First some background.

The State Government (Vic) has committed $3million from the Commonwealth Games budget to develop a State Mountain Bike Course. This will be the venue for the CWG MTB events and an ongoing venue for recreational & competition Mountain biking.

I attended the first (of 3) Project Reference Group meeting on Wednesday night.
Present were representatives of major interests in Lysterfield Park and the State Mountain Bike Course / CWG MTB event, about 18 people in total. The PRG objectives are to identify & discuss the key operational issues related to the development of the State Mountain Bike Course. It’s planned that 14km of trail will be built, a 7km loop of which will be the CWG racecourse.

The main focus of the meeting & most of the issues were directly about the CWG event (23 March 2006, put it in your diary!) rather than the trails/recreational riding in the park.
For those that know the park, the start/finish, logistics area will be at Hallam North road. The course will roughly be around Valley View track to the Trig point & looping back near Grassy Spur to return below Valley View back to Hallam North Rd. It will use some of the existing singletrack through the Spotted Gums below Valley View track & may venture near some of the rocks above Wallaby track.

How the racecourse links to the recreational trail & any existing trail hasn’t been discussed yet, neither has the status of any existing trails.
I’m sure the next meeting will be interesting as the issues are discussed.
Cheers
Steve

First some background.

The State Government (Vic) has committed $3million from the Commonwealth Games budget to develop a State Mountain Bike Course. This will be the venue for the CWG MTB events and an ongoing venue for recreational & competition Mountain biking.

I attended the first (of 3) Project Reference Group meeting on Wednesday night.
Present were representatives of major interests in Lysterfield Park and the State Mountain Bike Course / CWG MTB event, about 18 people in total. The PRG objectives are to identify & discuss the key operational issues related to the development of the State Mountain Bike Course. It’s planned that 14km of trail will be built, a 7km loop of which will be the CWG racecourse.

The main focus of the meeting & most of the issues were directly about the CWG event (23 March 2006, put it in your diary!) rather than the trails/recreational riding in the park.
For those that know the park, the start/finish, logistics area will be at Hallam North road. The course will roughly be around Valley View track to the Trig point & looping back near Grassy Spur to return below Valley View back to Hallam North Rd. It will use some of the existing singletrack through the Spotted Gums below Valley View track & may venture near some of the rocks above Wallaby track.

How the racecourse links to the recreational trail & any existing trail hasn’t been discussed yet, neither has the status of any existing trails.
I’m sure the next meeting will be interesting as the issues are discussed.
Cheers
Steve

Excellent work Steve and keep us up to date with the events.

I spent over 4 hours in the park yesterday with the track designer
(Ben Monroe) & Vic MTBA rep (Chris Bland).
We rode around with a map & checked out the singletrack. The good
news is most of the existing singletrack should be kept open. The
better news is that the project track budget should enable some good
links to be built.
There is still a lot of work to be done, ie Parks approval etc.

Cheers
Steve