The next round of the Victorian all mountain series is happening over the 12th and 13th of January at Myrtleford, no doubt many of you will be racing itA�(or wanting to!) and we just had a chat with course builder Ben Watkins about what to expect from the event. To say Ben was pretty excited about what was in store on the ‘Breckenridge Trail’ would be an understatement!
The new singletrack has had a lot of gone into it to help the flow, in Bens enthusiastic words; “The trail I am using for the Myrtleford Yeti Cycles Elevation round, is a trail called Breckenridge trail. Ita��s in a myriad of old hard core moto enduro loops, fouby tracks, and tech mountain bike descents, winding down the side of a huge mountain with tons of these tight sharp steep little “valleys” on the way down.
This gives the trail an amazing yet unique mix of long, flowy descending sections, which then gives you enough speed to get up the other side of a short sharp little climb. The bonus of this is that you drop a ton of vertical elevation but then you get most of that back again without a massive climbing effort, so it feels like an endless roller coaster ride.
I did a few days hiking with a high end GPS which helped me to see a�?the whole mountaina��, even though you cana��t see over the next ridge in the thick forest. This helped to pick which direction to go, which old trail to use, and which ones to let die. Picking out some of the diss-used trails and rebuilding those, along with piecing together some amazing new linking sections which have amazing terrain has given us what seems like “the perfect trail” for all mountain, super D, or gravity based enduro riding.
Even though there is a lot of old trails there from long ago, the erosion from heavy rain had destroyed a lot of it, so by the time I added new links or whole new sections, rebuilding the old trails meant that pretty much I ended up with what looks like five kays of brand new single trail. This did allow for more interesting and creative new lines, and this trail as a whole is definitely a step in the right direction from the Bright trail, and more interesting from a riders perspective too.
The elevation drop is close to 1000 vertical feet, and after the first lay out of the track it was five kays long. It has since had two un interesting sections removed, but also an amazing new section added, so it will be interesting to see the times and the actual new trail length, as Bright was 3.5 kays taking ten minutes.
A lot of riders have asked me “whata��s the track like?” as a builder I think this one is the best, and most creative Ia��ve ever built. As a rider, I cana��t wait to thrash it!”
For more info head over to the Facebook or site or hit up their website, as usual expect a full report on the site after the event!