How long and how tough please?

25/30 mins ish
couple of sections where you dont want to be going against the flow.

Ride round is quicker unless you have a DH bike

The fire road route up is fairly easy and you can actually cycle a DH bike on most of it, takes ~ 45 mins. Fire road is a lot easier than pushing up track.

Go up fire road from cross roads Junc nearest FC offices, this bit is quite steep so you’ll probably have to push. Then take 1st left turning, this is the fire road that the course crosses and reasonably flat. Keep going on this until a T junc then turn R, then R at next junc which takes you to the start of DH trails.

Thanks Mike, I will be on an orange alpine 160 with coil and supertacky tyres. How long to pedal up then?

Thank you 100mphplus.