Mount Stirling (05/01/2014)

It never ceases to amaze me how people tend to flock to something popular, and ignore everything around it.  The 1,000 steps in Ferntree Gully is a classic example.  Thousands flock there on a weekend to climb it, but rarely go and visit the climbs around it.  Whenever I was at Mount Buller, I would always eye off Stirling Road, which is right at the base of the Mount Buller climb at Mirimbah.  The first part is paved, and it looked like a sweet climb.  I looked up Strava and found a segment which was 8.7km’s @ 7% which looked to be a cracker of a climb, although not too many people had climbed it.

I was camping at the Mansfield Zoo with the missus, and got up extra early to give this one a shot before she woke up.  It was a chilly morning, but perfect for riding.  The road turns to gravel after a couple of hundreds of metres, and I was in for one tough climb.  I love riding on the dirt, but this one was pure gravel, and my 23mm tyres weren’t really suited for it.  I was pushing hard, but was impossible to get into a rythmn, as it was challenging to find a racing line at times, and the rare corners where it flattened out was heavily corrugated, and my arms felt like they would be ripped out of their sockets.  I got a shock as a massive Deer ran out onto the road right in front of me, and was so lucky it wasn’t on the descent. 

 

It was an incredibly difficult climb, but one I was really happy to have done it.  I felt I had ridden the climb badly, but up until the top of the segment I was in 4^th place, so guess I wasn't doing as bad as I thought.  I was in for a bonus.  At the top of the climb the road forked two ways.  I decided to just continue climbing, and there was a bonus 1.9km’s of climbing @ 4%.  I was in heaven.  There wasn’t a segment for the whole climb, and I set one up, and it turned out to be 11.1km’s of climbing at a 6% average.  Pure gold.  There were only 5 other riders who had climbed up to Kings Saddle.  It was listed as a Cat 1, but given the difficulty should be HC given the severity of the climb:

https://www.strava.com/segments/6356946

I descended back to the fork easily enough, and was in heaven.  I really hadn’t anticipated how bad it would be to descent almost 9km’s of gravel.  I had my hands on the brakes the whole way, and the whole descent was incredibly bumpy, and I was bouncing around like a rag doll, desperately trying to keep the bike upright.  I had to stop several times on the descents as my wrists were getting so sore from pulling the brakes so hard.  Several times, due to heavy amounts of gravel I had to slow to almost a stop to negotiate my way around.  Mount Stirling took me 37 minutes to climb, and almost 24 minutes to descend.  I don’t know how I didn’t puncture.  I love adventuring and today was pure gold.  This is one amazing climb, but would not recommend it for 23mm tyres.  Amazingly this climb was Everested.

Here is a link to my Strava segment here:

https://www.strava.com/activities/104014327