Near Cobungra to Harrietville

AS YOU CAN SEE WE MADE IT!!!!

Near Cobungra - Harrietville = 62km (ridden Saturday 31/10/09)

Cummulative total = 772km

There has to be something wrong with Kouta ... since travelling with us he absolutely loves the wildlife and thinks that he is a young pup that can take on any wildlife that is the size of deer! I woke this morning and popped out of the tent to find Kouta just sitting there obviously watching something in the distant and I do what I normally do and that is ask Kouta what he is looking at (as if he is going to reply!!!) next thing you know there is a loud sort of bark and I look and all I can see is 2 deer about 100m away and they are bounding off, so Kouta gets all excited and begins to chase them, I yell to stop to Kouta and he just ignores me, Neil yells at him to stop, and he sort of listens to him, but eventually he decides bugger it and runs off under a fence and heads off in the direction of where the deer went. I begin to panic, Neil begins to panic and has to put his shoes on to jump over the fence and chase Kouta. Meanwhile Neil catches up to Kouta (only because the little mutt decides to take a dump to make himself lighter to chase the deer!!!)Neil is so cross with Kouta and we have to remind ourselves that Kouta has no idea of danger, he has no concept ... but all Kouta can do is wag his tail and that was his excitement for the day!

Once that is over we focus on the day ahead ... we should reach the top and do the downhill part of this mountainous climb.

So we finish the hill we began to climb from the day before then there is the down part again and only to start climbing again. At this point the profiles say it is 3.5% to dinner plains but again I think that has averaged both the up and down to come to the 3.5% average. Basically it is undulating with some steep (but not as bad as yesterday!) inclines and declines, it is by no way a nice steady incline. The photos below show some of the hills

Here we can see our destination - the mountain with snow on the left is Mt Hotham with Mt Feathertop to the right.

I am climbing hills and still smiling!!!

Oh we are nearly there - this is nearing to the Mt Hotham Village, which we could always see in the distant but at this point we were so over Mt Hotham and like I said I take full responsibilty for the STUPID idea of doing this climb (I thought it was easier to do than go back to Melbourne and go northwards to get to Wangaratta!!!) Even Neil said this is difficult and wouldn't recommend doing this with a loaded touring bike to anyone. Then again he also said that had we had more km's under our belts it may be a little bit easier!!! But I think we both decided that we won't be back!!!
We finally got to the top and took a group photo but I was a little disappointed as at the top there was no marker for Mt Hotham, there was nothing to say that you were at 1861m. So we took a little break and had something to eat. It was quite warm up there, very sunny and bright but there was a breeze, so thinking and knowing about the 'fabulous' downhill that we were going to have we put the coat on Kouta to keep him warm and we put warmer clothes on us as we know from previous long and 'fabulous' downhills that you can get cool very quickly.

Me and Kouta on the snow - he didn't mind it at all!
So we set off for the downhill, at this point there were quite alot of cyclists doing the climb and going back down, we assumed they were training for the 3 peaks challenge next year as Mt Hotham is one of them.

Well our downhill is not what we thought it would be, we knew it was going to be steeper than what we had climbed from the other side but I was not expecting this at all in the DOWN hill and I just had to take a photo of it ... just our luck this is OUR DOWNHILL!

Since when is a short sharp UP HILL part of a down hill? What was worse was that you couldn't get a run up to it as the down hill before it was to steep and winding and all you did was 'ride' your brakes and what was even worse was that it was at least an 8% gradient ... who the hell put that there, I was fuming, I thought why are we going up why can't we just go in front of this hill and rejoin where the road was going down and still maintain a down hill but for some unknown road engineering thing we had to go up it and rejoin the down hill at little further and at that point I had to take off all the layers and dogs coat to get up this but I thought this down hill is going to be like this all the way ... up and down to go down!

A few kms later again there is a short sharp hill to climb on our down hill so again we get of and walk it as it is too steep for loaded bikes, by now I am ready to scream as I want my DOWNHILL!!! but alas that was the last and after 12kms of very steep declines (with 2 steep up hill bumps) we ease into a lovely winding down hill for around 10km (the part through the Alpine National park) and then it becomes very steep in the descent (but no ups thought!!!) to the point that your arms begin to ache from using both brake levers. We even had to pull over so the arms could recover and the wheel rims were running hot (too hot to touch!). I am fortunate to have mountain bike brake levers on my bike which are easier to grasp but Neil has drop handle bar brakes which I think are harder to use for long periods at a time, ie. downhills!

We get to Harrietville and since it is a long weekend in Melbourne everyone is out and about, but the campground is not all that crowded. A lot of people doing the rides and bushwalking etc.

The town is small and doesn't have much in the way of a general store.

We have decided to maybe pass through Bright and continue on to Myrtleford the next day, but me being so pessimistic about roads and think that it is to good to be true that there are not hills between Harrietville and Bright decide that we will make that decision when we get to Bright!