MTB Guidebook

21/06/2024

What a location! Corker of a summer spot. Ride, Swim and Ice cream!

27/05/2024

You see these type of progressive jumps in other states and on highly regarded jump lines like Air Ya Gain in Derby Tasmania. Western Australia has traditionally done a poor job with progressive lines with camel jump style making life difficult for riders at their limit and pulling up short. Or large gaps in skill required between different levels of jumps built in WA. Have you seen this style of jump anywhere in WA? One of the benefits of travelling is experiencing different trails and different styles.

08/05/2024

Under biked or Overbiked? Andrew’s choice for solo tilt at the 600km multi day Pipeline Challenge was the Rocky Mountain Slayer, 170/180mm of travel, coil rear shock, flat pedals, alloy frame but why stop there? Maxxis Minion DHR and Assegai complete the package. Andrew we 🫡 you.

08/05/2024

Under biked or Overbiked? Andrew’s choice for solo tilt at the 600km multi day Pipeline Challenge was the Rocky Mountain Slayer, 170/180mm of travel, coil rear shock, flat pedals, alloy frame but why stop there. Maxxis Minion DHR and Assegai complete the package. Andrew we 🫡 you.

07/05/2024

The Pipeline Challenge is on again. 600kms over 5 days, it’s made for a gravel rider. Perfect weather for this years event from Kalgoorlie to Mundaring.

07/05/2024

Pipeline Challenge is on again. More gravel bikes are making their way into this event. Next year will be 10 years since the first Pipeline Challenge.

28/04/2024

What’s the one that surprises you? For us the Kwinana loop seemed forgotten and untapped potential with the potential to engage a large population living right next to it.

09/04/2024

Sangas!

04/04/2024

Dusty, loose and a rider prepared to push it. A great morning with sampling Bindoon MTB park’s toughest lines for an upcoming magazine article. you’ve got a goodun.

28/03/2024

For some Easter is a story about rebirth, hope and a new beginning. Western Australian Johnny’s story has all that and more. Johnny is the kinda guy who snaps a pair of forks in a 12 hour endurance race at Langford Park!

So put down that choccy egg in get into Shooters story.

Over the roughly two decades since that head injury, Johnny Waddell has transitioned from World Cup downhill into endurance racing.

18/03/2024

Like Nannup the opening date was pushed back and pushed back, and like Nannup we hope it will be worth the wait. Now how about some rain?

𝐓𝐞𝐧 𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐠𝐨! 𝐖𝐡𝐨'𝐬 𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝? 🤩

The countdown is on! There is only ten days to go until the Bindoon Mountain Bike Park opens. Are you as excited as we are? 🙌

17/03/2024

Great to have the local automotive association onboard promoting MTBing in WA. Checkout the latest issue in your letterbox now for members.

10/03/2024

And we thought this new location would be a popular choice when it was raining! Everything was on high rotation under the Redcliffe bridge (Mooro-Beeloo Bridge). Park at the Bayswater Boat Ramp car park area off Katanning St (the one with that weird looking toilet) and follow the happy kids for 50 metres back under the bridge. Sunscreen is certainly optional .

01/03/2024

Some new trails to discover for the long weekend?

What to expect at Dianella Regional Open Space, Bindoon MTB Park, Boo Park Fremantle, John Forrest National Park, Kalamunda, Dwellingup, Langford Park and Collie.

26/11/2023

Trail Network Review: Wild Mersey Sheffield entrance

TLDR: Some better trails today, the layout of the trails is problematic.

So today was a transit day to Maydena with some riding from Sheffield. We were the only car again in a very large carpark at the end of Badgers road. We knew the trails were up the hill on our left so it was confusing to drop down a gravel road away from the trails. There is probably a good explanation for this, but dropping 40 vertical metres on a road knowing you’ll have to climb that height back up once on the trail is frustrating. Badgers Run was a good start, although we wonder if anyone misses the turn and continues down the hill? Maybe a post 20m up the track to prep riders?

Badgers was a lovely trail that took us to a lovely junction. It took me a moment to realise how strange the junction was. It wasn’t actually a junction. The turn off to the climbing trail actually happened 10 metres before. The Gold rush and Zen Garden intersection similarly happened 10 metres on the other side. We had to ride Zen Garden although it was nothing like the (in)famous Zen Garden at Maydena. Did I ride it so I could brag to my mates that I rode Zen Garden on my trip? Yes, yes I did. It was a lovely little loop. Stuff like this should ideally be close to the carpark for kids and beginners.

