Dusty Butt Chronicles Part 2

Day One of the big event and the alarms went off at 5am for an early start but lying in bed the wind was nearly drowning them out.  Wandering around outside we could see all the blown over rubbish bins and could even smell the smoke of some nearby scrub fires.

Too bad, Colin and I tore into brekkie and started getting ready.  Some of the others decided to wait a bit to see if the wind dropped but we decided that we'd rather get going and have to stop in shelter later if necessary.  We wanted a good start to the day and to get in before dark...We even persuaded the 3rd member of team WR to leave with us too.

As you'll see from the video later we got away just as the sky was starting to lighten up and get a feel for the performance of the WR's on seal...

Not far out of town we turned off onto our first bit of gravel and hitting it at pace was exciting!  It was fairly deep and soft and the bikes wanted to wander around all over the place but speed was actually your friend.  We'd end up putting up with this "fun" surface all the way down to Black Forest.

Pretty soon we also started to come across more damage from the wind.  The first few downed trees were easy enough to get around but eventually we came across a monster completely blocking the road.  This didn't stop some super keen lunatics from attempting to attack the tree...

For a moment I wondered what the heck we were going to do but out of the corner of my eye I spotted a KTM tearing across a farmer's paddock.  We doubled back and snuck into the paddock and followed the tracks through the grass to the next gate after the tree and quickly got back on track.

The next bit of excitement was me misreading my GPS and going on a solo journey on a neat gravel road that I'll call Wallaby Crossing as I did come across a wallaby that had failed to complete their crossing.  Eventually it dawned on me that nobody was in my mirrors (it took a while because WR=missile like performance) so I did a U-turn and found the others waiting for me back at the "purple line".  Oh well, I had a nice extra 10km+ ride...

As mentioned we then had to deal with more of the dodgy, deep gravel all the way down to Black Forest Station.  We flew down there pretty well, passing some others and in return getting passed by even faster guys.  I even got stuck behind an 1190 who was tricky to get past as he was just a little slower than me, kicking up a lot of dust and perhaps not wanting to be passed by the third WR in a row...

At the station some good soul was holding the gate open for us so we didn't have to stop and took to a dirt road/track that slowly made it's way up the hill to lookout over Lake Benmore.  The ride up started introducing us to some more technical riding - a narrow rocky track with the odd small water crossing and some steep climbs with corners that you really needed to get around lest you find yourself taking the short-cut to the bottom...

Some great views from the top though!

Rowan

Colin

Rowan

Some cool WR rider...

The drop down to the dam was more of the same including more gates and a pretty rocky dried up river/stream crossing.

Next up was a reasonably long stretch of WR torturing seal to Omarama.  The poor little bikes having to cope with decent hills and a head wind - 6th gear was a luxury and I was even down to 4th once.  Luckily the bikes are brave little troopers and refuse to fly apart...

In Omarama we refueled and decided that we didn't need any pastry so made for the next section.  After a short piece of gravel we were confronted with a choice - to complete the Omarama Challenge section or take the challenge bypass.  We knew that the challenge consisted of a lot (40 or so) water crossings (my secret fear going into the event) but decided to tackle it anyway...

The track initially consisted of a reasonably good dirt track with the odd rut and eventually some wet stuff to splash around in before changing to a slightly more rocky and rutted track with some deeper, longer crossings.

I was handling it fairly well even if I wasn't a fan of the ruts when I had my only off of the ride going through what was actually a quite shallow and simple water crossing.  I think the front tyre just slid off a rock and down I went.  Luckily it was very shallow and the bike fell on it's left side with the muffler clear of the water.  I got a little damp rolling around in the creek...and yes, it is on the video...

That silly little mistake over and done with, I got back into it and caught up with Colin just after another water crossing.  We parked up and waited for Chevvy.

We'd been waiting a wee while when some riders stopped and asked us if we were Chevvy's mates.  Rather than naturally and automatically deny it, we confessed...

They then informed us that Chevvy had binned reasonably hard but was up and going again and wouldn't be far away.  Sure enough, he arrived on the scene, splashed through the creek and rode straight past us.  Unfortunately, he wasn't 100% and came off again fairly hard just up the road.

Once again, he bravely got going again but then had another off and after this he definitely was in a little trouble.

I'm not going to go into all the gory details but basically Colin and another rider headed off to try for some cellphone reception and were lucky enough to come across some people with a PLB who were able to set it off and get rotary-winged assistance on it's way.

Poor ole Chevvy's DB ended a little early and for Colin and I it meant about 6-7 hours lost by the time we managed to get his bike out to St Bathans where it could be stored at the local pub.  The ride out to St Bathans was a lot of fun - and I got to do it twice!

By this time it was after 5pm so we decided to have a quick meal and drink at the pub before abandoning the Dusty Butt trails for the day and pounding seal through to Alexandra for the night.  Not the best day for Team WR but at least we had got Chevvy to where he needed to be a lot more easily than it could have been.

And the WR's didn't need the love that some other bikes needed...

They did get a nice dry shed at our motel though...

Once hosed off, we wandered off to the pub with the others to feed the worms again and chat about the exciting Day One...

Bring on Day Two!