munda bidi trail, r u keen?

burjo

We cycled the Munda bidi trail last summer - Dec 2003-Jan2004. Not a good idea with loaded bikes. We're from Melbourne and we were on an 8 week fully self-contained tour of South West WA - consequently our bikes were fairly heavy with front and rear panniers pretty well fully loaded - camping gear, a few days food, kitchen sink etc etc.
First bit from Mundaring to the Youth Hostel was a breeze - 'how good is this' we thought (we did that bit in the moonlight - but that's another story)

Next day's climb out of the Helena Valley was steep , thick pea gravel , deeply rutted, couldn't get enough traction to ride up much of it, and in some spots the gravel was so thick it was difficult to even push the bike through. With an unloaded bike you could just lift it and march through the bad bits. Definitely not much fun with loaded bikes. My husband had knobblies and I had semi slicks - slicks probably made it even worse.
Took us 2hrs to cover 6 k's!!!!! - had expected the 33 k's to the next campsite to be just a pleasant ride before morning munchies.
We are fairly ancient, (both in our 50's), but do all of our cycling in the Dandenongs just outside Melbourne so do not have a problem with a mountain or two.
We pretty well took to the roads after that - stayed at the Mundabidi campsites but used their maps to find our way via the back roads - things improved from there, though we probably missed some very beautiful, and hard packed sections of the track.
Went all the way to Collie - then via the forest and the coast on a rather windy roundabout route to Albany.
The best thing about the M-B trail was that it made all of the climbs on the rest of the trip seem a breeze.
We also started to have a love affair with hard packed dirt and even the shiny black stuff called bitumen!!
The pea-gravel is the killer - small very round smooth stones, sometimes 20 or 30 cm deep so your wheels just disappear in to it. We spoke to one of the trail managers and he acknowledged the problem - said it was much better in winter when there was generally enough rain to pack it down.
I think the trail would be best enjoyed as a series of unloaded day rides.
They were talking about trying to put a small grader (one of those metre wide tractor mounted blades) along some of it, but I think this was an 'in the future' plan.
Despite all that - the countryside is phenomenal, the campsites really great (don't miss the Dandalup campsite - the toilet has a million dollar view), and the whole idea fantastic.
I wouldn't do it again on a loaded bike, but have no regrets - and we are definitely keen to do the lower half once it is finished.