Any experts on here?
Which route would you do this weekend?
Bearing in mind I’m reintroducing mrs soap to the black mountains after a failed/wrong turn Killer Loop attempt.
She hated the long Grassy climb of the killer loop.
Also is it dry enough up there yet?
http://www.gpsies.com/map.do?fileId=sciypzfgcrmnzsde&referrer=trackList
http://www.gpsies.com/map.do?fileId=ezelvgpazqgbeili

hmmm your doing the killer loop the wrong way round……

now I’ve got that off my chest….

Conditions are good at the moment…

from those routes I’d go for the start from Bwlch…

if it was me… I’d do something different like Parkup at Lambedr follow the bridleway past fordlas Fawr and use the fire roads to get up to pen y gadwr fawr then descend back along the ridge past crug mawr….

that way all the climbs and ticked off with a long rolling descent with great views back to the car……

T1000 thanks
The only time I rode there it was the killer loop clockwise. Is that the wrong way?
The first route above is anti clockwise.
Liking the 5 mile climb then the rest is sort of downhillish.

clockwise and you miss the opportunity to pick up an extra descent…. its just my opinion….

I’m going to do this on Sunday, anticlockwise to have a crack at Y Das. Not looking forwards to the climbs up Crug Mawr and up to Trumau though.

The other reason is to ride the Fford Las descent, havent done that before.

Only issue is that we’re staying in Llanthony, so might have to ad lib a little, and put in a few more miles and another climb

Agent I’ve bottled it 😕
We will be riding the purlock route from this months MBR tomorrow.
Will you be taking a Garmin with you?
Any chance of a report and a GPS ?
Cheers

Fordlas is a little bit overgrown at the moment and v dark in the mid section
Sounds like you might need you might need to use some special bridleway from gospel pass 😉

Fford Las was pretty big disappointment. Just a rubbly shoot, not much fun in my opinion (and not helped by a navigational error getting to the top…).

On the other hand, the climb up to Twympa from Gospel Pass (after the short initial push) was a good challenge, and then the bridleway from the col beyond, back to Capel Y Fin is one of the best pieces of singletrack I’ve ridden in the UK.

Just need to find out the best way to get back to the road, we did it twice and ended up riding on 2 different peoples’ drive ways for the last few hundred yards.