Tuesday 26 April 2016

A Taste of NARSTy 2016 by Lee Edwards

Just three of the rides we did during NARSTy 2016

Ticked another box today. Took the Urals to the highest road in Australia ( we lunched at the highest town a few days ago.....Cabrumurra ).
9 outfits to Jindabyne for morning coffee and on to Charlotte Pass....1964 metres. WoW.......
Back down for a lovely lunch at the Wild Brumby Distillery a few k's out of Jindabyne.


 

Tumut....
Six Urals assembled for a morning ride. A route to Wee Jasper was selected and we headed off. We chose to leave about 8:30 and be back for lunch. The thought process was.....well, there is nothing at Wee Jasper as the general store has been closed for some time. Another factor in the planning was the temperature....38 degrees C in the afternoon.  
The track was a little rough but a good 63km run for the Urals. We returned to Tumut via the Angalong stock route. This takes you right through the pine forests and up over the range. we encountered some logging equipment and trucks, but all was well. Again the route was a bit rough as the loggers lay very course rock on the tracks. We all arrived back at camp a little hot..after 135km return trip........it was now 36C. Some of us headed straight for a dip in the river.......total bliss !



Brindabella.....

170km trip from Tumut along the Brindabella-Canberra road. Turned off about 20km before Brinda onto Barnetts road. Half a km down the road I stopped to wait for Doonie. His back has been in spasm for a few days, so we turned him around and sent him home......the road was very rough and got rougher. Doon would have ended up in an air ambulance if he had continued.
Barnetts road to Boundary road and onto Broken Cart fire trail. Our desired road was Long Plain road but a land owner has placed a locked gate down the Brindabella end so it's a bit of a go round detour to get through. We eventually turned onto Long Plain road and got to the Snowy highway at Rules Point for a hard earned drink stop....Along the fire trail, Andrew was following my wheel tracks, straddling a deep rut which he somehow managed to fall into. The standard mufflers did their usuall thing and held the drive wheel off the ground..........love my high exhaust..... Being ahead, I did not have to help push him out but further along, I was caught out by a very steep twisty climb. Not going fast enough in second, I snatched first only to bounce and skid sideways, ending up at right angles to the track and me almost falling into the sidecar.......yep it was steep. Completing a five point turn, I descended to the bottom and did a u turn to try again. First gear selected and a 30 metre run up had me powering, sliding and bouncing all the way to the top. I knew the others would have the same trouble so I headed back down on foot, just getting there in time to give some advise.....then I had to walk up the damned hill. I consider myself to be fairly fit but I had to stop 3 times before I reached the top.
At Rules Point having a drink stop, I checked the time and discovered it had just taken us 4.5 hours to travel 60km on the dirt.
That was a fun day.......

I forgot to say....the rocks we encountered that have been layed on the tracks are the size of tennis balls and broken so they have a super sharp edge....I can't believe we didn't get tyres sliced open.It was impossible to go faster than 10kph on these sections.