Bunya Ride Summary 27/12/2016

Bunya has been a long time staple of the Bushrangers riding diet, there’s even a club strava segment covering our favourite loop of the trails. This ride took us through both the Bunyaville and Samford Conservation Parks with a combination of Alan and John leading the group with a splinter group taking a shorter route towards the end.

The ride started along the Jinker Track (actually a proper road, its name is from the 4 wheeled/6 horse wagon timber cutters used to cart timber. I wonder if we should call our power carrier the “Jinker”). We then dropped into Jurassic then we headed down Wayne’s World. This trail took us over to the other side of the park to Bunya Road. From there we hopped onto the Dark Side trail before popping back onto Bunya Road and then along a neighbourhood road called Linkwood Drive to the Samford Conservation Park and onto the Trickles Drop singletrack.

It’s at the end of Trickles Drop where we made a wrong turn and it was one of those bad ones where you don’t find out until you’re at the bottom of a long hill (the fire road is called Lomandra if you’re wondering)… still it was a fast and fun descent and not that bad of a climb. We then found the start of the fantastic Kombi Express flow track that ends up in the Ironbark Gully skills park along Samford Road.

A length of really soft shoulder along Kombi caused the first (and only) stack of the day. The bike pulled up fine however its rider, Daniel, made a bit of a mess of himself as he was covered in dust, had a torn jersey, a few scratches and a bruise or two. Apart from that Al overcooked it into a berm but turned it into an intentional stop over to take some video footage of us nailing a berm, good work Al.

Everyone regrouped at Ironbark to rest their wary limbs (legs go jelly after a long descent) and made good use of the skills area to practice pumping, riding skinnies and railing berms. Once the epic flips had died down to the occasional 180’s we decided to split the group to those who wanted to take a scenic route back to Bunyaville and those who wanted to take in more single track such as a uphill track called Ball Breaker and Dug’n’Dan that follows Dugandan Road.

Back to the breakaway group… after a toilet stop (and discovering a possum hiding in the rafters) the scenic route took us up the aptly named I hate this one too fire road climb and along Water Tank and stumbling upon a vista of the Brisbane CBD in England Park. Following the pavement down along Cabbage Tree Creek and then back to the carpark for a bit of a rest before tackling another couple of loops before heading home.

Creek Track and Nutcracker were picked to be the last two tracks to ride. Both favourites with a good combination of technical features, bermy descents and rock gardens with a few decent drops.

Back to the carpark along Jinker Track (you can see how this road is in the middle of it all) and then off to the Albany Creek Tavern for lunch before heading home through the unusually congested highway.