Monday 30 April 2012

Big Boys weekend.

  Last weekend me and Craig headed North for a Biking get away.
So off we headed Saturday afternon. First stop our addequate accommadation only minutes from Parklands, in Yandina.

  Quick cahnge and we were headed forParklands. I'd ridden there once previously and had mainly done the South eastern corner of the park and loved it. This tie around we decided to hit up the northern corner. Well we found hills and more hills. " Road Rage" is Hard technical climbs followed by short fun downhill sections. Too short for my liking. But they some great riding to be had. Except for the fact that is mostly sub tropical surroundings. Which is beautiful to look at and ride thru but STINKING hot in the afternoon.




  Next after a grueling climb to the power line junction. We hit up "Cancer tree" WOW what a hoot. Started off with a flying 35km/hr+ bolt down the ride line then into a loose gravel rocky decent. Now that was more like it. From there we headed UP AND UP again thru rock and roll and onto the southern end. Wher we promptly got stuck into some flowy XC type trails and got lost.
We ended up making our way out near dark via " Ho Chi Hoe".

Garmin track for the day.



  The adventures continued into the night when we were waiting for pizzas we decided to see if we could find a Geocache located about 2km away in a Parking area off the highway. So armed with a set of bike lights and an iPhone for navigation we headed into the bush next to a busy parking camping area ( did we look suss or what!) So after ten minutes of searching we found this underneath a log.


  Sunday came aorund and we decided ot head back to Parklands for a play on "Ho Chi Hoe" and "Lower NZ". Then off to test our skills at "Posties".
Posties is a Downhill track built by Downhill From Here. Now I looked at all the pics and videos and thought "Yeah we'll be right we can do that".

  As you arrive you are greeted with a 20% decent tarmac road with Waterbars which the car struggled to get down without frying the brakes. Wow if thats the road what's the track like?

  Well.... OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!! This place is CRAZY!. This steps up the difficulty level by a hundred fold. I quickly realised we had the wrong bikes, pedals, skills, helmets and Gonad size for this place. The last jump is a 10 foot drop road gap. WOW! ( Unforunately all my pics failed)

 SO after an hour of watching in awe and scoping out a bit fo the track it was decided that it wasn't for us. Not at $60 a head to try it out. So off we went with Plan B Hennessey's Hill Beerburrum.

  Hennessey's is anoter Downhill track with a road right next to it making it ideal for shuttles. As we arrived a Father and Son do were about to head down for a run and after a quick chat we had a shuttle piloted by there Wife/ Mother ( I think). What a score!
Hennessey's was a lot more up our alley with many alternate lines and lacking the mental steepness of Posties it was a challenge without being too over our heads. End result we ended up doing 7 runs down each time attempting a new obstacle or line to try and get quicker and smoother down.

  So the weekend didn't turn out quite as planned but as good as hoped. WIth a greuling ride around Parklands Saturday, First Geocache find, Then checking out what has to the premiere Downhill track in queensland, to taking on a recognised DH track at Hennessey's with my first ever shuttle runs. ( except the gondola at Queenstown).

Got to love Mountain Biking!


Friday 20 April 2012

I'm Back

Ok so I'm back and a lot has been happening. Every Saturday has seen the construction of a new MTB track in Cornubia forest by a bunch of volunteers. End result an awesome 1.7km track with 100m of decent, built by mountain bikers so there's a lot of fun stuff on the trip down. Here's Dave's video taken a few days before completion.


Pump Track Update. I got a little silly and decided to whack a BIG ASS wooden berm in. So with help from Craig we came up with this.


End result we a have a whopping big berm which mostly works. Unfortunately the berm is too big to get enough speed up to hit it perfectly. But it's still a hoot and looks cool.

MTBO News. First race was Karingal and unfortunately I'd been battling flew and sickness for a month or so. So fitness was shocking. Still raced of course and ended up getting 12th. Was really happy with my Navigation just fitness was the issue. Missed ou ont he second race at Beerburrum due to fitness and the course being 34km+ so thought it better to give it a miss. Next one is Alex Hills sprint distance so hoping for a better showing on that one.

Ride News. This weekend heading to Parklands tomorrow and hopefully Posties on Sunday.

That's it for now. Hope to update a bit more often.