Mt Stromlo Flow Trails | Canyon Neuron

Описание: This time on five minute rides… my still very new 2021 Canyon Neuron 6 and I have found the happiest place on Earth, at the Mt Stromlo Mountain bike trails.

Mt Stromlo is only 22 minutes drive from Parliament House and 25 minutes from the Canberra CBD, but if it wasn’t for these seriously killer trails, then I don’t know why anyone would really want to visit our nations capital?

So today, along with a huge group from Sydney called the Dim Sim MTB Crew, I’ve paid for a shuttle pass with Dynamic Motivation so that gravity can do all the hard work while we have all the fun!

First up is nice green trail called Skyline. With a 1.2km run and a 79 meter decent you’ll hit the bottom in around 3 minutes. It’s popular because it’s easy and allows you to gain some good speed but just like all the trails in the area, you need to be aware of just how dry and loose the ground is, especially on those corners.

Now this is my second time experiencing a gravity park and the Canyon Neuron 6 is performing beautifully. For those who saw my last video at Greenvalley’s mountain bike park you’ll remember just how fast the wheels were turning without much peddling at all. Well, here at Stromlo, it’s all that and a bag of chips! And for those curious about the bike, I did receive one comment on the GV video questioning with surprise that I was able to do all that on a Neuron! I think the 130mm travel throws travel snobs off (sorry if you’re one of those), but let me just say 130mm front and rear is plenty. Drops and jumps throughout the flow trails as you’ll soon see is no problem at all for the Neuron.

At the brigdeasection (that’s right, I just made up a word), we peel off to the left and send it down a trail called Luge – another highly popular green trail filled with berms that when coming down from Skyline adds a nice mix of tight cornering and flow control to the downhill run.

Now in all these trails, going fast is rather effortless. You throw in a few cranks to get the wheels turning at the beginning and then let gravity do the rest.

Neuron however with it’s big 29ers, I feel is a bit cumbersome on the berms. Coming from a 27.5 inch wheel size on my previous bike, smaller wheels will manage the tight turns better so if gravity trails and berms were your only go to type of trail, then you might want to consider the Canyon Spectral or some other 27.5” wheeled rig.

Next up is a blue trail called Trebuchet. This 2 km intermediate trail features jumps, berms, drops and sweeping views across Canberra! Yay!

Beginning at the top of the hill by the Observatory, things get fast, fast! At first, I feel like I’m screwing up all the corners, and nervously noticing how extremely dry and loose the ground is, it’s clear this narrow trail is really not going to be very forgiving if you don’t hold the line. Just look at the size of the jaggared looking rocks to the side of the trail!

On the fun side, the jumps range from tabletops to small doubles that pop really easily, feel great to land, and they’re also spaced out quite nicely - so you have a chance to refocus before the next one.

At the bridgeasection we bear right to stay on Trebuchet and my confidence gets a boost as I begin to really allow the wheels to soak up the gravity and relax a lot more on the break lever.

At the red sign that shouts “caution!” my fellow riders move to the smaller of the three upcoming drops and I take the chance to overtake them “albeit blindly” with the largest of the three drops.

Case!

If only I put a bit more speed into it I would have landed that a little nicer.
Again however, there’s a lot to be said for the Neuron here as (despite my poor riding) the travel still soaked up the crunch really well.

With two wheels still on the ground and I race ahead, hitting the tiny kicker and launching into the berms that lead to the last leg of this trail.

With more berm and jumps the bike is really flying.

And flying.

And jumping.

Aaannd this is where I became unstuck.

A bit of a scrape for me and a scratch or two to the Neuron but damn, it took the beating well. I think I was more concerned about the bike than my shoulder but this thing was virtually unscathed and ready to go again.

Back on the horse, the last leg of Trebuchet is a lot tamer as the gradient begins to flatten out. Now throwing a few more peddles in, there’s a few last jumps to be cleared and another drop marked with a red caution sign before finally reaching the bottom.

So would I want to come back to Stromlo again? You bet I would. Of course the day went on but the GoPro did not! So with over 40km of mountain bike trails, our 7 or 8 shuttle runs across the course of the day barely scratched the surface of what this place has to offer and I’ll be back here again before too long.


Trailforks: https://www.trailforks.com/region/str...