{"id":172,"date":"2004-09-30T16:07:15","date_gmt":"2004-09-30T06:07:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cyclingwild.com.au\/?p=172"},"modified":"2018-01-09T16:42:58","modified_gmt":"2018-01-09T05:42:58","slug":"victorian-high-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cyclingwild.com.au\/blog\/victorian-high-country\/","title":{"rendered":"Snowy times in the Victorian high country"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spend a lot of time outdoors pursuing adventures for work, education and experience or sometimes just the sheer thrill of it.\u00a0Any opportunity to explore the world around us I jump upon. A few rules of travel I have created for myself are it must be physically challenging, mentally rewarding and cheap; yeah I am a tight ass when it comes to holidays! \u00a0So what happens when it all goes a little pear shaped? Below is an account of what happens when you let excitement override sanity and just decide “Stuff it why not, I mean how much harder can it get!”<\/p>\n

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My mate Simon and I had decided to ride back from Falls Creek after a back country walk with friends in the Falls Creek area of Victoria\u2019s Highlands. We had allowed ourselves five days to get to Melbourne, plenty of time to ride 400-500km for two young and fit lads.<\/p>\n

We got out of the back country on the Tuesday evening. It was decided a\u00a0night\u00a0at Howmans gap would help us prepare for the road home. Scanning the Bogong High plains map\u00a0a fire trail was found. It ran all the way to Mt Beauty from the Mc Kay creek power station, 15kms down hill nearly all off road. Sure it traversed for a few kilometers but we were skilled mountain bikers, and hey I’d been jumping my bike in 15 cm of powder just days earlier!<\/p>\n

As we set off on the Wednesday morning, sprinkles of snow began to fall, incentive some may say,\u00a0to take the road but where was the adventure in that! My Gloves were somewhere packed away as we started the descent. I came barreling into the McKay creek road\u00a0with my heavily laden bike trailer pushing me headlong towards the gutter of the icy road. My hands already freezing, I had trouble executing an emergency stop. A sense the adventure was all about to unfold.<\/p>\n

Soon we found our first turn off. We were off road. Yes we were ‘off road’. I yelled back to Simon to turn around. The track was already one foot under water and the bridge on the map, well\u00a0 I am sure it was somewhere down the gully, albeit a bridge no more. A minor detour i thought, we’ll just go up and around the power station.<\/p>\n

A few minutes later we were on our way again, below us an awesome white water creek could be seen and heard. Beyond that our crux emerged. This was the point at which we could have turned around, but that involved riding back up the hill, clearly the harder of the two at this point of the journey. So before us the trail disappeared into the grade two rapids for ten meters before emerging on the other side.<\/p>\n

We sussed it out for a few minutes and decided how much harder could it get? With BOB trailers detached we waded across the knee deep water with bikes above our heads. The current was strong and every step had to be measured. The water was cold, after the second trip back and across for the trailers i had little feeling in my toes.<\/p>\n