Of late I have been leading a few easy trips as my confidence has grown simply because I have been on a lot of trips now with people such as Kelvin, Winston, Alex, Pauly and Rick and these people have shown me some great tracks which I just wanted to share with others.
The trip I did on the weekend, I actually did the same track the week before and the week before that as I love it, there is some great tracks with a little bit of everything and without damaging the car. The bush, the views and throw in a little snow makes the trip even better.
We all met at the meeting point on time in Warburton where it was freezing, the sun was out but the wind was very very fresh which was a positive sign that snow was up on the mountains. I had personally met a couple of people before, Kris on one of my most recent trips around Marysville and Naomi on my first trip through this site and it was the same trip we did with Alex the trip leader. Our cars were both stock at the time. Also in the trip we had Rob in a GU Patrol, Tony with another GU Patrol and 8" lift which I swear you need a step ladder to get into it, Kris in a Jeep and Nick in a Pajero, so we had some capable cars within the group.
We drove up to Big River (Stockmans Reward) where we aired down and headed off into the bush, the tracks where a little slushy and slippery but nothing we couldn't handle. We come to this section that I guess a lot of people have done now, there is 3 options to choose from, left is the easy way, middle is the hard and right is medium. I have done all 3 in the past and Naomi did the middle track on the first trip we did with standard highway tyres, but I must admit the middle option has changed a lot since then and it was very frosty and slippery this day. Most of us went up the right track with Naomi determined to do the middle again of which was not happening due to the track having almost ice in it. Tony had a crack with the GU, mud tyres, 8" lift and when I sad a crack, he had a crack alright to the point there was smoke coming off the tyres but he was just getting stuck on one section but Tony had an excuse he was still at 28psi. It was awesome to see Tony throwing around this monster of a car with so much articulation.
We continued on where we found a nice sunny spot on top of a ridge to have lunch and have a yarn and we shared stories about previous trips and experiences. Its always nice to chat to new people and hear their stories and a little more about their lives and this site certainly brings like minded people from all walks of life together. After lunch we continued to Matlock fire tower where we started to see a light dusting of snow, wasn't as thick as the week before due to the sun being out but it was still nice. We came to this section where it was a steep long incline with ice all over it, we all got up with the only option which was point the car and plant the foot. Rob pointed out that we were going up a fire break which was turned into a track and the road actually went around that section so that was handy to know for next time as I always thought that was the actual track.
We got to Matlock Fire tower around 3pm where there was more snow and a lot of other cars up there, even looked like people may of been planning to camp the night. Overall it was a good day, nice drive with a little bit of everything, snow, big blue sunny sky's and great people. I will certainly be doing that trip again and again and would love to do it again with the people who were on it who were all friendly and respectful of the day.