A grey beard covers the tops of the mountains surrounding Falls Creek.  A reminder of the bushfires that ravaged the area back in 2003 leaving forests of dead trees. After the charred bark drops off the trunk and branches are a light grey. Quite an unusual look. The undergrowth has recovered, but the trees won’t be back for a long time.

Up here at 1600m in the Alpine zone, dawn is rather chilly. That gave the biggest challenge of today’s opening stage – what to wear! With reasonably clear skies we expected it to warm up soon so too much kit was also not a good idea.
You would be forgiven for thinking that the biggest challenge would rather have been the 2400m of climbing in just 65km. BUT…. Looking at the route profile last night we were doubtful. And so it turned out to be. With just 1100m of up and 2250m of down it was a day of descending – mostly on forestry jeep track covered with the leaves of the approaching autumn. These did cause a few problems. Firstly the grip was not great and then they hid the stones and sticks that littered the track. One had to stay sharply focussed. Fortunately we made it through without major incident although I was glad to be wearing full gloves as I grasped at the foliage when sliding off the edge of the track and down a steep bank! Sounds more dramatic than it was, although I did end up about 2m down with my legs dangling over the edge of cliffy kind of thing. Didn’t stop to look around – scrambled back up, collected the bike and got on with the job. Strangely unaffected by it all. Must be getting tougher. As they say in these parts, HTFU. Besides, nobody saw it, so it didn’t really happen. Did it?

Everyone complained of sore hands after the rough downhill. HTFU?
The field is here is really small with only around 80 riders in 40 teams. Which makes a nice change from the big groups at our races back home. Also without the top racers in the mix, the pace at the front was pretty civilized. Not that we were in the mix for the GC! Our time of 3h31m gave us a 2nd in Masters (combined age >80 – and no prizes for guessing who provides the lions share of that!).
So, tomorrow we have to claw back 4 minutes. Should be interesting