Twosdee Knight Worsley chuffing

Nelson collected me outside work just after 5 as usual and as usual the traffic was diabolical, hindering our progress towards Worsley Rd.  Up to the top into the misty cloud, drizzle threatening and rain forecast later.  Found a park, the place was packed with vehicles (and yet did we see many people in there??? - the place is a sponge!).  For a change we headed up the main track, all the way.  No rain means it's smoothed out quite nicely, and both of us cleaned the whole way up with maybe one light foot dab each.  Good to go.  I was struggling with air, and stopped part way to have a puff of some asthma.  Takes a while to kick in, so I took it easier from there on up. 

At the top of the forest we were surprised by how wet it was under the edge trees.  The moving mist was accumulating and dripping on all the trees around the usual meeting point.  We got going up the extra climb and it was greeeaasy in here, on account of it being on the edge of the forest, but you could see that just a few metres in it was all dry.  All the way up to the top and we dropped into Tommy2's.  Bombed on down and the trail was good.  Maybe a quarter of the way down we saw a trail off to the left called Sargent Choco.  So, figured we'd give it a look.  A few metres in and there's a massive gap jump, with no real bunny route round either, so walked this, then another jump further in...  One of 'those' tracks...  Persevered and there was some super steep stuff, a couple bits Nelson rode that I walked, and some obvious jumpy drops that only someone insane (or indeed wearing fullface, armour, on a big travel bike) would ride.  It tapped back into Tommy2's maybe half way down and we rolled to a stop for Nelson to have a snack.  I had one too.  One rider rode past while we sat there, and we could hear scuffing of other riders off in the distance on Throw The Goat to our right, and on Alices below us.  (but considering all the cars, where was everybody?).  Rolling again, onwards down, awesome flow on down to the bottom where I think we encountered a few riders...

Into the climb out and up back onto the main track for round two, saying gudday to Nick at the Junction.  Climb climb climb and cleaned it all again, including the hardest rocky section with an audience of a couple of guys who weren't cleaning it.  In the deepest darkest gorsey section there was a guy with loppers taking off overhanging gorse.  Thanks, bro!  Cleaned out to the top and there were a bunch of girls including Ann from work on her first ever ride.  They headed down and we headed up again.  This time dropping into my recent favourite newby, dropping down through the cool canyon and then into the sweet dark fir forest, across the creek, through the meadow over the rocks then across the slope for ages finally joining back into Tommy2's and blitzing it all down again to the bottom, this time finding a fun, fast trail dog and a couple other riders.

Up the climb again and into the Guts climb track up to the cliff top, cleaning it all but suffering endlessly.  Here we met up with Ann and the girls again, Nelson took their photo (for them!) and they headed down Waynes and Listerine while we headed on up the Original to the very top, watching riders on the jump that's on the left just before the rocky section, and checking out Wasabi a little further up.  Turned around at the top and headed down Tommy's.  Pretty greasy on the roots in the first sections, but not bad.  Nelson did the big jump and landed with a krunk and a burp.  Then we rode back up a ways to a trail I'd spotted off to the left (downhill side) quite near the start.  Down this, found some large gap jumps (with bunny lines this time) and quite a lot more country in here.  Got to the point where it looked freshly scratched out and unfinished, had a look (down steep rocky droppy into tight corner (nearly to the main track?).  But rode off down the older looking trail which eventually took us across to Tommy's again (but with another extension off to the left below).  Into Tommy's bomb bomb bomb and then into Fight Club.  A new log drop (not very big) just in from the original 'start' of Fight Club and down we fanged.  Nelson had a record time down here, I wasn't quite so fast, especially not after the shits were put up me by the losing of a foot on some rough roots...  We dropped into the end at the same time as other riders were bombing down the next trail to the exit...  Rude little non-hello-saying groms. 

Climbed out again, and up the first section of the Guts climb up to the pylon gap where we turned around and dropped into Shortcut to Suva.  Picked the right hand line and bombed down this. I'd ridden this ages ago, cleaning the steeeeeep rock rollover part way down this time, bombing down finally to the climbing track again.  Climbing this again, out, across the main track and over into the Jumpy (fence gap) track.  Once again I didn't do the fence jump, but got good air on some of the lower down jumps, rolled out the end, up to Epitaph and fanged down this to the carpark, where we found Ann and the girls again, having a beer.

Not even 14kms, but 690 m of altitude climbed...