We then climbed Up Start past the interesting E-Bike challenge. Basically a steep up. It doesn’t look heavily used but an interesting addition. The climb was nicely paced with a rest spot next to a short little black descent. A very photogenic pinch point next to the rest spot allow half the group to rest while other could drop the line and ride back within a 5 minute space. It was called Double Trouble which was rated Double black in some places and single black in others. If it’s rated double black the naming makes sense, otherwise it’s a bit confusing.

More up’s on Rock ’n Roland and Blue Tongue. It was good to see options now on the network, we could have turned down Jack Jumper, Gold Rush or even Bluetopia. There is a 2nd ride here was the feeling to tick these off. From our dissapointments of Railton on the previous day (see other post) we’d talked to some riders and developed a strategy. Woodhooker was a crowd favourite so our ride was designed to make sure we hit that trail despite it terminating a fair way from the rest of the trails. If I hadn’t talked to other riders I wouldn’t have chosen Woodhooker as looking on the map, other trails made more sense to ride on singletrack (ie Sweet Caroline>Harden Up>Jack Jumper> Gold Rush). Strava Heatmaps also showed Woodhooker to be more popular. Hopefully we could avoid another Gnarvana with it’s BDE.

Beside the entry point the trails so far had been delightful. We turned onto Skyed Out a Black Techy trail. At slower speeds and tech features we found this to be a delight. A heavily reworked rock section had shearpin vibes but with multiple lines. We saw the turn up left for the only double black of the area Over Quollified. We rode the first couple of bits of this but as it cut back over Skyed Out we had a choice. Which trail to ride? As we were enjoying Skyed Out and it was a longer trail we continued on it. I would have loved if the Double Black was an option AFTER you finished the Black. By doing the double black there was no easy was to get back and finish the black line. The black line kinda pettered out towards the end so I don’t know if we made the right choice.

Again we found ourselves at the back of the trail network and again another Flow Techy trail. I hoped it wasn’t as bad as Gnarvana. Luckily the BDE had been dialed down and it was OK but again with big doubles at speed in the middle followed by some blind tricky stuff into rocks afterwards. We actually had a bit of fun popping off structures but always very wary of what was over the next blind structure.

Woodhooker was a great flow singletrack in the purest terms. Kinda like Mercury Street of even Flo Jo for those from WA. It turned down the hill halfway through and I remember thinking. Aww why did you do that, we could have milked that flow momentum for quite a while longer.

Woodhooker is a great trail. We climbed up the very beautiful Ewok and then sat there looking down a short flow trail called Shredwater Creek. It had a massive berm on entry and looked inviting. But based on previous experiences of Flow trails in this network we gave it a pass. It was interesting to later hear from a rider who told us that one of the last structures was causing the most crashes on the network. Looking like previous structures it was only once airborne did riders discover it was actually a triple.

Riding along the baseline, we passed through farmland with the farmer holding the gate open for us. A beautiful day, it was great to be on the trails but climbing back 60m vertical and a couple of kilometres along the gravel road to the car park our conclusion was this was a bit of an odd network. It seemed to be trying to achieve a bunch of objectives and making a good trail network with good trail options for a variety of riders didn’t seem high on the list.

It’s too spread out. I would have liked a good network developed first next to a carpark with multiple options in a compact network then other locations added afterwards. This feels a bit too much too early. Although we preferred the trails on the Sheffield side both sides force riders to ride trails they don’t want to ride to get to trails they do want to ride. There is no information on the styles of trails. Unless you know the trails beforehand you will ride a bunch of different styles of trails. The Flow trails need a major rethink. Too much BDE and are out of step with anything else we’ve ridden in Tasmania.

Sitting on busses, in pubs and at bike shops over two weeks of riding we probably talked to hundreds of riders and overheard hundreds of conversations (people talk loud on shuttle buses). People often talked about where they had ridden and where they were riding on their trip. Not once did we hear Wild Mersey mentioned. I made a point when talking to riders from Tasmania to ask them about Wild Mersey and I was often greeted with an eye roll or an awkward grunt or a “Yeah, That place, I don’t really ride there much.”

