A very enjoyable day with a great bunch of guys...
It was 8.45am on the dot when we all met at the Erica Pub. 6 of us, Alex, Neil, Discomatt, Erwin, Shane and myself met earlier at Longwarry then topped up with 'motion lotion' and a bakery stop in Moe before meeting the 2 other Matts at the pub.
We then made our way to the Walhalla Rd to air down then down Merringtons, across two shallow river crossings then onto Jorgensons Tk to make our way towards Mt Selma. It was reasonably easy going with one steep, slippery section on Jorgensons that we all got up without too much trouble, most of us having to use a 'bit of right foot' to get to the top. As we made our way along McGuires Tk we could see Mt Selma and there was some snow, so we were hopeful that we might see some up at the summit. Turned onto Mt Selma track and headed down to the river crossing, then some of us had to do a U turn as the trip leader went up the wrong track....
. Started the climb and at about 1100 mtrs started to see the 'white stuff'. The higher we climbed the more we had, not a huge amount, and we all enjoyed the drive with some having more fun than others...
. We arrived at the trig point at Mt Selma where we had our lunch break; not a long one as it was cold and quite windy.
After the break, instead of getting straight back onto Mt Selma Rd, we went down this very steep rocky section of track. Most vehicles did a bit of 'crashing and bashing' on the way down, but no damage. From there we made our way back down the main roads with a stop at the Mt Useful tower before turning onto Morning Star Tk to make our way back towards Walhalla. Some video of the day up to Mt Selma/Mt Useful.
Onto Morning Star track, which had a couple of nice sections, then we arrived at 'Discomatt's Hill'. We all stop and watched Alex slowly crawl up to 'that section' He then kept going and the 'beast started to slide sideways, so thought it best to back down. When I get the pics, you will see how steep that last little pinch is. We then had a stop at Store Point, then made our way via Army Tk to my favourite track; Fultons Creek. We only drove a small section with a couple of river crossings that were extremely shallow before our last track of the day being Beardmores, now named 'Morebeards' by Alex. There are two bog holes here, one can be avoided the other cannot. The one we had to go through was much worse than our trip up there a few months ago, and all vehicles hit what we thought was a rock in the bottom. Luckily no damage but Neil was anticipating his sidestep to be rather unhealthy. At the bottom of 'Morebeards', we had the nice river crossing to help remove some of the mud then we aired up and all headed home about 5pm. Again, a super day with great company and was good to have Shane, Matt 3 and Erwin join our regular group.
I will put up some pics taken by the others when they send them to me, as the dickhead trip leader forgot to put his battery in his camera...