Summer riding holiday part 2 – Bright/Mt Beauty

Leaving our pretty camp early in the morning we headed to Bright, arriving late morning to a town swarming with carbon road bikes. Seriously, if you have an expensive carbon roadie, some matching kit and a bit of a potbelly then head to Bright because you’ll be one of thousands! I’m sure there were some pretty serious roadies around Bright too, but they tend to be glimpsed earlier in the day and we’d obviously arrived at the prime feeding time of the slightly portlier species!

Having decided that it at least meant our bikes were very unlikely to be stolen, we hit up the local bakery for a milkshake and to meet up with yet another couple of old Melbourne friends who tend to do some DH riding as well as a bit of XC. Indeed Kat suggested we should all “get some Gravity in ya”!

All the cafes in Bright were surrounded by roadies

Once the crew was assembled, a process that takes longer with increasing numbers we set off for some exploration of the Bright trails. These head up the creek from town and deliver you into a pine forest networked by random trails and some fireroad. Overhead the paragliders were circling like flies in the clear blue skies obviously enjoying the thermals created by the 30-odd degree day. Yet more flawless weather!

Unfortunately the Bright trails are hard to navigate when no-one knows where to go and we ended up doing a lot of discussing which way we should go and some time spent riding up stuff that should have been ridden down and vice-versa. In the end we climbed up the fireroad to reach some trails that are probably more all-mountain than cross-country. Should have guessed that seeing as it was the gravity-loving pair leading the way.

About 20 minutes short of the top we stopped and the less gravity inclined of us headed down what was supposed the easier trail… not so much easier as just a shorter section of steep stuff I think. Now as an XC rider I generally rank reasonable well in the descending stakes so I took the lead into this “baby gravity” trail and suddenly found myself on a very loose and soft surface with steep corners and an unfriendly drop-off to the side for a lot of the trail. Things went pear-shaped rather quickly as my front wheel found some even softer surface on the edge of the trail and dug in and I unclipped one foot pre-empting an over-the-bars incident, however I somehow stayed on the bike and careered on down the track on foot of the pedal and very soon off the saddle as well and finally coming to rest in some bushes after riding one-footed on the cross bar for some distance… what can I say – style is my middle name.

Bogong from Survey Track

Determined to do better I remounted and continue down the trail, and things went relatively well for a while until a very steep and tight right-hander with a near vertical drop off the side. I’m not sure what happened, perhaps I lost my nerve and unclipped shifting my weight forwards and over the bars or perhaps I grabbed some brake but the result was a catapult over the bars but somehow landing on my feet with my bike entangled in one foot and still cartwheeling behind me. I ended up with a perfect dust tyre-print across my arse so at some point I managed to run myself over…. That’s what I call talent! After that display everyone else walked that corner, and soon we were down off the steepest sections and into more manageable trails for us cross-country types.

The rest of the ride was more of the same, trying to find trails based on vague memories of someone who had raced there and getting thoroughly lost in the process. Then getting annoyed with it all and heading back to town only to find the sought after trails on the other side of the river to where they were supposed to be. Eventually we all ended up back in town for yet another milkshake before leaving the town of a million carbon roadies for the slightly quieter scene of Mt Beauty.

Big Hill MTB Park and the local brewery

Over Towonga Gap and into Mt Beauty, which nestles in the valley below Mt Bogong and Falls Creek, we set up camp at the foot of Mt Bogong about 15km out of town and yet again were treated to another idyllic campsite with beautiful mountain stream and no camp fees.

A good day on the trails

Our days in Mount Beauty revolved mainly around the Big Hill mountain bike park, which is just on the edge of town on the side of a hill (they have plenty of hills in the area). Luckily this time we had a local guide for a our first ride and the result was 2 hours of riding awesome trails without having to make one direction decision. The first part of the ride was up Survey track, which was the original track, used by surveyors and early construction workers on the Kiewa Hydro Scheme in the early 1930s. There is some local talk about clearing the track even further up the mountain and perhaps making a mtb route all the way up to Falls Creek which would be a phenomenal ride. For now the track winds its way up the hillside running almost parallel to the Falls Ck road and provided a not-too steep way to reach Cranky Corner – where the Falls road has a distinctive hairpin. Crossing the road here and continuing up some equally manageable firetrail brings you into the trail network of the mountain bike park. Crisscrossed with trails and fireroad you could literally spend days in here getting lost and found again but always finding stuff to ride. There is apparently a trail map available but apparently it’s more confusing than helpful so we relied on group knowledge and experiences from the first ride with the local guide.

Survey Track

Mt Beauty was back on a surface I’m more familiar with, dry hard pack through eucalypt bush with some rocks and tree roots. The single track has been built by locals and the local club (rather than resort style construction) and trails often bear the name of their main builder …. Seems Bernie was and is instrumental in the park. 

Three decent sessions in the trail network and I’d still be happy to go back for more but Tim was champing at the bit for some road riding so on New Years Eve we planned to mountain bike in the morning and road ride in the afternoon. As it turned out it was yet another hot day and so after a decent session on the trails we swapped to the roadies and headed up to Falls Creek.

Elevation of the Falls Ride... with a GPS fart to start

Now I said Mt Beauty was quieter than Bright but it’s still a riding destination, in fact there’s an informal boot camp called ride week that is headed by some riders who are Mt Beauty born and bred like the van der Ploegs and attracts some top road and mountain bikers to the area for the Christmas/New Year period. With classic road climbs like Falls Creek, Towonga Gap, Hotham and Buffalo all in reach it’s easy to see why you’d want to own a roadie in this area.

Doing my best roadie impression!

Ok so maybe not roadie legs!

Starting at Mt Beauty at around 300m elevation the road up to Falls Creek climbs with some big undulations in the first 15km up past Bogong Village until it crosses the Pretty Valley branch of the East Kiewa River, from there it continues up at a fairly constant gradient to top out at Falls Creek 31km from Mt Beauty having climbed to an elevation of around 1600m. Being the seventh consecutive day of riding, I did have some doubts about whether I’d make it especially as my easiest gear was already in use in the first 500m of the ride. The ride never gets steep though and all I had to do was just keep the legs turning and keep my heart rate from spiking to high. Soon we climbed high enough that the heat started to ease and in the shade of the tall mountain eucalypts and tree ferns it was a pleasant and pretty ride. Several kilometres from Falls Creek village you pass the toll booth for fleecing winter visitors, from there the village in often in sight and you start to loose the tree cover. I started to really struggle but Tim encouraged me to keep going and soon enough I could rack my bike on one of the many friendly racks (the hook your saddle over type ones) out side the Falls Supermarket and recover with a chocolate milk.

Just to prove I did make it!

The descent down Falls is awesome, with fairly gentle corners and gradient you swoop down the mountain between 40 and 50km/hr marvelling at hour quickly you reach landmarks that seems miles apart on the ride up. Then suddenly you cross the Kiewa and the legs have to pedal with the first of several rather rude uphills back to Beauty. Finishing back in Mt Beauty I was totally spent, so much so that after one beer I was in bed by ten thirty on New Years Eve and looking forward to a rest day to start 2013.