The ups are as good as anywhere, there is some beautiful singletrack and some unique high quality stone work. There has been media campaigns but there isn’t any organic buzz that we can see. We saw one rider on the network over two days of riding and we were the only car in the car park on both days we rode. Admittedly it was mid week but so too was George Town when we pulled up mid week and there was lots of riders on those trails.

We’re encouraged that there are continued works and trail maintenance going on there and those we’ve talked to recognise some of the issues. Great networks don’t happen overnight, great flow takes tweaks to fix. I hope to get up next trip and ride Over Quollified. It looks mint.

(Side note, the GPS took us via the Great Lake / Central Plateau to Maydena which was stunning. Tassie, you are always delighting us).

25/11/2023

Trail Network Review: Wild Mersey Railton entrance

TLDR: Some good stuff in there, but we really didn’t like the “Techy Flow” trails.

We’d been trying to get to Wild Mersey for a while. On my last Tassie MTB trip before COVID we got close but some of the group didn’t want to ride there because they heard it was mellow (how wrong they were). Initially the layout is hard to get your head around, multiple trail heads, multiple trail networks over multiple towns. On holiday in Tassie all other places I can think of are a lot easier for initial navigation. One trailhead, one logical route to start your ride. Here we had a choice. So we picked Railton, drove to an empty carpark and started our ride. Over the next two days we’d do two rides over two days to experience the network.

The first thing we noticed was the “courageous” choice to put the trail head car parks nowhere near the trails. It made navigation initially a bit tricky as there was parking on the maps but they weren’t near the squiggles of the trails. Maybe that’s why I chose Railton first, there was a green close by. We climbed Teleport, a nice easy green with some lovely rockwork on some corners to Newbed road. Then we turned out on the road and started riding down the road. On bitumen?! What the hell? Almost one kilometre along the bitumen road before turning into the trailhead part 2 and Super Hornet.

One thing that became quickly apparent was with the spread out nature of the network regardless of your ability there is often only one trail ahead of you. Super Hornet was a blue/green “Flow” ish trail with some berms in some rough shape. There is once “Instagram” feature that you know was just made for social media. We didn’t see another structure like it on the rest of the network. A step gap onto a ramp with a gap off the end.

So far Teleport was lovely, Super Hornet was in rough shape and we’d turned onto Easy Tiger which was a lovely connector to the longer and bigger climb Pony Up. There were some really nice sections of trail and it felt like a great XC, Trail riding network so far. The maps we’d initially looked at had Railton and Shefield as seperate where actually they were opposite ends of the same network. From the top of the Pony Up we could easily drop into the lovely Woodhooker or Sweet Caroline. But as our car was parked at Railton there was only one option, the “Flow Techy” Gnarvana.

Flow Techy sounds a bit oxymoronic to us, but I think it’s two words to say “It’s got everything”. It certainly did have everything, kinda all jumbled up. Very rarely on modern trails do you feel like you have no idea what the trail builder was thinking. This Blue had some big ass none rollable gap jumps mixed in with some random rocky sections and drops. To get the doubles you need to be at full gas but then the other stuff should be tackled a lot slower unless you know the lines. Did we mention this was a Blue rated trail?

Gnarvana felt like it was built with malice, to try and get you to crash. A mate describes this style as “Big Dick Energy” (we’ll call it BDE). We all know BDE, it’s the one thing that isn’t in shortage in MTBing. On comments online, or some trail building, you get this BDE. On shuttle buses where guys are telling others how easy something is, “you just need to ride more like me.” That’s BDE. Making a blue trail that isn’t a blue, that is actually a Black, if you know how to ride it, BDE. There isn’t any BDE at Maydena or Derby because they don’t need to, there is hard lines for people to ride, so they make blue trails for blue riders. This Blue rated trail should have projected structures and been more consistent in themes, instead it was one nasty surprise after another. In it’s existing layout it would potentially be OK on a shuttle run where riders can do lots of laps and figure it out, but this is buried in the back of our trail loop and it’s not optional. If you want to return to your car, you need to ride this.

