THE CLOUDRIDER

I didn’t expect it to be easy. I’d ridden enough rugged tracks and fire-trails in the mountains of South-Eastern Australia to know that. But the viciously steep, rock strewn track that lay before me was unlike anything I had ever encountered on a mountain bike. With the slopes too severe to ride, I accepted my fate: a ten-kilometre hike-a-bike. Looking skyward only added to my woes. The clouds had begun to cluster and bruise. Electricity, as the cliché goes, was in the air. Head down, I started my work.

I was deep in the Victorian high country, inching my way into the Tingaringy Wilderness near the Snowy River. Narrow ‘benches’ had been cut across the trail every one-hundred meters or so. Designed to divert water and reduce erosion, they provide the hapless biker with an almost horizontal surface on which to rest.

But these ‘benches’ come at a price. The twenty metres of track before each ‘bench’ was steeper still. Impossible to even stand without sliding backwards, some basic mountain climbing techniques were required. First, I had to lock the brakes and use the bike as an anchor. I then scraped a foothold to provide a more stable base from which I could thrust the bike forward.