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NARBETHONG
DIRECTIONS: Head out the Maroondah Highway, over the Black Spur, until you come to the township of Narbethong. Turn left at the road immediately before the timber mill (Plantation Rd), and follow it along straight west. After a few km, you will go through a clearfelled area, after which you will enter a valley with trees on either side of you. A couple of hundred metres into the foresty area, you will see an area that looks like a small "carpark" to your left, and about 50m after that, singletrack coming out at the road, over a small wooden bridge. This is the END of the track. You need to continue for approximately 1 kilometre once you've entered the foresty area, until you see a fireroad heading up to your left (it's a T junction with what looks like a campsite-type area directly opposite it). There are a number of fireroads that head up to your left here, so make sure you get the right one: its defining features are that it's a much more "major" intersection than the others, and that it has the camp sitey area opposite the intersection. Drive up this road, and follow the most "main" fireroad up the mountain. There is one rule to remember here: if faced with a choice at an intersection, take the fork that involves a sharp turn and heads UP the hill more than the other one. At no stage should you find yourself going downhill, if you do then you've made a wrong turn. Keep in mind that the fireroads are poorly marked, if at all, and that maps are largely inaccurate because the roads are created/destroyed by loggers when necessary. Continue up the hill until the surface of the road suddenly changes from the typical tan-coloured rock to larger, greyer, looser rocks that make the surface quite rough. Once you are on this stretch, you should be facing west (roughly), and you will see where the track crosses the road: there is another carparky area on the downhill (north) side of the fireroad, which leads into singletrack, and directly opposite it is where the track comes out. Take NO notice of any singletrack coming off the road until this point, because there is another trail which you may stumble upon accidentally (see Narbethong NS trail listing) instead of the DH track. Continue on along the fireroad for about another 400 metres, where you will see singletrack heading up off the road to your left, and an area just big enough to let you turn around (it is distinctively brown dirt, as opposed to the grey rocks on the road) on the right side of the road. This singletrack leads up to the top of the track (couple of hundred metres' push).
TRAIL DESCRIPTION:
From the start of the track, you are stuck on singletrack with no turn offs, until you come to the road crossing. Cross over into the "carpark"-looking area, then head down the singletrack which leads off from that. Again, you will shortly come out on the fireroad. Head down the steep fireroad area which comes off the road you drove up, and let it all hang out, completely flat out. Be aware though, that there is a SHARP 90 degree right-hand corner which appears almost out of nowhere, and you can't take it at speed. This heads down to a left-hand hairpin, which is followed by a fairly flattish, open fireroad stretch with a "bus stop" up on the left. You will round a gentle right-hand corner, then be faced with a fork in the fireroad: turn right, down the hill. There are some MEGA waterbars here, launch them at your own risk (they're dodgy to launch, be warned). After a few of these waterbars, you will again come out on flattish, open fireroad. Continue straight ahead (ie don't do the hairpin right turn), and you will see some singletrack heading down off on the right hand side of the fireroad (it's pretty much straight ahead in the direction you're riding). Ride down this, and follow it to the very bottom. Near the bottom the trail flattens out a bit and there's a few small jumps before you come back out on the main road (Plantation Road) again.
TRAIL LENGTH:
3.5 KM.
MELWAYS REF.: The town of Narbethong is at 527 K4