Writing this over a week after finishing our trip I can say Gnarvana was easily our least favourite trail of the trip. It was no surprise talking with other riders of lots of stories of people hurting themselves on this trail. We climbed Back to School and down Echidin’ Me. I loved the tech climbing on Back to School and there was some beautiful sections of trail. I saw some other markers but it was only once back at the car I realised we’d missed a 10km loop I’d wanted to ride called Raptor Ridge. The map I’d taken a photo of for reference at the trail head was out of date and didn’t have it on it. FAAARK. We’ve heard from other trail riders who say it’s a good trail loop with no Flow Techy. To be honest we actually thought the best descending trail was the last Green Hornet into Railton. We’d maybe come back to ride Raptor Ridge but with Gnarvana dominating the network from this side the reality is we’d probably ride elsewhere. We left a bit disappointed wondering what the next days riding on the same network from the Sheffield side would be like. We didn’t see any trail descriptions so we could figure out which trails were Flow Techy and avoid them. It was going to be interesting.

24/11/2023

Houston we’ve got a problem. It’s a good problem though. So many trails to build around the state, so few trail builders to build them.

Early bone dry conditions makes it very challenging to build trails. So put ya tender in now, put a totally unrealistic completion date and once you’ve won the contract you can just stall and stall. 😉 😂😬

What a problem to have! Luckily there are lots of great trails out there already to ride.

Mountain biking trail tenders called for as part of 'Kings Park of the North' project! 🛠️🚵🏻🚵🏻‍♂️🛠️

Fresh mountain biking trails in Perth's northern suburbs are a step closer with the WA Government calling for tenders to build family-friendly tracks at Yellagonga Regional Park near Lake Joondalup.

When completed the new trails will be part of an $8.5 million investment in the 'Kings Park of the north' that includes an adventure playground and promenade.

"These new bike trails will add to the recreational facilities in the area, making Yellagonga Regional Park a must-visit destination for families and fitness enthusiasts," said Joondalup MLA Emily Hamilton MLA.

Environment Minister Reece Whitby MLA highlighted the strong community support for the trails, noting, "particularly strong advocacy by the Northern Beaches Cycling Club."

Find out more about the project here: https://www.dbca.wa.gov.au/management/parks/yellagonga-regional-park-improvement-project

23/11/2023

Some big floater footage from Meadow Bank private park near Hobart. The other footage is from Glenorchy which has been refurbished and looks tasty.

23/11/2023

Best Green Flow Trail in Tassie?

TLDR: Dirt Surfer surprised us with it welcoming berms and endless flow.

Do you like Fluid trail in Margaret river? Great for all riding abilities and on high rotation with the kids. Dirt Surfer in Maydena surprised us, tucked into a corner of the hill, easily overlooked and on a hill that has lots of steeps it managed to find a mellow gradient to make the flow work. For a green flow trail it was almost perfect although a muddy puddle almost had us a gutza exiting a high g berm. No jumps (from memory).

You need to start riding down Evergreen and I think for beginners it’s probably best to access from one of Maydena buggys that takes riders only part the way up the mountain or alternatively get off a the halfway point up the mountain ride across on Midline to Evergreen and follow it down to the junction on Evergreen. There is a massive Malibu surfboard which is pretty hard to miss.

The downside was it dropped us off into some janky XC trails that meant we weren’t keen to ride it a 2nd time which was a shame as we had fun chasing each other down the trail shouting encouragements across the berms.

So we were stoked to see that they’ve recognised this and fixed the exit which opens tomorrow.
It was good to do one lap down to mix it up from the tech and the blazingly fast jump lines. Another great flow trail on our trip was Woodhooker at Wild Mersey.

If you’ve got a picture of that surfboard on Dirt Surfer, post it up!

22/11/2023

What the hell are all those red spots? Looking at the map it first looked like a Measles outbreak.

TLDR: Some excessive signage we question if it actually makes anything safer and fights against hard work that has been done to put in trailheads that blend with the environment.

We like travelling and riding new spots and seeing how different minds tackle problems. We like seeing good design but what we saw at George Town Tippogoree is one of the most excessive things we’ve seen in 30+ years of riding trails. We liked the trails (checkout our previous post). We are all for safety on trails which is why in our review of Tippogoree called out the designing of dual directions sections of trail, especially on sections where you have descending riders entering and cornering into the dual direction at speed. If safety is really a concern the trails have been engineered a unsafe design. Anyone who’s done any safety training knows that the “Safety Pyramid” or “Hierarchy of Controls” puts engineering/ elimination as the best solution. Engineering is better than excessive signage.

