Heading up there on Sunday, stopping at the Hydro hotel for a couple of days. The Mrs is going to chill out in the pool and wander round town whilst I get a bit of riding in.

If we get there in good time I was hoping to do the blue initially, then the red on Monday.

There are trail closures noted in the 7stanes website, admiral section on the blue and…Red mtb Route: Matrix, Lombard St, Pie Run, Mushroom Pie and Magic Mushroom closed. Diversion from post 45 to post 54 (Tourist Trap). Also Pennels Vennel closed long term due to windblown trees, with diversion from post 37 to post 38 (Spookywood Climb entry). Rest of Route open.

Am I missing anything important due to the closures? Should I be aiming to do the black really? I just don’t want to take the piss and be out all day!

Or is it all likely to be under a few feet of snow and a write off anyway!!?

Need a local to tell you what the snow is like – GT is on a decent-sized hill, the top of the black is 600m and the top of the red just a bit below that. If there’s snow then it’s usually v hard going up high – take you ages to make progress. It’s not one of these rolling-along trail centres.

Large sections after the Spooky Woods descent were closed when I was there recently. A bit dissapointing TBH. The ‘relief’ section they’ve put in its place is quite comical – in a 1990s XC on a muddy bridlepath kind of way.

Lots of snow at the w/e, walking from the top of Kipps to the mast.

You can ride straight out of the Hydro and climb Janets to Buzzards car park. Whatever else you do you can descend from there to the Hydro using Zoom or Bust, the Green and then Dave’s Trail. or climb back up towards Spooky and descend on Ho Chi Min and onto Zoom.

Strava for where.

The ‘relief’ section they’ve put in its place is quite comical – in a 1990s XC on a muddy bridlepath kind of way.

Just ignore it and climb back up and take the Blue back to Blue Velvet and descend from there.

I found Glentress just like Afan but with bigger hills. I was most disappointed.

The pictures I saw from the weekend showed an awful lot of snow at GT – about axle deep up near the mast.

Generally though, the diversions on the red route make that whole experience a bit disappointing at the moment, so if you have time (and weather) the black route might be worth a punt.

There are also some cracking off-piste trails which Strava will help you out with.

Lastly, there are some trails behind the Hydro which I came across recently. I have no idea if they are part of a bigger network, but they were pretty fun.

Diversions on the red route at the moment are actually pretty extensive. Like br said, you can return from the blue route which would be better (unless you have done that they day before and fancy something different!) A lot of the black stuff is also closed (located physically close the the closed red stuff). You may be best mixing the two together, get up to spooky wood and ride the first couple sections of red, and then back up to the top of the blue and ride all the way down.

However there are also many other trails to be ridden at Glentress if you know where to look, and of course the rest of the valley is open too 😉

Comments about snow are also justified, it’s quite deep in the upper ranges at the moment, similar at some of the other nearby trail locations as well. It’s due to warm up a bit for the weekend so you may be lucky with a bit of a thaw? Will be very wet though 🙂 Send me a message if you want any advice on alternative routes if you think the red may be a bit on the short side at the moment…

Just been up today. snow has got very slushy and slippery. Not much snow below buzzards nest, after that the climb is just about rideable for the most part today. However forecast is for temperature to rise about 6 or 7 degrees over the next couple of days, so expect it to be very mucky by the weekend

The red closures are pretty extensive at GT with a lot of the marked descent closed. If you’d prefer to say on-route, how about heading across to Innerleithen and doing the RED XC route there. Getting to Inners is about a 5k flat off road ride along a cycleway. The top of Inners is quite exposed though so wrap up warm and be prepared for a bit of snow.

I think the blue at GT is fully open and good fun. Likewise the black should be mostly open but allow around 4 hours to finish it if conditions are difficult.

Did the red loop on Friday night when there was still a lot of snow at Spooky Wood and right down past Buzzard’s Nest, but it was great fun and Falla Brae was open but unrideable due to ice. The diversions were a mixture of slop and ice (even despite minus 4 when we got back to the car and not enough to freeze the mud). With the rise in temp that’s coming it will be even sloppier!

I’d tend to agree with Paul that Inners might be a better shout – you miss some of the good trails with the closures. Alternatively there is the black at Glentress but there are still some closures on that too.

I would definitely consider a ride along to Inners if you’re there for more than a day and is certainly going to be less busy, simply due to there being fewer facilities.

I went with mates this summer, and stayed in the pods. Inners Red was our favourite trail. Easy ride to it along the old rail road path by the river.

The current closures at GT are really pretty disruptive, it takes out a good chunk of both the main descents but also makes it harder to link up alternatives which is what you’d usually do.

If you want a red-ish route then there’s 2 good gt options I think. 1 is basically do all the open red and blue- might not sound that good but GT blue’s one of the best there is. This is the trailcentry option. The other is to throw in some offpiste, which varies from fairly straightforward to fairly treacherous… You could do the red then ride back up and do the Fort descent frinstance. That has the advantage of 2 decent sized descents low down and pretty snow-proof.

