Ride Report from the land of convicts

Editorial-RL Policar: We asked our friend from a very large continent in the southern hemisphere, no not China…I said southern hemisphere. No not Antarctica…but Austrailia! Anyway, Brock Cremer to provided us a ride report for our readers since we thought our you folks would really dig it. Keep in mind that Brock us Australian, so make sure you read the article below with a bit of an Aussie accent. If you can’t do the accent, here’s a video that will get you sounding a legit Australian. On a side note, my dad named me after a city in Tasmania, which is an island 150 miles south of Australia. No its not Hobart..but Launceston.

I Come From The Land Down Under

While the Northern hemisphere is in the midst of winter, Australia is enjoying what Australia does best, and that’s some nice hot weather almost perfect for riding (now that the tropical cyclones and flooding has passed). But before I tell you a little about the trails in Australia, let me introduce myself. My name is Brock and I am one of the lucky 24 million people that get to call Australia home. After being born and raised in Sydney, I moved when I was 18 to a small country town north of Melbourne and fell in love with mountain biking. Years have since passed and I am now an I.T. Project Manager during the day, an avid rider, and one of the co-founders of DirtGeek.com .

So enough about me, here’s a little taste of what Australia has to offer in regards to trails. During this weeks post, I will show you my local trail called Nail Can Hill and over the next few weeks, some of my favourite places such as Mt. Stomlo (2010 24 Solo Course), Beechworth and the Blue Mountains near Sydney. Given the size of Australia (Roughly the size of the US), it is impossible to ride all the trails, but through various events and road trips, I have certainly had the pleasure to roll across some very well designed tracks.

Me giving the thumbs up during a race on Nail Can Hill

Now, I am lucky enough to live a mile from my back door to the trail head, which means after a short 10 minute drive from work to home, I can be on the trails within minutes. This is even better at this time of year with the sun setting around 8:30pm, I can get a good 3.5 hours on the trails most days. There is quite a lot to offer for everyone on Nail Can with everything from long fire trails, a dedicated downhill course and lots of XC single track.

Hitting the final dirt jump.

Now I have been known enter a few enduro events but I consider myself a trail rider who loves the rough stuff and I Iove the AM terrain that Nail Can offers. At the top of the hill there are plenty of rock gardens, drop offs, jumps and high speed single trail that really gets the heart pumping and the adrenaline flowing. It seems that the whole hill is made out of rock and no matter where you go, you need to be pretty skilled on the rough stuff.

Random photo of me and the Nail Can Hill ridge trail

Every year my local club holds a SuperD race on Nail Can Hill which is the type of racing I really enjoy. On this course you are at 100% for at least 10 minutes with high speed technical terrain and a few jumps thrown in for good measure. This is one of those events that just keeps growing and growing. The 2010 race had the largest number of competitors to date and had an impressive field with a whole range of bikes. Given the amount of riding options on Nail Can, we had everything from downhill rigs to carbon XC bikes. Keep an eye out for the full race report in coming posts.

How did we ever live without camera phones?

So what do the trails really look like? If a picture tells a thousand words, HD video must tell a million. I was asked by my friend who is a member of the Specialized Trail Crew to ride his Enduro bike in a short film that he planned on making. I said yes and the following is the end result. The only down side is that he is a bit shorter than me and rides a medium framed bike. This means the bike was too small for me and felt completely different to my own. Checkout the video below.

So that’s pretty much Nail Can Hill. It’s situated right in the middle of town and right at my back door. It’s a hard life living here with so many trail options and so many bikers to enjoy them.

Cheers
Brock