So what is going on here? Red posts have been erected in case of an accident with information to relay to identify where you are. This is pretty standard. For instance at Maydena which has a lot of trails that push riders injuries are a common occurrence. For example with one feeder trail leading to 4 trails (Tea Trees to Gnar Yeah, Sideshow Bob, King Brown & Marriots) this is 5 trails. There is one emergency sign (see photo). At Georgetown, there would be 5 seperate signs, all within sight of each other.

Junctions where trail direction markers are normally put in other networks were missed for emergency signage. Instead they were put 5-10 metres down the track. So if you have 5 trails coming together you have the junction with no emergency signage but 5 seperate markers, most within sight of each other. Another example is at the start of the trail network. With-in a couple of metres from the carpark on flat open ground there are 3 emergency signs on tracks within a couple of metres from each other (see photo). There is 7 emergency signs, all in the flat open ground within sight of the car park. Normally the emergency signs fade into the background. They are there if you need tjem, but they aren’t intrusive, most places put them at trail heads where there is already signage.

This network they are so excessive as to be laughable. See other photos for examples. Trail heads here have actually been done tastefully blending into the environment (see photos), why the emergency signs aren’t simply included on the rock trail head markers is beyond us. I don’t recall seeing any signage warning riders of non rollable structures and I deliberately rode the hardest trails in this network. By comparison Maydena consistently warns of the hardest structure on a black/ double black trail with signage often going beyond a warning and notifying the rider what the structure is (ie Step down drop on Top Gun).

Keeping signage in good condition is ongoing work and an ongoing cost to any network. Signs fade, get damaged for multiple reasons and need to be replaced. Once apon a time we had IMBA trail auditor in Australia that would visit trail areas and provide guidance for best practice. I know some will read this an not get it, but there has been real effort and thought into creating beautiful trail heads and structures on the trail that work in harmony with the environment. Maybe because of this effort and the lovely trails the red marker poles everywhere stuck out even more.

21/11/2023

Trails Review: Tas George Town Tippogoree Trails

TLDR: A holiday hit. Easy climbing, short interesting trails and a compact network with excessive signage. We think this place will be a popular addition to many peoples trips to the NE of Tassie.

People were talking about George Town on the buses we were shuttling on saying it had some fun trails. We had a friend heading to Devonport to catch the ferry back to Melbourne and a detour to Tippogoree added about 20 minutes to the trip from Derby.

Easy carpark access, a great loop in an empty paddock to wear our the kids with a clear line of sight to the car. We nipped underneath a trainline and onto a two way trail. A two way trail? On a new network? These sections invite head on collisions with fast downhill trails feeding into them. A bad design but at least clearly signposted. Up Bass Line, Saddle Up and onto Skyhook. After riding Derbys trails for most of the week these switchbacks were a breeze. Wide and open you could hit them at full throttle. The downside is for us wierdos who like a tech challenge is they are kinda boring but the trail climbed nicely and about as easy as it is possible to climb with nicely spaced grade reversals to catch your breath. This was the easiest climbing all trip.

The terrain is different to the Derby and Maydena and reminded me of riding in Adelaide with fine grain soil being baked into hard clay. Fast rolling tyres designed for hardpack would be perfect for these trails. On the aggressive front, Dissectors or Aggressors would be great but even a more XC tyres like Ikons or Ardent Races would hold a lot of speed on this fast rolling ground.

From the top we’d been spying Yeah Buoy and fun looking Blue flow jump trail. Half of us went to do that while I started down Yeah Buoy onto the black Yabba. A little bit more tech but easy enough to navigate through.

We bumped into a couple from Queensland doing laps of the top and loving it. The had been to St Helens which they had mixed feelings about. There was no buzz about St Helens that I heard. I can see where they were coming from. These trails allowed you to dive into having fun on the trails quickly. It wasn’t brutal climbs, big doubles and 30km XC loops with a really nasty climb at the end like St Helens. Unlike the old maps at Derby the name on the map was in the colour of the trail grade. Ie IMBA green trails had their names written in green. It’s not rocket science people! Contours on the maps helped as well but no description of jump trails vs flow vs technical which is a bit disappointing. There was an insane amount of red emergency call up posts but I’ll save that rant for another post.

