After a chance meeting at The Bike Vault on Saturday Chris and I headed over to the Central Highlands to ride the Mt Franklin to Vaughan Springs section of the Great Dividing Trail.
With its combination of flowing bush single track and loss of elevation it’s the most popular and maybe the most fun section of the entire GDT. I’ve ridden it on both mountain unicycles and mountain bikes but it’d been a while since I entered the trail from Sawpit Gully Road so was looking forward to refreshing the memory.
After the wet and muddy conditions at the Wombat Track at Woodend I was expecting the GDT to at least be a little damp, but the track was in prime condition — not a puddle to be seen, fast with a good amount of grip. There’s even a new wooden bridge over one of the gullies – massively overbuilt so hopefully it won’t get washed away in future floods.
The theory is it’s all downhill as you drop off the Central Highlands from Mt Franklin to Vaughan Springs but there are several short climbs along the way that leave you feeling like you earned the flowing single track descents. We cruised along most of the way, getting on the gas now and then to make the most of the single track. Good fun.
Heading home in the van later in the afternoon there were four black cows walking across the lower flanks of Mt Franklin and I thought yeah, I would rate the ride four cows 🙂
