Camping at Cotter Camp-ground last night was quiet, the showers were hot but timed to 3.5 minutes with a 2 minute gap between activations, no problems there. Quite cold overnight with a little drizzle early on. Observations for Canberra just 10km away had the morning temperature at 0.6 degrees. Normal morning routine and we were off to Stromlo for some MTB fun. As we had no phone coverage at Cotter we uploaded the blog and caught up on the latest bookface and stuff like that before we got going.

A fine day

City Views and a nice seat to sit on waiting for Sharon

Here she is coming out at the top of ABC switch backs

Quite a few people around to what we expected but there is so much trail we hardly saw anyone all day. By chance the couple from Northern Territory we met yesterday at Sparrow Hill were at Stromlo today as well. Sharon wanted to play in the skills park for a bit and we did all the berms, pumps, drops (some of) and switch backs before heading out on the Intermediate loop 4 that takes you right around the park for about 20km, just long enough to have us back for lunch.

Last part of ‘Slick Rock’ – rest was like this but with switchbacks thrown in

There were a few climbs on the way up to Mt Stromlo and past the observatory with some great views over the city. Then we decended down ‘Magpie Rock’ & ‘Slick Rock’ that were very technical and rocky. I was fully concentrating to get through it all and Sharon struggled with a couple of particular gnarly sections but made it through with only one scrape on the arm. She did not enjoy this section at all, it was quite hard even for me in places. After this section it started to open up again and then we hit some great flowy sections for quite a while including the super fast ‘Terminal Velocity’ where I hit 51kmh for a bit. Stromlo is a cross between the rocky sections of Trevallyn and the gravel sections of Kate Read so we felt right at home on the trails here.

Interesting story about ‘Willow Junction’ just a pity they don’t say what or how he died as it just leaves you hanging wondering if it was the riding or a health issue

Chillin at ‘Willow Junction’

Back at the truck after the great flowy decents to the car park I repaired the bent idler arm on my derailier that has been the cause of all my gear issues and chain hook ups over the last few days. Not sure what crash bent it but things are top notch again now after a few bends and re-alignments. We came to the realisation over lunch that we had no clean bike gear and not to many clothes we could put on and needed a washing machine badly. The weather was warm and breezy so this arvo was regroup, sort, repair and wash day.

Jockey Roller cage was badly bent on the inside bottom plus out of alignment

We must have farted or something?

Finding a caravan park in Canberra in not that easy as there are not many of them. A couple had doggy reviews so we headed to the best looking one and when we arrived it was full. They gave us a slip of the nearest two and we headed of with Leigh (Navman) guiding the way. Unfortunately we hit the wrong street as two very similar names and ended up 4km away. Quick back track and the second one did not look at all appealing, onto the third another 3km away. At least they were close to each other. So almost an hour of clothes drying time lost we setup and as I write this we do not have another soul around us but we know how that changes. Tomorrow we are shopping then Stromlo for round two, maybe even round three who knows where the wind will blow us to next.