Kiwarrak Goodness

Just had an awesome session with a bunch of blokes from Taree this moring riding the trails around Kiwarrak.

Best fun I've had for a very long time. There's something like 30km of singletrack hidden in there, maintained by some very active trail fairies. Bridges, berms, see-saws, ramps and jumps, All-mountain, downhill, dirtjump, XC loops, it's all there. Apparently for the Easter weekend they had a few hours spare so they walked around with a petrol blower blowing the dust and leaf litter off the trail!

The 18km section that I rode with the guys today showed what a difference that makes and had excellent grip. Not a lot of rockgardens or other technical featues, but quite tricky to ride especially at speed. Needed to use the brakes a fair bit as it was quite tight and twisty in places, I didn't know the trail, and the trail is routed so the trees are very close to your handlebars to keep the motorbike riders out. Nevertheless, it had awesome flow. I think only about a km of what we rode was fire road, and there was a singletrack option for that part but I was too cooked on the climb to contemplate it.

The downhill singletrack to back the car just seemed to go on forever, bermed corner after grippy bermed corner. A choice of ramps and jumps for the skilled and B-lines for the gumbies like me.

Easily as good as Ourimbah.

Unfortunately a couple of km's from the car I pushed the edge a bit far trying to keep up and clipped a stump with my pedal and OTB'd. No harm to me but I sheared the brake master cylinder off the left-side handlebar, so it was a granny ring road ride back to the starting point.

I'd really like thank the guys from Bourke's Bikes in Taree and Forster for making me feel welcome - they each took it in turns to keep me company and warn me what was coming next.

I've sought permission from Pete at Bourke's, and they're happy to share so I'll load up the GPS trace as soon as I can get some bandwidth.