The Day Phil Nearly Died
It seemed like such a good idea to go back to Tress despite the poor
weather and despite the fact that I was sporting possibly the worst hang-over
of my entire life—and there’s been a few.
Arriving at the Hub shortly after the sun showed its face and with the in-car thermometer reading a pathetic minus 15°C my already aching body wasn’t relishing the day ahead but having been assured by a local 'crazy' (who had already completed the Black-Run by 6-30am) that it was 'Surprisingly Grippy' up there we figured what the hell!
It wasn’t long before our two intrepid guides met their first obstacle—neither of them can read a map.
Having stopped to perform major surgery on my shitty bike—Martin and I found ourselves somewhat lagging behind on the first climb of the day. With Phil out of sight we stupidly assumed that he had followed the CLEARLY SIGNPOSTED ROUTE but as we were soon to discover that this was not the case and after a swift phone call and an about turn by all concerned we were soon back together and heading in the right direction.
For
those of you who have been I’m sure you can appreciate what
it was like. 1800ft to climb - 3" snow - Arctic conditions and Three
fat useless gits.
Despite the conditions we did finally make it to the ‘Observatory’ and were treated to some breath taking views for our trouble.
At this point I can honestly say I was a bit concerned about the descent as it was mighty cold, the snow was pretty deep in places and frankly, I was shagged.
But,
now that I’m back in a nice warm office I think it was possibly the best ever!
The snow kind of gives you a sense of security, we didn’t have to worry about what was under our wheels and on the whole we were just as quick and aggressive as we had ever been.
Great fun all-round.
On our first ever trip to Tress we met a group of ‘locals’ who escorted us on the ‘Black Run’ and I could distinctly remember them telling us to miss out a certain section of the Black because you lost a huge amount of height, very quickly and then you literally had to climb back up to where you started. It was at this point that everything went wrong.
"Pathfinder McMahon" was sure "it's that way !" and,
despite protests from the rest of us—he was off like a shot down
the next section (which was to be fair great fun) and we were left with
no option but to follow him......
If we turn this corner and it goes up-hill...
YOU’RE A DEAD MAN !
When the words came out of Martins mouth I
rekon he was probably joking but Phil wasn’t going to test the theory and kept out of his way
for quite some time. Normally this wouldn’t have been a problem.
Sure Phil would have had the piss taken out of him for the rest of the
day but that’s it. Only this was no ordinary day.
The conditions had taken their toll, we were all very very tired and starting to get cold, the light was fading and with the temperature beginning to drop, we were only going to get colder!
Just leave me here—I’ll just have a nap...
At this point I should point out that Phil is diabetic and without the
proper medication and some food he can become very ill very quickly.
On any other day this would be no problem—he always carries sufficient
rations to get him through the day has no problems only this day was
lasting far longer than any of us imagined.
First there was our little de-tour courtesy of Phil and then having regained most of the altitude we had lost, we discovered another down-side to snow. The track started to become indistinguishable from the surrounding area and with no tyre tracks from previous riders to follow we were to be honest, totally lost.
We plodded on non-the-less but the situation was looking grim.
We were all exhausted having been in the saddle (or not) for around 9 hours, it was very very cold, we were lost, it was getting dark and just to cap the day off Phil was feeling the effects of not having eaten for quite some time. His speech was slurred and his body was basically shutting down.
Eventually we came out of the forest and onto a road which was what we had been hoping for—we still didn’t know where we were but at least it was a start. With a 50/50 chance of being right I made a decision—turn right (up-hill) and see what's there. And guess what—I was wrong...
Just keep going to the next corner—or the one after...
With me pushing my bike and Phils and with Martin Pushing his bike and
Phil, we set off up the hill (yes yes in the wrong direction !) in the
hope of finding a marker post that would give us an idea of where we
were.
By now I was getting worried, Phil was at an all time low. He kept insisting we should leave him to have a nap and he’d be alright but frankly I think he would have been dead in a matter of hours.
We discussed making a shelter 'Ray Mears' style but frankly we needed to get home. After almost 45 mins of walking up-hill we saw a 4 wheel drive approaching and thankfully the woman driver stopped and told us where we were and how to get back to the Hub.
If only I had decided to turn left and head down-hill we would have been ‘home’ over an hour ago!
All joking aside—small factors and wrong decisions left us in a very dangerous situation. We laugh about it now and poke fun at each other but make no mistake—we were in deep shit, and all three of us, but especially Phil were lucky to get home at all!!!
In all we were out for 11 long hours. We still say it was the best ride we’ve ever had but it could have been so very different...
TAKE IT FROM ME — BE PREPARED FOR EVERYTHING!
Our thanks to The Hub for staying open when everyone else had long since gone and for feeding our hungry faces when we finally got back home and especially to the driver of the 4x4 without whom we might still be up there.
And finally thanks to Phil & Martin for not beating the shit out of me for heading in the wrong direction.