We happily spun up the uphill trail again for another hit from the top. An excavator was busy working on new trails to this network. There are shuttles running some days (business is for sale). We’d love to shuttle this network next time we are here with senditmtbshuttles.com.au

From the top, we tracked across Walrus Dreaming onto Devils Elbow, the only double black in the network. It had some nice tech rock descents with some tricky spots, kinda a mini detonate in spots. It didn’t start out as much and I started writing it off but it saved all the good stuff for the 2nd half.

With 160m drop from top to bottom it was easy to do laps. The new trails we heard will take the network even up higher but the only reason we stopped riding was we had a ferry to catch.

For Green and Blue riders this is a great addition and should be worked into trips to Derby. The family man in the group with wife and kids wished he’d brought them here instead of all the time at Derby. There is a couple of fun trails for Black/ Double Black but you’re already over catered for in Derby, still it’s worth a stop as the terrain is different, fast and interesting.

We blasted down the green Slap Happy with a nice gradient and easy table tops back to the car. There was a handful of riders mid week when we rocked up and more arriving when we finished. Derby does have some beginner trails in the valley (Axehead, Relics etc) but this machine built network has mass appeal feel about it and we’re sure many road trippers like our group will leave wishing they’d allocated more time to ride these trails.

Bravo!

20/11/2023

So life goals. Which one is the accessory? Spotted at Glenorchy MTB park.

20/11/2023

Derby Tasmania: Cuddles Trail review.

A (relatively) new technical descent trail in Derby?! Derby has gained a solid international reputation for techy rocky trails. Enduro World Series (EWS) riders have twice voted Derby as having the best trail they raced all year. Detonate (2017) and Kumma Gutza into Air Ya Garn (2019). So when a new trail just next to one of their most iconic trails (Trouty) opened up and graded a grade higher (double black), there was no way we weren’t going to ride it when we finally got to Tasmania.

Detonate, Kumma Gutza, Trouty, Shearpin, Roxanne, Black Stump, Black Dragon and 23 Stitches. 8 Trails that define Derby internationally for technical Black or Double Black rock shaped trail experiences. It’s not quantity, it’s quality. Now there is a 9th trail, Cuddles.

Overhearing “advanced” interstate riders come to Derby and just riding the one shuttleable jump line (Air Ya Garn) made me cringe. It’s like going to the Penfolds winery, home of the world famous Grange wine, and just drinking beer.

Cuddles starts just after Trouty and has a very mellow introduction. When we got to techincial features there was multiple lines of varying difficulty. There are granite slabs in the area and other trails have flirted with the odd wall ride (Kingswall, Shearpin) but Cuddles takes it to another level. Kinda. The problem is their is ways to avoid doing the wall rides if you don’t want to. As too with the defining feature. A bonkers steep rolling drop. The B and C lines are easy but confronting in their exposure. If you thought the slab at Nannup was large, that’s just a warm up.

Riding the A-Line with the long wall/slab rides would make Cuddles an incredible trail, up there with Detonate/ Trouty with it’s own unique experiences. The difference it that with Detonate and Trouty only have one way down. If you talk to a rider who says they’ve ridden Detonate, you’ll know what features they’ve been able to ride. You HAVE to ride the features, there is only one line down. There is no B lines. Cuddles felt a bit more like a modern wider trail with multiple lines.

Cuddles is rated a Double Black and we got down fine the first attempt. We often stopped to inspect and admire lines. Cuddles neighbour Trouty is some ways is more of a challenge (ignoring the one big drop on Cuddles) simply because of the way it funnels riders into structures. So too Detonate.

Cuddles is a great trail, but it isn’t Detonate or Trouty great. It’s possibly got more in common with the top section of Kumma Gutza. Regardless it’s a solid pedal to get to either Trouty or Cuddles so you won’t get sick of riding the descents. You might not think you’re a double black rider but as always in Derby the builders have projected upcoming obstacles well and you are rarely ambushed by features. For solid blue riders it’s worth having a look at just to look at the big rolling drop on the A line. It’s really big!

Have you ridden Cuddles?