Camp Outlet

Loading up the big bikes, we headed back to the 'creek. Its been a good few months of excitement building, and it sure as hell paid off. I think the term 'best riding ever' was used a few times, so it was pretty good...

With Melbourne in the rear view, we headed to the Wimmera, staring into the sun for a few hours and finally to be rewarded with a pretty nice sunset somewhere near Warraknabeal.

Finding camp, we sparked up some warmth, and settled in.

Straight out of the box on saturday morning, it was ON! First riders up the creek for the weekend, it was a bit nervy. 40mm of water had fallen in the last week, so there was a few little splashes, but some very slick clay beside them, which was always exciting. And of course, plenty of sand and whoops.

40km of singletrack, sand, whoops and creek bed led us the Lake Albucutcha and out onto the lake bed.  A splash of fuel (which was a good thing, as I ended up switching to reserve 3km from home!) and we're away.

 Having eyed up off a few locations on a previous trip, we hit up the whoops. They were full on, 2ft high, deep sand, singletrack whoops - the real deal. Best described by the comment, "yeah, tapped 5th, 90+ seemed to be the go...." So I'd say Hoff got the hang of it..! We did some good giggling after that run, just awesome!

I pinched some blokes helmet cam here :

Up on the cliff edge gave a good view of the Lake.

After a quick few shots, we headed out towards the desert proper. With one of our destinations deemed a stretch too far in deep sand, we adjusted our plan and took off on another awesome section of flat out whoops. After coming accross a copper in a truck sitting pretty much in the middle of nowhere idling, keeping an empty ambulance company (?!!!?), we had a yarn to him and then left him to it. Someone had a bit of a spill in the park, which given their location, would had had a pretty long day and subsequent drive to medical attention. No room for yard sales out here, protective gear isn't for posing out here, we're reminded!

So another good section of trail led us to our bailout where we cut across and back to the creek, where we headed for home. To say we were a bit tuckered out and hungry was reasonably accurate. Here's a good version of the 1000 yard stare...

After a bit of tucker and a sit down, we headed out to use the afternoon sun for some more shots. These dunes are just at the back of camp, and accessed by a super deep sand track which catches out most 4wd who head up, and sure enough there was a Prado on its belly as we went past.

And in what seemed to be a bit of a tradition, we caught the sunset from up top as well.

And the best part, this was only day 1..

More of this tommorrow!