Up and Adaminaby
Not all rides go according to plan.
I found myself reflecting on this fact halfway up a remote mountain fire trail, ski-slope steep, pushing more than 20kg of bike and cargo up a punishing 35% gradient. Moments previously, we’d been intercepted by a friendly park ranger, who’d let us know our planned ride, and the road ahead, was closed due to the bushfires that ripped through the area almost a year ago. We’d have to adjust our route and go back the way we came before diverting over a different part of the range; a hefty fine was on the cards for going out of bounds, so there was nothing else to do but turn around and follow the ranger’s instructions.
Our relief at avoiding personal bankruptcy did little to lessen the toil of the Sisyphean task we were now facing, but after 10 or 15 minutes of sweaty grunting up the ‘hill’, we reached the top. ‘That’s the last time I ever trust the Strava heat map,’ Jim, my ride partner and photographer for the day, told me. When planning a route for an off-road adventure, it’s wise to dig a little deeper into the topographic maps, and boy were we learning the hard way.
We’d started our ride around four hours earlier in Tharwa, a small village on the outskirts of Tuggeranong in the ACT. Full of beans, we were rather excited to test out the capabilities of
