Tuesday, March 07, 2017

Tuesday Explorational Eastern Tops.

Nelson collected me from home after work and we headed for Sumner then Evans Pass. Parked up and he found his dropper post was stuck dropped. He clambered up the first section behind me, standing the whole way, and we decided to explore up the ridge walking track and to find somewhere out of the wind to have a go at fixing the post.  Climb was steep to start, pushing the bikes, riding a little, pushing a little more then we found a nice spot and fettled the dropper.  Got it staying up for a start, and so got riding (and a couple of short walks) again up the fenceline ridge.  Up on the tops, through a gate and following the walkway around the top, past the 329 trig, heaps of windage, and over to the harbour side, dropping down, interesting sections of rocks and descending to a hairpin, then sidling nicely across the back side of the hill, tail wind along awesome flowy singletrack.  This ended at a stile, over this and fast descent down to Livingston Col. 

By this time, Nelson's dropper was stuck dropped again, so he upped the post in the frame to nearly normal height.  Hung a right here and rode and pushed a little up a steep sheep trail which then curved around to sidle across a basin above the usual trail, then spotted another one slightly higher up, so rode up a rocky ridgeline to this, then followed it around til we were overlooking Breeze Col. Found our way down the slope through tussocks til a good sheepline was found, and descended fast down past pfmtbc rock and down to the Col. 

Through Breeze Col, and for a change instead of around the narrow singletrack above the road, we headed up the oldschool steep face trails, Nelson cleaning nearly all of it, me walking one or two bits, til eventually across the top then over a fence and up past the 246m trig, down to the Observation Post, bit of a look around, and then down past a couple of ladies, over stile, and found our way down to the end of the narrow trail.  Into this, it's obviously seen a bit more action lately, and around it in the reverse of usual, fun blast back towards Breeze Col.  Decision time...  Down the Snake?  or back up Goddles...?  With Nelson's seat the way it was (not quite high enough for good climbing) we decided against the Anaconda. 

Off up the Godley track, taking the zig and zag out past the pfmtbc rock (rather than straight up the face like usual), and around over to Livingston, fun on the rocks along the top.  Next up from Livingston, climbing nicely, and trying out the new zig zag bits which work very well indeed for climbing.  Then up the into the valley and out again and up onto the ridgeline / landing strip bit.  Here we hung a left and rode up the ridge back up to the top to check out our initial climb as a downhill.  Mint!  Fun down, interesting rock sections, and some cool tech at the bottom.  Then instead of following the usual trail at the bottom stayed on the ridge and dropped down back to the last corner before the road.  Sweet.

Short but interesting ride, 11.14 kms, 555m climbed.

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