Autumn cornflakes 🍂 at the queen of the hills - Mt Royal🫅

TLDR; watch 0:00 to view the start of the trail, 13:00, 21:00, and 27:35 to get a good idea of the downhill.

Mt Royal downhill is one of a kind and best to describe as Peaking Ridge on steroids but better. Plus spectacular landscapes and stunning 360 views. And those gorgeous stunted Beech trees and beautiful ferns.

We took the Heli to the tippy-top and descended to the Wakamarina trail.

The riding is incredible, and while you navigate your wheels through the forest, searching for an orange triangle, you get to enjoy steep chutes, rocky sections, roots wherever you go and plenty of autumn cornflakes to rustle through.
It is marked as a Grade 5 plus and it rode like a solid Grade 5.5.

There was plenty of uphill, pushing and even carrying the bikes over rocky terrain to the next ridge line.

It took us in total 2.5 hours for Mt Royal trail, and another 1.5 hours to ride out on the Wakamarina trail. Although we didn't fuff around too much, the first Heli started at 9am from the campground and we were back at the cars by 2.30pm.

Hands down, an amazing trail. Thanks to the crew of Helibike Nelson for flying us up there, and thanks to the lovely and amazing women from Welli inviting me spontaneously the day before in the Gorge.

As always, chapters are your friend. Enjoy!

0:00 start
2:26 entering the first shrubs
3:33 entering the beautiful stunted Beech forest
3:54 the first smaller uphill
4:09 along the ridge line, dipping into the steep, steep downhill
5:50 carrying the bikes uphill
6:56 downhill from here onwards
9:22 riding along rocks, through Beech forest and soaking up the sunbeams
11:30 rocky moss section on another ridge
13:00 crazy straight downhill
16:14 fast crazy downhill
16:40 collecting branches with my derailleur
17:20 root heaven and ferns, beautiful ferns
17:33 little rock chute
18:10 rock garden in the forest
18:45 another chute with plenty of roots and rocks hidden under leaves
19:35 beautiful ride through ferns
20:33 a little treehugger in between
20:40 another rocky and rooty chute
21:00 ROOTS!
25:09 unrideable downhill part (I've tried parts of it though)
27:35 definitely unrideable, downhill climb to the creek
30:25 creek crossing
31:02 carrying and pushing uphill to the hut which connects us to the Wakamarina trail
33:14 MADE IT!