A "Social Ride" in the Victorian Alps

With all the flooding in the lead-up to this event I was skeptical about getting to the start line. When a storm dumped 100+ ml of rain on Wednesday evening before the event the organisers sent out an email Thursday morning saying they would check the course and make a call the next afternoon.
I had planned a long weekend with the family at Falls Creek so got the organisers text message postponing the event just as we got into Mt Beauty. With the event postponed I got a leave pass from the family and went for a ride round Big Hill Bike Park at Mt Beauty on the Saturday morning. It was 4 degrees and foggy when we left Falls Creek, an hour later when we got down to Mt Beauty it was sunny and warm.
Big Hill Bike Park has a lot of sweet single track and is similar to Stromlo with lots of switchbacks although fewer rocks. I stayed on the main hill which had about 200m of elevation and did a few laps around some of the trails. When I followed the course markers it took me through some of the best tracks I found there although as I would find out the next day course markers are no substitute for local knowledge.
After 2 hours at Big Hill it was time for the commute back up the road to Falls Creek to rejoin the family. I don't normally enjoy long MTB commutes on the road however the scenery on that road is spectacular and at 10k and hour you get a lot of time to take things in. The local road crew had been very busy clearing landslides and fallen trees in the previous 48 hours and I must have gone past at least 20 landslips caused by the rain. There was one section near the top where part of the road had subsided due to a landslip on the inside of the corner. There was just a few safety cones and an automated stop/go set of lights at each end to keep the cars in the one lane. Didn't seem that bad from the car however when I paused on the bike and looked over the side there was a lot of hill missing. The remnants of the mountain ash forests that burned in the 2003 and 2006 bushfires make the area around Falls Creek quite spooky. There are just thousands of these silver weathered tree trunks poking out of the hill and its not until you get up close that you realise it will be 50-100 years before the place recovers to what it was like before the two fires.
There was over 1100m of hill so I had a lot of time to watch my ride average creep up from 6 to 10. Never had to work so hard to average 10 before, particularly when the last 26k was on tarmac. With over 1800m of hills it was a pretty intense 44k training ride.

When I got back to Falls Creek there was a text message from the event organisers offering a social ride at 9am on the Sunday for anyone who couldn't cancel travel arrangements. Clayton, one of team at Finish Line Events ended up staying in our lodge and had a wry smile when I asked at breakfast how social the ride would be and just mentioned there would be a 2-3 hour version and a longer version.
My wife was going to do the 20k lap round Mt Beauty so I spent the next 10 minutes talking her into leaving the kids at the lodge and coming on the social ride with us. Despite the red wine hangover she agreed so at 9am we headed out into the mist and the short ride up to Windy Corner.
After the customary standing round and waiting for the guys with the maps to work things out we split into 2 groups and they took contact details for those of us on the longer ride. About 30 riders headed off up the hill for the first 10k to Pretty Valley where we crossed the causeway in the lake and split into the two groups. Cathy took the shorter option and ended up looping back round the main dam to several of the mountain huts and then on the road back down to Falls Creek. She was still smiling when I saw here later and said the scenery was spectacular.

There were 9 of us on the longer ride and one of the locals accurately described the next hill as a bastard of a climb. It was once a 4WD access track however was pretty wet, grassy in places and lots and lots of rocks. While it wasn't that steep my tired legs, the elevation and what seemed like 2k of rock gardens made it challenging. The downhill on the other side was fantastic as we picked our way through rock gardens and what resembled a creek at times. Defiantly a case where challenging terrain made anything over 10 seem fast. One of the locals smashed his derailer so we huddled in the lee of a rock on the top of a bluff with a view of Mt Feathertop in the background while they converted his dually into a single speed. I am sure it was much more fun for us taking photos and asking the other two locals to name each of the mountains we could see in what was now turning out to be a nice day.
When they caught back we were told it was mainly downhill. There were lots of downhill sections and at times it was hard to see the track. Some really fast sections where the track was a bit more open and the drop over the side was only a few hundred metres, lots of creek crossings and quite a few sections of boggy track that resembled a creek.
The alpine scenery is really spectacular and we rode through a combination of high plains above the tree line and then eventually dropped back down into the forested alpine areas with similar vegetation to the NSW ski fields. Eventually we left the unmaintained access roads and descended about 900m on a gravel road that had my Mavic back hub screaming for some oil. Pedalling the whole way down stopped the noise and hopefully saved it from too much damage. Cant say the same for the back break pads which sounded like they had succumbed to the wet conditions.
The locals then took us on some more of the Mt Beauty single track before we dropped back into the Big Hill bike park and followed the marked course to the bottom. It was a great ride and fantastic company. There were 4 guys down from Queensland and myself. Many thanks to the 4 local guys showing us the way. A very memorable day riding in some truly spectacular countryside.

Now I just have to decide if I can make it back down there for the rescheduled event in January.