wurple.net

I clearly didn’t get enough of the snow on Sunday.

It’s rather cold in Melbourne at the moment. So cold that it was snowing on Mount Dandenong, which has a rather unterrifying elevation of only ~600m. Perfect conditions for a spot on mountainbiking.

I kicked off from the carpark behind the hall in The Basin and went up via the firetrails in the park. Second time I’ve done it now, so I found it easier to pace myself. Not to say that I didn’t put a foot down of course. Since I was riding alone and in the wet, I kept off the singletrack and just kept climbing. Up and up and up. I hadn’t done the full ascent of Mt Dandenong on the MTB yet, so I just continued to pick trails that went up. This eventually got me to the Channel 10 tower and to the snow line. Woohoo!

With my HR way up in the sky, I was feeling rather toasty in all of my winter gear. My hands however were starting to get a bit wet and cold. Water was also sneaking in around the cleats of my shoes. Out on Ridge Road, I contemplated heading downhill, but I figured that since I’d come so far, I might as well head up to the Observatory and Arboretum to take some happy snaps. The Observatory was fine, with plenty of visitors making the road quite easy to ride on. The Arboretum however was another story. With very few visitors, there was far more slush and mud making riding a bit tricky.

Starting to get cold, I decided to head back down via the road. Just to make things interesting, it started to hail. With my Buff over my face, I put my head down and battled straight into the hail. Uhhh… Ouch! Really quite un-fun at this point. My wet hands were starting to hurt from the cold making braking quite painful. I’m glad I was on the MTB because disc brakes gave me plenty of braking power. Funny moment at the intersection of Ridge Road and Mount Dandenong Tourist Road, with a VW Bora trying to get out of a driveway opposite me. She put her foot down, span the wheels and started to slide backwards. In a panic, she braked hard, locking up the wheels and sliding even more. She ended up facing the wrong way, back down at the bottom of the hill, while I just rolled on.

The rest of the descent was slow and safe. My hands were getting so cold that I decided to pull up in Sassafras and stick my hands up my jersey to warm them up before continuing all the way down. Geesh. Not fun. I was quite glad coming down Mountain Highway when I left the snow behind. I could almost feel it getting warmer even though my watch was telling me that it was only 5 deg C. Ugh.

Am I crazy?

Quite possibly.

Photos