To the OutBack…and back

The South March MTB trails near my work have a few different loops and one of the big ones is called the OutBack. As the name suggests its further back into the woods so had to take a Saturday morning out to get to it. Its one of the black trails below.

As I pulled into the parking area I noticed that Norco was having a demo day. Cool. I signed up and tried out my first top end full suspension bike. In this case a 27.5 Range Killer B-1.  I didn’t ask much about price so just wanted to get a subjective comparison. I put my MTB bike at about $1200 if I was to buy it new today. With that in mind I stomped off and did a few trails like Porcupine and M Line.

It felt about $2000 worth of bike. Certainly rolled better and I was able to tackle a few things more than I usually do but overall was still the same basic experience. Back end quite a bit more settled. Maybe not better just different. I did really like it and probably would upgrade if the gap wasn’t too much.

I got back to the demo tent, retrieved my own bike and asked about the pricing. This was the top of the line B-1 and retailed for $5,995.

Wow…not sure I would afford that and I do always struggle to understand what a 5k bike offers over a 3k bike over a 1K bike.

Anyways, there is a B-3 version at $2899 which probably is more what I felt I may be able to afford one day.

That done and an hour of my OutBack time gone had to speed things up a bit. Got back on my Devinci and headed out.

Also got to try out my GoPro, looking to just learn more about this device so just simply turned it on. Did a few hours of recording but just adding a few minutes here.

GoPro testing on the trails

This trail is rated quite a bit harder than the other trails and was winding quite a bit so took a longer time that I anticipated and had to rush a bit. But these trails are quite a bit more bumpier and really couldn’t push the pace too much.

Still, it was loads of fun and used both my PowerCal power meter and Garmin 500 so got some good feedback. Max Power is still weird but is effectively filtered out over time. Power was decent at just a bit under 200W and does convince me its just as hard to do a hard hour on the mountain bike. Also you get a better overall muscle workout. Again can’t say enough about being able to just slap on the PowerCal and go.

And you can compare the map below with the official map.

Looking forward to spending more time with the OutBack!