Wharncliffe Explorer Version - June 09

From Wharncliffe June 09

Our first trip to Wharncliffe Woods after just way too much excesses from the night before needed further exploring to find the right trails.

This time out, Nick and I managed to start and stop enough times to check and find the trails on the map, hit the big downhill section and survive (some guys told us it was the Steve Peat section), then continue on to find the rest of the 18km loop. I even managed to get TrailGuru working again and here is the link.

We started in the upper section, parking on the Greno side carpark and heading right into the rooty/twisty trail in the trees. The first thing that hit us was the amount of standing water and large puddles on the trail, which definitely hit us all over. No rear crud guards so mud caked us pretty much immediately. This was way more than what we'd come across at the previous trip, seemed to be just on account of the tress providing a lot of shade and shelter so the ground never really dries out.

After following the first section of impassable rocks (second time made this no better, still about impassable for our novice status) we stumbled across the right path, the downhill mountain bike trail maintained by Singletraction. This is very rocky and offers two starting points side by side (one much more steep than the other), but these both still rideable, just need some balance and balls. Definitely need balls. We opted for the lower starting point but followed it down through a couple of berms and lots of rocks strategically placed to get air if you wanted. Everything was rideable though if you didn't want to jump it, which proved lucky at some parts where the front wheel seems insanely low compared the rest of the bike when going over a drop off, it appears a consequence is a slightly buckled front wheel now.

After that, the trail hit some of the long uphills we'd seen before and then progressed much further along the top at a good speed, photos opportunity here which we took.

The trail then flowed round and onto the Trans-Pennine Trail before heading up over a very long uphill, 100mm travel and lockout selected to get up it clean.

A great workout for the legs and now we're better placed to ride it fully without trails maps all over the place.