ALPINE TREKKING
The inaugural Husqvarna 701 Enduro Trek was to have been run in February but a run of bushfires through the Victorian alpine region made the established route impossible. Determined to make it happen, Husky Australia gave Nick Selleck from Maschine time to replot the route. And so the ride was back on, and over 40 701s arrived to take on what is one of only two rides dedicated to a single model in Australia (the Yamaha WR250R Rally being the other), and perhaps the only dedicated 701 ride in the world.
The ride would have sun, rain, mud, sand, hills and views, rivers and rocks. It was a test at times and an absolute pleasure at others, but it never felt short of satisfying.
THE MERRIJIG LOOP — 205KM
The first day couldn’t have been met with better weather. The sun was shining, the morning was brisk but not too cold, and the 701s all fired up in anticipation of what was to come. In this case, what was to come were the toughest tracks of the week but in the best conditions. This would swap around somewhat in a couple of days, but for now it was onward for a loop run that brought us back to the same starting point.
It wasn’t too long before we reached a ‘three chilli’ section. Nick Selleck from Maschine rates the harder sections of the trails with a chilli number, three being the hardest, and we hit that loose rocky bastard of a hill nice and early, which got the blood pumping.
You can at any time skip the hard route and take the easier way around, but it turned out that this would probably be one of the most technical trail sections of the entire ride as it climbed and climbed, all the while offering nothing but loose rocks and boulders