The black up at the boundary had a good foot of snow on it in places on saturday, and it does tend to linger up there- only very short sections weren’t ridable but, if it goes to slush it could be pretty grim. Ironically the trail itself had pisted amazingly, like someone had rolling pinned the snow down in a perfect foot wide track. Gorgeous… But that’ll be gone by now I think

With a little planning you could definitely get a day’s low level #enduro trails out of the golfy and inners but that does up the difficulty level. (I’ve no idea what the snow’s like along there, I’m assuming the upper slopes got nailed but again, depends how they melt)

Well I’ve got a lot to be going on with there.

Does this sound feasible…. Ride GT blue with a diversion to take in spooky wood and super g as a short ride on day 1. Then ride from the Hydro to do inner’s red on day 2?

I’ve got the trail map off 7stanes website, does anyone know where the Hydro hotel sits on that map and where exactly I go to ride to innerlethien?

Sounds like a good plan Richard, you won’t go wrong with that.
Temps are meant to start rising so hopefully most of the snow will be away by the time you get there.

Simple way- leave hydro onto main road, turn left. Glentress is about 2 miles away on the left, by road or bike path (take the bike path, you can’t miss it on the left as you ride out of town. Watch out for wee flat singletracks on the right as you go along the path, you can’t get lost as the gap between path and river is at most a hundred feet wide).

Innerleithen is literally the same only more so, just go further along the path, it’s almost perfectly flat. Turn right at the end, innerleithen trail centre. Though I’ll be honest, I’d drive!

I’m maybe going to make this more complicated than it needs to be for you but basically, if you’re doing your red/blue option at Glentress, you want to do both the final descents- Good Game on the blue, and Falla Brae on the red, they’re the best bits of both trails. This is very easy to do, they start on the same trail then split left and right. But it does mean climbing back up the same climb twice.

But there’s a forest road that goes from the Hydro right to the top car park at Glentress. This shows up as “Janet’s Brae Road” on the OS map but isn’t on google maps. Bikehike’ll show you the OS, or it is a Strava segment as “Janet’s Brae”.

So, go up that. Do the upper red or blue trails, go down either the red or blue descent to the trail centre cafe etc. Then go back up the trail centre climb and round all the other trails you want.

The offpiste descent I mentioned, the Fort, actually takes you from the buzzard’s nest car park directly to the hydro. It’s not hard, as tweed valley offpiste bike trails go but it’s a wee step above the red route and has some harder options. But it’s another good option for you

GT is terrifically overrated. You’d do well to nip along and do the red xc at Innerleithen instead and a couple laps of the lower downhill runs, they’re all pretty simple to ride on any bike

Yeah, first few times round inners red is a blast, it gets old very fast once you realise it’s all just the same 3 features connected with pedally straight bits mind…

Still, I’d say GT > Inners, even with these closures. But if you’ve got time, do both.

@OP, I’m not getting very offpistey vibes, you definitely seem to be after the trail centre experience, am I right?

I guess you could say that, because of the nature of the trip I want easy navigation. I’m all for a bit of off piste at a trail centre, but when I’m a little more familiar with the place.

Hi RK, do you know roughly what times you are going on Sun/Mon, if you want a guide/biking partner, this is as good a place to ask. I’m around on Sunday, but haven’t got a lot of available time.

Not sure what time we’ll be there on Sunday, hopefully lunchtime but it just depends on how quickly we can get out the house! Will be up early doors on Monday am to ride then spend the pm chilling.

Thank’s for the offer fella, I just need to know what’s going to be a good compromise given the closures/conditions. Perhaps a guided ride would be good for my next trip!

have fun and here’s a link for the future http://tweedlove.com/

Back home today (despite the wind and rain trying to kill us on the M6!)

Arrived in Peebles at the Hydro around 2pm on Sunday. I went off and rode Glentress blue with Spooky wood and Super G extension whilst the wife chilled in the lounge at the hotel. Glentress is practically next door to the hotel.

On Monday I got up early and rode to Innerleithen via the cycle link (6 miles.) Did the red XC loop and rode back again.

Really enjoyed all the riding, but Inners definitely edged it. Possibly the best red route I’ve ever ridden. Pretty exposed at the top though, could barely stay upright!

The Peebles Hydro was great. We had one of the suites which was pretty swish, I believe some of the other rooms still need re-vamping though. The lounge, bar and gin bar were all spot on and the wife enjoyed the pool whilst I was at Inners. There’s bike storage and hire if you need it. Evening meal was pretty mediocre but there’s loads of choice in Peebles.

I’d definitely recommend it for a weekend trip if you’ve got a non-riding partner. As much as I love the Lakes, we’d have to pay more than twice as much to get the same standard of room and facilities.

Good work.

😀

gt is an odd one when it snows. I’ve been there when its been covered and completely ridable, but also when its been to icy to even get up the first climb.

i appreciate this doesn’t help you…