Av. Trail Rating:
(7 votes so far) |
 |
Description:-
This route is a combination of the Red and Black routes. To do just the Red route you would cut across the ‘Red Lynx’ at Tag1.
As you can see from the elevation profile, this trail is a single gradual climb, followed by a single long descent. But one thing which sets this trail apart from the pack is the fact that the ascent doesn’t feel like a chore because it is interesting almost all the way to the top. At Tag4 it changes to a boring firetrack for the final part of the climb, but all the way up to that point there are a densely packed succession of interestingly designed rocky features, twisty singletrack, lumps, bumps, and anything else they could think of to keep you interested as you make the climb. You are climbing over 400 vertical meters, so you don’t ‘not notice’ that you’re climbing, but the trail does a great job of keeping you distracted as you huff and puff your way up the hill.
The toughest section on the way up is without a doubt the ‘Lactic Ladder’ at Tag2. This is a challenging steep sequence of rock steps, which are all rideable, but only if you have a good combination of skill and fitness.
The climb flattens out at Tag3, and gradually climbs up to the top at Tag5. If you haven’t been to the top before its definitely worth a quick detour to the massive 100 foot tall statue to the first Duke of Sutherland. You just don’t understand how big the thing is until you stand right beside it.
The first section of the descent from Tag5 is a series of jumps and drops, some of which are quite big and can have you getting some fairly ‘big air’ if you hit them fast. Tag6 is the start of the ‘VTOL’ section which is a linked series of very big jumps which allow you to carry speed from one to the next. After this you enter the trees for a technical descent over rocky steep slopes and drops etc.
From Tag7 all the way back to the car park you are back on the ‘Red’ route and the trail features reflect this in terms of their severity. The trail soon opens up to be much faster and all the jumps, berms, drops and rock gardens are all designed to allow you to go fast and to carry your speed all the way down.
Finally at Tag8 there is a balance beam section constructed using flattened off tree trunks laid out end to end (this section can be easily bypassed if you are not into that kind of thing).