Friday Night, up and down

Nelson picked me up from work just after 5 and the traffic was stupidly slow until we got across Brougham, then it wasn't so bad and we got to Worsley's Rd, parking next to the poplars on the flat before the new Park's entrance.  Rode up the road, round the corner and into the climb on the grass next to Fluffy Sheep.  At the top of this, we dropped into 1TrickLucy, boffing it down this, swoopy, clippy, yumpy, cruising.  Didn't look very well ridden, lots of overgrowth starting and just all a bit unkempt.  At the bottom of this, Nelson led off jetting down the switchbacks into the bottom of the valley, and we climbed up the lefthand (true right) side, steep little mother this is.  Levelled off and then through a gate, across a brandspanking new bridge, up some steps, then up a nice new gravel track, couple of switchbacks and then level-ish for a bit, then up a couple more switchbacks and then across the new slobdivision zone back onto Worsleys Rd, for to climb, up the singletrack bit then on up the seal to the top.

Into Worsleys proper, figuring the alt-route from the gate might be slick as shit like the other week.  We headed over to the left hand side through the trees to check out whether we could see anything of the new Park works.  Not really.  Rode up this singletrack to the water tank, then on upwards eventually finding ourselves IN the park, behind the sign.  Over the fence, and across the main track to ride up the 4wd mess-up-zone next to the jumpytrack forest.  Off camber as fuck up here, then on up and back onto the main drag in the big corner.  Cleaned the next few sections, really enjoying the challenge and just blazing up stuff I would have struggled with not that long ago.  Dunno what it was, but wasn't feeling all that bad.  Eventually got to the top, ie, the bottom of the Body Bag, and sat down for a rest, and to wait for darkness to get more in.  We'd ridden all the way to here without lights on.

Heard a couple of voices and spotted some lights over at the top of Braille, so we headed down and dropped into the little valley here.  Two guys with a boxer dog, parked up.  Brief chat, and we headed off into the newby singletrack here.  We had a nice blat down, I led the way, and we were keeping an eye out for any trails on the left.  Eventually, found one, but it proved a dead end in short shrift.  Meanwhile the two guys rode past, as we pushed back up to the track, and found what was really actually a droppy wee track just metres further down.  Couple of filters at the top but the rest of it was sweet, zigged and zagged steeply down onto the 4wd track in here.  Climbed this up to Braille and climbed on up.  Nelson gapping me, and then finding another newby off the right-hand side of this at the top.  Checked it out, no go, and another further down, no go, then back onto the climbing track to the top again, meeting the two guys and the boxer again, chatting longer this time.

They led off first, dog chasing hard, one of them took the jump line, and so we all got ahead of him and then when Nelson dropped into the steeper left hander lower down, the dog followed us down this, while the other two guys fanged off down the rest of the the trail, calling for the dog.  We hooned down the 4wd trail to their exit (quite along way further down), and then the dog turned up.  Down, and we spotted a trail exit on our right, so Nelson rode it and I pushed up it and eventually we found it's another new exit for the rest of the new track up there...  Back down this from where our droppy track started and out the 4wd all the way, getting caught, at speed, by the slickmud...  Nearly lost it, but managed to scrub enough speed, get back under control and follow on down the rest of it, spraying clods off  the tires.  Up to Epitaph, and down this back to the carpark.

Zoom down the road, bits of hard mud flinging off cleaning the tires, singletrack, then into Fluffy Sheep for a swoopy speedy descent back down, onto the road and back to the car.

2hours22 total time, just over 15kms and 578m climbed.