It’s a bit late but hear is a quick report on the day.
Saturday 22nd August, we met at the dealership South Coffs 7.30am, there was a few no shows, we where on the bikes and into it by 8.00am, as soon as we hit the dirt the effects of the recent rain was visible with wash out sections that would swallow a 4wd.
The first hill climb a couple of K’s into the ride seen one of the young guys getting very close to nature. Up over the first ridge and heading towards Peak, the trail had been cleaned up since I last rode there, it is now smooth with 4foot erosion mounds 50 meters apart, up another ridge and a short break at Peak and take in the view.
Along the top of the ridge over to Crossy, very rocky now due to the rain.{Crossmaglen}. Down Crossy which is a red clay rutted hill that would have to go for a kilometer, impassable with the slightest bit of moisture. Some single lane over towards Bellingen, stopped for a break and a couple of other guys pulled up for a chat, they had come down from Ulong and where doing a loop through Bello and Dorrigo, it turned out that I used to work with there brother inlaw when I was at Coffs, they invited me on a two day ride that they are planning for the 19th and 20th of September. They had tried to come down the trail we where about to go up and told us that at the other end they could not get through heading south but if we made it up to that section we should be able to get through coming from our direction. We decided to push on. The hill that we had to get up is the legendary four mile which is regularly featured on you tube breaking people and bikes, all was going well until the last steep rutted pinch where the KTM decided to throw me off and slide backwards down the rocky hill, picking the bike up I could see carnage below me, several attempts later still no joy, we only had to get the bikes up the last four meters and the hardest part was over, we man handled the bikes up and it nearly killed me. Rested up we continued on to Devo, this is where the others had not been able to come through from the other end, big rocky rutted down hill section for only about 10meters, you could loose your bike in the ruts, all through and a huskey 450 decided not to start, more bike pushing through a single lane section, it fired up and we where back into the more open sections, a non stop ride over to the Coramba pub for burgers and beer.
Refreshed we head for Mount Coramba, there used to be a sweet hill climb all the way up the north side of the Mountain,{not the mountain bike track} when we got in there it had been logged recently and the sweet single lane hill climb was now a steep loose rocky dozer track with erosion mounds every 15 meters, racing a mate and nearly at the top the Huskey 450 went bang and there was a cloud of steam, we rolled it to the bottom and the rest of us continued on through some great riding and an hour back to the cars. We did 128km for the day.
We drove out to pick up the spent Huskey. Another good day at Coffs.
Cheers KTM01
