RIDING THE RED CENTRE
We had a problem. Granted, in the pantheon of the world’s problems, the issue confronting us was not severe. But the fact was that it was our final night in the desert after a week of mountain biking, and darkness was now encroaching; with the sun slinking from view, the cobalt sky – ravenous – gobbled away at the last skerricks of brightness. With it went the warmth. But the problem was not the temperature, even though none of us had brought any warm gear and the temp last night had dropped to just two degrees. Nor was the issue water, despite us having here in the desert not one drop to drink between the three of us.
No, our problem was this: We didn’t know where to look.
Now you may think of Australia’s desert heart as – save the bold extrusions of Uluru and Kata Tjuta – flat and featureless. And in truth, large swathes of central Australia would justify that belief. But not where we were: Alice Springs. The Alice is the counterpoint.
We often tend to think of Alice Springs as a portal to more spectacular desert scenery elsewhere, but the town is actually right at the core of some of Australia’s most spectacular scenery, a landscape of rocks and cliffs, gaps and gorges. And that was the issue. We (myself, my mate from Sydney, Louis Bartels, and local rider Dave Atkins) were with our bikes just a few kilometres from town (hence our lack of worry about water) atop the aptly named Sunset Hill. Wherever we turned there was an eye-catching vista; choosing just one to focus on seemed impossible. Do we look to the West MacDonnell Ranges marching towards the setting sun? How about to Mount Gillen, inky purple and standing proud and tall and sharp? Do we instead do a 180 and turn and look down the bluffs and cliffs of the East Macs? At their stupendously long escarpment, a rocky and jagged sweep, red and glowing and running all the way to and beyond the horizon? How about north, to the seemingly infinite spread of low hills and undulations, where space itself seems limitless? How about even to the now twinkling lights of Alice Springs itself?
But our view on that final night was just one instance of the too-much-choice conundrum we faced while mtb-ing here. We had just five days, and while that may be enough to cover most other Aussie MTB (mountain-biking) destinations, in the Alice, you’re still only scratching at the surface. How many kilometres of trail are there here? “That depends on who you ask,” says Marty Krieg, echoing the response of pretty much every local rider I asked that question. “Some say 80. Others 500.” No one, it seemed, could pin down an answer, not
