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TOPIC: Marysville 14th May

Marysville 14th May 14 May 2017 20:21 #21325

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Things started off a little frantic for me this morning – the alarm hadn’t gone off, and I woke much later than I had planned. In the rush to get to the meeting spot, I left behind the printed ride list sheets and, more importantly, my body armour. Thankfully, I had a padded jacket in my kit bag that provided some upper body protection.

Arriving at the starting point just prior to 8:30, I was surprised to see more people than I had expected waiting there. We had 8 in the group, and by the look of the weather, a ‘crisp’ looking day ahead of us.

The first couple of kms gave us a hint of the track conditions. It was slippery, even with the recent lack of rain. I guess the thick fog that blankets the mountains each night is enough to keep things damp up there.

Going down one of the optional ‘harder’ routes provided a spectacular view of the low cloud completely filling the valley below. Very picturesque, but it was hard to enjoy the view and concentrate on the rutted downhill section of track at the same time.

Despite the greasy conditions, the group was travelling nicely, and it seemed that we were going to finish my intended morning loop sooner than I’d planned. Mark suggested a detour over to the Narbethong side of the highway for a play on the open tracks there. As I’m still not confident in my knowledge of the tracks over there, I let Mark take the lead for a while, and settled myself back as tailman.

There was a bit of action to watch too – the tracks on the Narby side were even slicker than those in the Triangle, and caught a few riders napping when they attempted even reasonably ‘gentle’ hill climbs.

After an hour or so, it was time to head back to the Triangle, and I retook the reins as ride leader. The erosion culverts provided some good ‘air-time’ on some of the tracks as we headed towards Marysville. The sun had made a proper appearance by then, and the jacket I was wearing was quickly becoming a mini-sauna.

Heading down towards the lunch spot, I decided to do another little detour up to try out a short challenging hill climb, only to find that the track had been well and truly blocked by felled trees, presumably by the DSE (or whatever acronym it is that they go by these days).

We waited at the track junction to give everyone a chance to regroup, but after 10 minutes or so, we were still short a few riders. The decision was made to cautiously retrace our steps back to the last cornerman’s position, where we learnt that Rachael had suffered a fall and was hurt.

She had hit a patch of very greasy clay, and by the length of the ‘gouges’ in the track, had managed to slide a fair distance before ending up in the bank on the edge of the track. She was able to limp around a little, but the prognosis was that her ankle was sprained. By the way she described it, things could have been a lot worse if not for the knee braces that she was wearing.

Mark went back to the car park to collect his 4x4 ute so that we could transport Rachael and her bike back to the cars. After seeing them on their way, the rest of us took the long way back via a few tracks, and met up again back at the cars. With lots of help to get her bike and gear stowed away, Rachael then headed off home (thankfully the car was an automatic), promising to keep us informed of the outcome of her injury.

As we had done 82km by that stage, the decision was made to call it a day, and we all headed home a bit earlier than expected.

Thanks for a fun day guys (and gal), and hope to see you all up there again soon.

P.S. I’ll see if I can add in a bit of video tomorrow.
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