Ramdog’s Clarence Wilderness weekend

Clarence Wilderness Weekend Group Ride

This ride was a cracker. Eight or nine chickened out. Made of sugar. But the rest of us had a ripper.

A tough crew were well rewarded. we had an absolute ball.

We got off to a fairly formidable start in steady rain at Coraki, but once west a few kilometres the weather improved, tracks were soft damp and perfectly tractable…mostly. NO DUST.

Koos did it the toughest with a two-and-a-half ride down in heavy rain from Brisvegas to just miss us leaving Coraki. He followed our track and met us at camp.

Stuart gets the distance award coming from the Sunshine Coast via Tassie and a few rode up the night before like Darren AC, Nigel and Lianni, Paul and Logan from Raleigh, Taylors Arm, Coffs/Dorrigo way. Catman got crook and rode back home on the Goldie,Saturday morn, so copped it both ways poor bugger.

With so much rain around and the Washpool catchment soaked, even crossing riding a noodle was treacherous, so we backtracked and slid our way into Ewingar and around some sweet trails to arrive at the Bulldog Diggings then up to a wonderful Lower Rocky Lookout.

The track down to the Wilderness Lodge in the rain was a challenge and Neil had a pretty spectacular off and a few got a bit stuck on one particular greasy hill.

Once we were all down we settled in safe to a good night under the shelter of the bush kitchen to catch up on old friends and get to know some new ones.

Paul was awarded the NRABR cap for his two minor offs. Plenty of others had a fair lash at winning it though. I think Wazza and Ron’s had the best audience participation.

Heavy rain at camp on Saturday night settled the track down and we woke to a brilliant Sunday morning. There were no troubles getting out and off to play on some awesome Deco Granite tracks in Basket Swamp and Boonoo Boonoo then back to lunch at the Lunatic Hotel.

MANY THANKS to:
* The Rangafrombanga for some brilliant sweeping , Greg for backing him up and helping me recce ride, a ( very tough job)
* Chris for coming out to the Washpool Crossing with a bike trailer in case we ended up killing a bike
* Greg and Ness for extra shelter, cooking pizza , earplugs etc
* Darcy, Holly and Bess for bringing tucker etc out and setting up camp
* Darren AC BBQ King
* All who jumped in and helped or wanted to help with dinner and breakfast
* Nigel & Lianni for not initiating a game of badminton on the eve of their 24th Anniversary
* Karen for leading her group around a supposedly easier loop that may not have been. Stockyard Creek Road is very slippery when wet.

There were 32 bikes of all breeds at camp, 37 of us all up and the truly good news is, with some generous donations added to camp and tucker/drink orders, plus Ness’s earplugs, Ramdog sticker sales etc, after costs we have $620 to go to the Helicopter Rescue service.

Cheers, Dave.

3 Comments

  1. Little update. Sharon & Steve from http://clarenceriver.com/ kindly kicked in the balance owing on accommodation & we handed over $710. Thanks to all that came along.

  2. The 3rd degree burns on my belly, from the BBQ are healing nicely,- but the fillet steak for the sandwiches were worth every layer. ( don’t usually eat QLD meat – the NSW steaks are so good – or are you buying from across the border )

  3. Our Lismore butcher looks after us well, but could’ve been QLD meat, generally better from over the boundary fence. Good thing we had a beer or two to stay hydrated AC, had a good fire to cook on.

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