We both just had a great weekend in Hobart mountain biking. Saturday we almost got blown away on the North South Track. The North South Track starts from the Springs on Mt Wellington and ends down at the Glenorchy Mountain Bike Park about 12km away and approximately 600M lower down the mountain.

Sharon, Marie, Peter and myself started off pretty badly when we arrived at Glenorchy without the keys to Peters bike rack or our bike lock! After a 45 minute round trip to get both sets of keys we had the bikes sorted and headed up to the springs for the ride down. There was a tree across the road just before Fern Tree on the way up from the wind. The first ride section from the Springs to Junction Cabin (3.8km) was quite wet and muddy and we got a good covering on us and the bikes. The rest of the ride was was quite dry in the driving wind though. Standing at the bottom was very difficult in the wild wind and Sharon got blown off a berm (banked corner) coming down.

Sharon and Marie road back to town on the cycle way so Peter and I loaded up the bikes and headed back up the mountain to his car. Peter had to go out for tea and I was keen for more so I did another solo run down the mountain to my favourite bit about 2/3 of the way down and then road back up again to my car almost in the dark. The last 1km was very difficult to see anything with the tree cover and the failing light. The guy from South Australia I gave directions to had more difficulties than I did arriving back about 15 minutes after me in almost total darkness but he had a ball.

Marie & Peter had given us a room for the night so Sharon and I walked up to the Elizabeth St strip for a nice tea and hit the sack for a well earned sleep. A few people during the night kept us awake from the nearby hotel at times though. Sunday Sharon, Marie and Peter had a switchbacks cornering skills course with Mountain Bike Skills at the Clarence Mountain Bike Park so I had the day to ride Clarence and the nearby Meehan Range tracks.

Arriving early at the Clarence car park and luck would have it a group of guys from Hobart including the local area track builder were there starting a ride and happy for me to tag along so I got the best ride I could have ever hoped for. I was taken on and shown all the old and new tracks in the area and we also road the enduro course happening latter in the year. After about 2HRs I made it back to the car and refuelled.

All the Hobart guys had to go so I went for another lap and on a couple of trails they didn’t ride last time around. I was struggling a bit up the hills this time around. There were some great views from the cliff top track over Hobart. Weather was great unlike in Launceston I hear as the Northern Vets races were cancelled. Sharon learnt a lot on the skills course and could manage the savage switch backs of Clarence afterwards.

We left Hobart about 1PM and went the back way through Richmond but it was packed with people and moved on to Oatlands to get some lunch. Oatlands was equally as hopeless as we got the last pie of any type (a yummy scallop though) and one of the last rolls. Coffee was almost impossible to get. We eventually did get a couple of coffees in the end and drove north into the ever deteriorating weather. It was such a nice day in Hobart on Sunday morning. I read that there was an estimated 500 people who road Meehan Range and Clarence MTB park this weekend and I can believe it. Hobart has some very different riding and quite a bit of it, we will be back. I have since found several tracks in the Meehan that I missed but I got to ride the best of it for sure.

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