| |
MAPS, DOCUMENTS
& VIDEOS: Click to go to... |
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Trailflix: Kentlyn - Trail Review |
|
We started off riding through the Airds trail behind St Helens Park and headed into Kentlyn.
Grant has this mostly mapped out in his head from frequent use but has a GPS to keep tabs, and anyone new would need to at first because there are plenty of tracks so if you’ve got GPS, take the file and if not take the map. To borrow a line from the ad for the movie 'Jumanji' – “It’s a jungle in there”.
It’s about 30:70, firetrail to singletrack. And the singletrack is good. With the landscape and flora similar to Appin, the trails feel about the same. And, like a few other club-supported areas like Yellowmundee, development continues. There are parts so new you can see the grass & dirt where they’ve dragged rocks to the side, and it appears so new on some there might have been only one or two bikes through. It’s not only trails that are being built but actual construction. We spotted piles of timber pallets, near one road access point, obviously intended for further North Shore work.
Yet there’s a heap already. A couple of large (wide, not lengthy) rock gardens with a fair bit of lumber plastered over top making for an extensive bit of North Shore – including a wall. The last bit of land I saw with this much work was at the Illawarra Escarpment. And its good too. Someone’s obviously got time on their hands…
The land itself is council-owned and managed and I understand a degree of DE-struction takes place from time to time but I’ve heard tell that the local fire-ys actually appreciate some of these rough-hewn tracks which help in bushfire management, prevalent in the area. The result of the he-said, she-said talk is that it appears not all tracks are considered bad and only when things ‘get out of hand’ (read: erosion, a council worker with nothing better to do, or stuff built too close to the roads so that the neighbours complain…) does someone official take action. Let’s hope someone in the local area sees an opportunity to make this stuff legal one day rather than treat it as urban terrorism, which used to be the way skateboarding was perceived (now the parks are everywhere, and they can’t get enough kids using them).
Off my soapbox and back on the trails: Technical, rocky, rough, branch-strewn, challenging and fun.
Very well worth an expedition.
Grant S.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
