After a solid week of bike maintenance recovering from a silly wet ride last weekend, we figured it would be a good idea to aim for somewhere this weekend that's always dry. The Kinglake escarpment is such a place, so that's where we went.

Not feeling particularly creative, I was planning to go along with whatever route was suggested by somebody else, with the Everard Circuit as a fallback option. Ian and I crossed each other on the road between Kinglake Central (where I said we'd meet) and Kinglake (where I actually meant, and given directions for). "Is there a station nearby?" Alister and non-listee "I still haven't been to bed last night" Ben soon rolled up, cunningly spotting the yellow Racing Magna despite having little idea where they were, and defying all rumours that Alister doesn't exist. With no other ride suggestions, we stocked up at the bakery and headed to the watertank carpark for a blat around the Everard circuit.

I admit, I was a bit worried when Al pulled his single-speed Mongoose jump bike out of the car. The words "Kinglake" and "singlespeed" don't sit well together...especially the 7km granny ring climb up Mt Jerusalem that hides painfully in the middle of this ride. Ben was on his Merida Big Air with Psylo XC, Ian on his retro Avanti hardtail ;-), and me on my new Norco hardtail.

The ride starts in a bit of a saddle in the hill, and begins with a firetrail climb up most of Mt Everard. Obviously painful on the singlespeed. Much of it is along a ridge, with views out over the Yarra Valley on one side and, I guess, the Plenty Valley on the other. Dry sandstone, in nice contrast to the slush at Gembrook last week. Alister and Ben hammered down the tight walking-only singletrack (where Ian said he was once told off by a horse rider for being on a walking track), which drops reasonably sharply down around the Yarra side of the hill. At the end of the singletrack, it joins a wide open track that runs the whole way down the next spur. I'm always taken by surprise by the number of logs that are down on this track - it's almost as though the Nasho's friendly Mr IHB has been along trying to make the track difficult to ride. If he has, he's only made it more fun, except for one or two big treefalls that I don't have the skills to negotiate. The new X-vert was an absolute dream coming down here, holding wheel contact and line through everything, and soaking up the sketchy log jump landings under brakes superbly. I'm certainly not going to miss _those_ 700 fun vouchers.

At the bottom of a saddle on this track, Ben started having bike dramas. His drive-side swingarm pivot bolt was working its way out, and interfering with the chainrings. Impossible location to get in and work on without taking the cranks off, which we didn't have the tools to do (well, who does carry a crank puller on the trail?!). He gave it as good a tighening as possible, and we continued down the hill.

After a third attempt to tighten the pivot bolt at the bottom of the hill, Ben decided to admit defeat and take the 5-ish km dirt schmoad back up to the car. Al took a look at the next hill we had to ride up, took a look at his total lack of derailers, and decided on the pike option with Ben. Their car was gone by the time we got back, so I guess they made it.

The Mt Jerusalem hill is a bugger. It goes up and up, then flattens out and you think "hey, that wasn't bad at all". They it goes up and up again, and you think "that's more like how I remember it". Then it goes down a bit, then up a lot, and you're higher than anything you can see, and quite rooted. Then it goes down a bit, and up a whole lot more, and you're really over it. Then it keeps finding new hills that didn't exist last time you looked. Al, I'm glad you piked. It's bad enough in 22-32 granny...you would have died.

At the top, we took the optional 3.5 km each way singletrack out'n'back to Jehosophat Creek carpark. The dry sandstone was suddenly replaced with slippery rocky rooty wet stuff, which was a bit exciting to ride on. I realised when I was getting my shit together for the ride that I'd forgotten to clean and dry my shoes after last weekend, so rather than enduring filthy wet shoes (complete with assorted fungus growing on them), I opted for my old shoes with broken soles. Broken soles that make it very hard to unclip when your bike starts sliding the wrong direction, resulting in several arse-dabs. I also had a wonderful OTB on the way back, when I tried to thread my bike, at speed, through a 1.01 bar-width gap between a couple of logs. Bar-end bash on each side, much overbraked attempted recovery, fall in a heap over the bars. Christening scatch up the slider of the fork. Sh'appens.

Back to the main track, and over the road, we climbed a bit more. Then the final descent, which makes it all worth while. It's a magic sweeping firetrail run, with a couple of good waterbars and things to bounce on. I nearly overcooked a corner, which could have been interesting at 40-50 clicks...I think I'm going to retire that front tyre.

I'm guessing at about 30km (I think the Everard loop is about 23 according to the signposts, and another 7 for the Jehosophat detour), with, guessing, 600m total climbing? We should do some more exploring of the other tracks up there, because they're everywhere...

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