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Old Coach rd/Wolgan Valley
Oooh... this looks nice:
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/3425611
I hope Flynny won't mind me quoting him from MTB-OZ:
Starting up the Drift sucked. From there it was nice fun pace. A few of the guys hadn't seen the Glow worm tunnels so we decided to ride down, walk through the tunnel and back then traverse the Pagoda track to link up with the coach rd. This was a nice little side trip. The Pagoda track, though short, offered some nice riding in between hikeabike with fantastic views over some grand old cliff lines.
Coach road had been graded, even the dodgy bridge as you cut under the cliff and get the first good look at the valley was done up with steel girders and rails. It made the ride less challenging but you could really get hooking and launch the waterbars.
The ride out from the river crossing is pleasant and undulating until you hit the Gap[1].
Wolgan Gap is 3km of up, up , up. There is something dishearten when you are on a steep climb and you round a bend only to see it get steeper.
We decided to forgo the extra climb up Blackfellows hands and took the highway home. We're soft.
[1]Actually you gain about 150 elevation but its nice riding.
I've walked in this area and it's pretty nice. A good deal of the above will be fire trail, and you may see a few 4WD (they like to play in this area). Looks a great distance ride though (the MB route is 89Km). Erm, perhaps a summer thing?
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Ah... he wrote about it here: Old Coach road
I hadn't noticed you had put that up.
The traffic thing was one reason we done it on a Monday. The main road tends to fill up with bogans on dirt squirters and yuppies in toy 4x4s on a weekend though there are secondary road that can be taken on a busy weekend.
The Edge had the ride at about 84km from memory. Motionbased up't it to 89
Sounds great, let's find a date! (sometime in the next few months )
If you wanted to make a weekend of it. 10km of ST heading down the rail easement from the coal mine brings you to the camp ground. it crosses private property but the sign says no motorised access from memory, it might say walkers only but I've never heard of riders getting into trouble (you could always take the road). It can be over grown at times and there is a bit of hike a bike, several gullies had bridges over them, all the rail infrastructure was torn up and shipped over seas in ww2 (I think)and the gullies are quite washed out.
There is some pleasant riding down stream of the camp ground, as well as the ruins of the oil refinery and township to explore.
The area is a popular for rockclimbers (Big natural stuff though some of the cliffs are more sand than stone), canyoners (two guys got pulled out of there last week by the rescue squad) and bushwalkers so a pleasant afternoon and night could be spent there before tackling the ride out the next day. You'd then be relatively fresh to explore Blackfellows hands which as some nice, if faded, 1200yold hand stencils
If doing the ride in summer, take plenty of water. Water is hard to find plateau if you don't know where to look and it gets hot. It would also be prudent to filter or boil water from creeks or the river before drinking it.