# Another Mt Donna Buang trip



## Shut Up Legs (2 Jan 2016)

I revisited my favourite mountain again today, for the 10th time in 6 years. I'm on holidays until January 26th inclusive, so plenty of time for cycling.

Unfortunately, due to an 8 day stay in Perth, Western Australia, to catch up with relatives, my legs found this ride harder than usual, but I managed it and got home in one piece (no thanks to some Australian motorists).

*The Vitalstatistix.*







Here's the route, elevation profiles (in metric and imperial ), and summary.




One datum missing from the above table is that yesterday I weighed about 80.5kg and today after the ride it's about 78.5kg.  Bonus! Yes, I know: dinner will sort that out quickly enough, but it shows that if you ride often and far enough, the weight does tend to drop, and since extra weight --> more calories expended climbing mountains, this is a good thing.
















*The Trail to Warburton.*

The photos below are thumbnails, so just click them to see the larger version.

The trip goes from Ringwood North where I live, to Warburton, which sits right next to Mt Donna Buang (see the above route map). Warburton is at 160m elevation and the summit of the mountain is at 1260m, so it's quite a climb, especially given that the average grade is about 6.5%.

I got up at 5am, left home at 5:45, then rode 16km of highway to Lilydale, where the 40km unsealed Lilydale-Warburton Rail Trail begins. This is quite well known around here, and is quite a nice trail to ride, with a fairly smooth, hard-packed surface. Due to hardly any rain recently, my bike got very dusty, which is why I took the 15kg touring bike instead of the 8kg road bike, even though this means the climb up the mountain is tougher.

Here's some photos of the rail trail on the way to Warburton.


 

 



 

 

The above bridge, which I referred to in a previous travelogue post as "The Long Bumpy Bridge" is now "The Long Not So Bumpy Bridge", as it's been resurfaced . It's still bumpy, but nowhere near as bad. I can do about 20km/h on it now, where before I had to slow down to about half that speed, the bumps were so bad.



 

 

*Warburton.*

I got to Warburton by about 8:30am, and left about 8:45, after a brief break. My bike as I said was very dusty. Here's a picture of the bike I used, and the Upper Yarra River in Warburton. It's so clean up here, too, nothing like the murky, nasty-looking brown colour you see closer to Melbourne CBD.



 

 

There is a 15 image limit per post, so more in the next post.


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## Shut Up Legs (2 Jan 2016)

[Continued from previous post]

*The Ascent.*

I started riding up Mt Donna Buang at about 8:53, and thanks to tired legs (due to the aforementioned 8 day break from cycling), it took me about 1 hr 45 mins, instead of my usual 1 hr 30 mins. (_Shut Up, Legs!_  ) About halfway up (in both distance and elevation gained) is Cement Creek, which I think is well-named, because the last few kms of road leading up to it has a higher grade, with a few bits exceeding 10%, so you need a large, full cup of cement (aka _HTFU soup_) to manage it.  The views here (and for the rest of the climb) are spectacular, though: so leafy and green. 



 

There are 3 lookout points along the ascent past Cement Creek, at the 750m, 850m and 925m elevation points, looking down at the Yarra Valley, and faraway Mt Dandenong (a mountain only 15km from where I live, which I frequently visit). Here's some shots of these, and you can tell which is for which lookout by the photos' timestamps, and also their filenames.



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

At about the 1km elevation point is the 10-Mile Picnic Area (must have been named before we adopted metric in the '60s, I guess). I think it gets its name from the fact that it's roughly 16km (or 10 miles) from the start of Mt Donna Buang Road in Warburton. The height of the mountain's trees is really evident in this spot.



 

More in the next post.


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## Shut Up Legs (2 Jan 2016)

[Continued from previous post]

*The Summit.*

By the time I got to the summit, my legs were aching a lot, so as usual, I just told them to shut up.  I forced them to walk me up the 30m high observation tower, so I could take these photos of the surrounds of Mt Donna Buang.



 





 





 





 





 



The 2nd last shot shows my bike (it's the 2nd from the right). The last shot is a very hard-won (and slightly scary) case of helmet hair, as you'd tend to get after riding about 75km including up a moderately-tiring mountain.

More in the next post.


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## Shut Up Legs (2 Jan 2016)

[Continued from previous post]

*The Ride Home.*

After visiting the observation tower, I rode down the mountain, which took about 40 minutes I think, went to a Warburton cafe (called River View, in case any of you ever visit this town), and ordered my reward.   The cafe is in a nice location, surrounded by lots of trees, and with a nice rear verandah area.



 

 

I didn't eat all of it, as one of the objectives of this ride was to lose a little bit of weight, so far be it from me to sabotage this objective . After lunch, I headed home along the Lilydale-Warburton Rail Trail. The temperature stayed in the low to mid 30s for the ride home, so I just took it easy and drank plenty. Here's some photos of the trail in the afternoon ride home.



 
The above shows the trail going through farmland, and as you can see from the photo, it just goes on and on, with a whole lotta nothing (with occasional sitings of cows, sheep, various birds, etc.).



 


The above 2 photos were taken from the same spot, and the 2nd one shows what the view from the right-hand side of the path looked like.



 

That's it: I'm done now. Hope you enjoyed reading it.


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## classic33 (18 Apr 2016)

When'll you next be going that way?


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