Piket-Bo-Berg Cycle Challenge Route Reccie

On the 6^th of June we were invited to go join the Piket-Bo-Berg Cycle Challenge organisers on the trails they’ve been creating for the 2015 race in September.

Rickus Jooste, the farm manager at Moutons Valley Farm, promised a harder but more fun ride than Welvanpas so the uptake on the invite was a little hesitant, but boy did the reluctant few miss out! The reccie numbers were whittled down by sickness, injury, a forgotten wedding and general reluctance to commit to a ride that sounded like it would be pretty tough, eventually the group settled at seven of us from the Full Sus group. Bigshot Media’s David Le Roux, Jacques Rademan, Specialized’s Harry Orr, Hilke Rode and myself (Seamus) drove up from Cape Town and Stellenbosch in the cold early morning hours to meet Moutons Valley Farm owner Eric Starke, Rickus, and a few of their local riding buddies; Johan, Johan and Stef.

Upon arrival on the farm we were greeted with coffee, muffins and Class 1 apples (the kind usually earmarked for export). Eric and Rickus really pulled out all the stops for us! Eric had even organised that his coffee machine be brought up to the trail-head so that we could enjoy flat whites or cappuccinos before getting going.

While the race starts in a different location, the normal route starts from the banks of the biggest dam on the Moutons Valley Farm. Rickus’ wife, Delanie, told me that in summer the dam is big enough to ski on, though despite the 100mm of rain in the week before we arrived the dam was dangerously low – making it impossible to imagine anyone skiing on it. The fact that it was near freezing didn’t help with that either. The jeep track along the dam wall is the longest section of road in the route – an astonishing 300 to 400 meters of it…

The rest is hand-built singletrack with the odd, very short, section of mountainous 4×4 route thrown in to link trails.

Eric explained that when the race started he wasn’t a mountain biker yet, they just started the race to raise funds for the local Piket Bo Berg ‘Inwoners Vereniging’ (Read about the charity aspect of the race here.) The route in the early years only featured jeep track, but when Eric started cycling three years ago he realized just how tough the race was. There we quite a few climbs he just couldn’t make it up. So they started building singletrack – for the opposite reason to why most people build singletrack – to make going uphill easier and more fun.

The bug quickly bit and Rickus and Eric soon had to devise a code to hide the amount of trail building they were doing from Eric’s wife, Michelle. Michelle when she joined us for a braai after the ride was quick to point out that she saw through their code, and didn’t really mind as mountain biking makes them so happy, but she does like to remind them that it’s a working farm after all…

Three years in to the trail building and there’s no sign of slowing, on Moutons Valley and the farm next-door they’ve built close on 60km of singletrack already. The big question though it what are the trails like?

They’re good! Very good in fact.

The trails are what we’ve come to call ‘real mountain bike trails’, they’re rough, leave in lots of natural features and require constant attention – as they rise and fall, and twist and turn constantly. The comparison with Welvanpas isn’t really fair as the iconic Welvanpas black-route spends that majority of its time in the pine forests, while the Piket Bo Berg trails are cut through fynbos. The terrain is similar to that in the Witzenberg Valley and the ride could easily be the fourth stage of the Du Toit Tankwa Trek. Piket Bo Berg actually looks a bit like the Witzenberg Valley, which is high praise in my books!

They’re fast and flowing in places and a hard uphill slog in others, but they’re always interesting demanding as much attention as the breath-taking views, which you’ll have to stop to properly take in.

An example of the massive amount of hard work they’ve put into the trails is the series of sweeping berms they’ve built dropping down towards the ‘Canyon’ section. Eric explained to David (it was the first time that anyone had ridden the berms!) that they’d used two pegs joined by a piece of rope to plot out a perfect arc for the initial berm. From the exit of the first berm they used the method and exact measurements to plot the next berm, creating a series of sweeping berms, where the exit of one is the beginning of another, which link perfectly together.

The initial loop, which all the race distances barring the 10km do, boasts views of the Piket Bo Berg valley, the Cederberg mountains in the distance and the patchwork potato fields stretching away towards Elandsbaai to the west. It is definitely one of the wilder places I’ve been on my bike and I can easily believe the story of a leopard encounter on the trails.

The worry amongst the would-be route reccie riders before we left was the potential technical difficulty of the trails. If that’s something you’re concerned about don’t be. The trails are very well built, with a firm (remembering the fact that they had 100mm of rain a couple of days before we arrived) and wide surface. The sheer number of rocks and trees left untouched along the trails means that the riding is never easy, but there wasn’t one feature in the route which would force the majority of riders off their bikes. You just need to keep your wits about you and your eyes on the trail.

Be warned though it is fairly slow going, don’t expect to match your normal average speed and don’t be fooled into thinking that because the overall altitude gained isn’t that much it won’t be difficult. We stopped often and didn’t ride hard and we averaged 11.2kph and covered 20km in the first hour and three quarters of the ride (after that I got a lift back to the dam because my rear derailleur twisted into a gargoyle-esque shape).

Post-ride we were treated to more platteland hospitality with Delanie laying on a massive spread for a scrumptious braai. Over a beer and some lamb chops we discussed plans to revisit the trails, before the Piket Bo Berg Cycle Challenge hopefully!

If we can’t organise that we’ll all be there on the 12^th of September that’s for sure!

 

 

 

Sus the Piket Bo Berg Cycle Challenge

Date: 12 September 2015

Venue: Moutons Valley Farm, Piket Bo Berg, Western Cape

Distances: 10km, 24km, 37km and 63km. Plus a 16km trail run

Website: www.piketbobergcyclechallenge.com