadled up the road to Lake Janet at around 460m then on up Mt Grey Rd to the top in around an hour.  Bit of rain about, really quite refreshing.

Top of Grey (radio tower - 929m), could see a a fair bit of rain out over Waipara basin, and so we hit the singletrack down, gnarling our way round through the tussocks and spaniards (one spiking my hand), boggy bits nearly dry, but still with some bog to them, and on the last section before rounding over into the bush (700m) the rain came down.  Switchback-City ensued, and we cleaned some and dirtied others.  Seemed to get down in no time at all, getting to the wee ridge with the look out very fast.  On downwards from here and loving every second of the trail. Out the bottom of the singletrack (~280m (again)) we flew, and before heading up we snarfed down a bunch of blackberries for a rich fresh antioxidant blast. 

BFe seems more planted, firmer, power transfer is more direct, i guess cos the frame is less flexy.  Seat feels a bit more solid, which shows how much flex there was in the old Soul back end.  Otherwise it handled exactly the same - excellently.

Climbed back up the road to "Lake" Janet, where we started up the road (as if for a second lap) and hung a hard right just before the gate, into the fir forest and down a nearly invisible singletrack.  Found a bunch of big holes dug, the fill of which had been used to make jumps nobody would want to ride...  several of these til finally out the bottom, back onto the road for a (i would say) 80kph+ blast down the gravel back to the car.

So, over all, a 650m climb followed by a 650m descent (one or two ups and downs in there), then a 180m up and over...  830m altitude climbed...  not quite the tonne we were thinking... but still pretty good effort well worth the doing.