Happy Trails

The above picture summarizes my weekend. It was a good one.

A mountain biker I've met here planned a bike-touring trip through part of Namadgi National Park. The plan: park one car at the entrance to Smoker's Trail, drive to the top of Pryor's Hut trail. Ride mountain bikes down through Cotter Catchement, and back up to car #1 over two days, taking small bushwalk side trips along the way and camping out for the night.

We got a bit of a late start on Saturday (the story of nearly every bike trip I've been on...), but since the first leg of the trip was very rocky but mostly downhill fire road, we covered a fair amount of distance. We even decided that the walk up to the peak of Ginninderra was worth it so I saw the Namadgi Ranges and Canberra from one of the highest points in the ACT.
Can you spot the city in the middle of the bush?

We rode till riding was no longer a safe activity (possibly a bit after that, but we wanted to find a nice place to camp!) and settled down right next to a deep-burbling creek in a clearing in the valley. It started getting chilly pretty quickly, but I was with two of the biggest outdoor-buffs you'll ever meet (seriously, they mountain bike, mountaineer, rock climb, xcounry and downhill ski, kayak, canyon, scuba dive, and who knows what else) so we fared pretty well. Sven got an awesome fire going, and I definitely took note of a few good ideas for short-term camping food ideas. It was my idea of a Saturday evening-- chatting with some pretty interesting folks, alternating between considering the fire and staring up at the stars, two of which were considerate enough to fall while I was watching. Waiting for the billy to boil!

Having gone to bed sometime between 9 and 10, I woke up pretty early, but, peeking out from under the tent (we'd just used a tent cover so that all three of us could fit under what ordinarily would have housed two quite cozily) and seeing the helmet that had been black the day before pure white, coated in the thick, crystally layer of frost like everything around it in the gray morning light, I was quite content to stay snuggled up in my borrowed sleeping and bivvy bag until more of the chill had worn off. After the sun had been hitting it for half an hour or so.

Some breakfast and repacking, then off to the next day of riding in beautiful weather. Starting off with more rolling hills and then downhill to the lowest part of the valley, we made light jokes about the impending climbs to come. The topo map showed that Smoker's Trail would be quite the quad-killer. However, when it came, we rode as much as we could, walked sections where the combined inclination and weight of our packs made keeping the front wheel down more effort than it was worth, and stopped for lunch half way up, so it wasn't too bad at all. Despite toodling along, when we hit the intersection with another hike up to Square Rock, we figured we had enough time, stashed the bikes and headed up. I didn't take a picture of the square rock (it was behind me), but this is a small section of the view!

It was downhill back to the car from there, and then came the hardest part of the weekend... waiting with the bikes for about three hours for the two who could drive manual transmissions to go and get car #2. I was just about ready to pull out my sleeping bag again as the cold set in with the dropping sun when Jasmine showed up again. We loaded up and headed back to Canberra. It doesn't look like such a small city as you approach its welcoming sprawl of winding lights at night.