Most roadies would have heard of the 3 Peaks challenge which entails a lot of climbing over a 235km course that takes in Tawonga Gap, Mount Hotham and Falls Creek. Well Phillip and I decided to do a Mountain Bike version on Boxing day and we called it the 3 Hills Challenge. It started out with a desire to do a longer km ride to help with our training for the Otway Odyssey in February and it doubled as a way to get rid of a few Christmas lunch calories (too much pav and trifle, hang on there's no such thing as too much pav and trifle). As we thought about the different routes we could take we came up with the idea of doing a lap of the echnida trail which encircles Bendigo. The full loop is about 65kms which we thought would be a good workout when you include the climb up One Tree Hill around the 40km mark. The other two hills are Lightning Hill in Eaglehawk and Diamond Hill near Kangaroo Flat.
Not being sure how long the ride would take we decided on an 8am start. Our starting point was at the top of Specimen Hill Road so we acutally had four hills not three.
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| Our starting point. Although it's Christmas we didnt quite make it to Bethlehem. |
The first part of the ride is pretty flat fire road through West Bendigo and it takes you through the areas hit hardest by the 2009 fires and brings you out near the Eaglehawk Golf Club. From there its past the Tip Top Bakery which always smells great before heading back into the bush towards Woodvale before turning back to arrive at Lightning Hill. Unfortunately the lookout has seen better days and the stairs to get up onto the man made structure have been removed. Probably due to an OHS ruling by the local council. The view of the forest surrounding Bendigo is still good though and would be even better if we could just cut down a few of the trees blocking the view.
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| Someone has removed the stairs so you can't actually get on the Lookout! |
From Lightning Hill we headed into the Whipstick before making a turn back towards Epsom and a quick run on the Linear Creek path before picking up the O'Keefe rail trail for a short while before crossing the McIvor Highway and picking up more fire road which brought us out on the Eppalock road. Once we crossed this road it was on to Heartbreak Hill (that's five) and the climb up One Tree Hill. We had been going for about 2 and a half hours now so we took a quick rest at the top before heading off on the fun descent towards the One Tree Hill Pub.
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| The fire lookout on top of One Tree Hill. |
After a quick run up the singletrack beside the Spring Gully Reservoir we made it to Diamond Hill. I'm not sure if there were any diamonds found here but there are plenty of old gold diggings in the area.
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| This is a lot steeper than it looks and is not the usual way up to the Diamond Hill Lookout |
We rode on through some more old diggings before heading into Kangaroo Flat and a short burst amongst the holiday traffic before heading back into the bush near the Crusoe Reservoir and onto Maiden Gully. After some more fire road riding we made it through to Rocky Rises Road and although there were no more hills we did manage to ride over a large knob thanks to some local graffiti artists.
Next stop was Olympic Parade and we had just about completed our loop. By the time we had added in a few little detours we had clocked up just over 70kms in just under 4 hours. We had been on pretty much every road surface you can think off from singletrack through to four lane highway. All in all it was a good way to rack up a large amount of kms in a short time and still be in the bush for most of it.
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| Phil in front of the different trail markers we followed. |
