The home trails of the Kempsey Macleay Offroad Cyclists (KMORC) may lack any real mountains, but the club has done a surprising amount with the bushland that lies beyond the local golf club, just on the outskirts of town. This was the venue for round four of the Rocky Trail Rollercoaster gravity enduro series.
The event took on four timed courses over two days of racing. All four tracks started out from the same point and branched off in different directions. It was apparent that the area has a lot more to offer; according to KMORC there’s around 20-25km of MTB trails in the Kalateenee State Forest and you couldn’t help but notice the multitude of singletracks snaking off into the bush that we didn’t use during the event.
As with most Rollercoaster events, you need to pedal up the hill to get to the start point for the timed runs. In this case this wasn’t a huge task as there was less than 100m elevation difference between the high point and the finish on each of the four courses used at Kempsey.
While this could lead you to assume the riding lacked challenge, this certainly wasn’t the case. The upper portion of each course offered numerous obstacles, natural rock gardens and man-made ramps and drops. Some of the jumps were huge and even had the top elite category riders coming to grief. As tough as some of these lines were, virtually every obstacle had a decent B line and the tracks we’re negotiated by everyone from 60-plus year old veterans to 13 year old kids.
Once the steeper and more technical upper section of the tracks had been dealt with, riders faced a flatter lower section that demanded plenty of fitness and pedalling. It certainly added to the mix and evened things out for the more XC oriented riders. As much as it demanded a lung busting effort, the trails rolled pretty fast so the pace remained high and corners were easily overshot.
With the racing spread over two days, it left plenty of time for setting up, looking around and hanging out around the campfire (maybe even drinking a few cold ones). Sure the four timed stages could have been compressed into a single day of competition, but most riders would still have spent two days in town (including practise) and spreading it out made for a more relaxed weekend overall.
If you feel like exploring some new trails, the network within the Kalateenee State Forest isn’t hard to find and you’ll find a trail map on the KMORC site here.
Round five of the Rollercoaster series moves on to Canberra in August.
See the results from Kempsey here »
