A truely Epic climb from Khancoban over DeadHorse gap. 3000 vertical metres!

The day started at 4.50 wake-up in Khancoban and breakfast in the local Diner. Peleton rollout at 6.30, with a 9 km climb, and about 500m vertical, to the sunrise filming at 8.30 am. It had rained overnight and the roads were damp – about 5 degrees, but not much wind at all. The filming was done at Geehi Dam, and we were in a gorgeous little clearing with a running creek behind. Alpine huts and the whole Snowy Mountains theme!

Then the real climb started with about 14km continuous climbing with a couple of kms at 12-16%. I was very glad I put the 27 cog on my rear cluster to make the climbing a bit easier.

Monitoring our temperature was quite hard as the climbs were brutally hard and we were sweating profusely, and then the decents were freezing with the extra speed and little effort. So arm and leg warmers, long gloves, and jackets were being put on and off multiple times during the day.

A couple of the team got mild hyperthermia as they must have got too hot on the early climbs and then started shivering uncontrollably. I’m sure it was around zero C at the top of Dead Horse Gap after the road greeted us with snow poles in the last few kms of the climb.

I rode over the Gap without a break, to get out of the cold and into the relative warmth of Thredbo for lunch. We weren’t that keen so saddle up for the ride to Jindabyne, but love the smooth hot mix roads and rolling decents, and got up to 80kmh in some spots. Woohoo.

I’d love it if you had any feedback or comments – post them to my facebook page, or email me on robhacker5@gmail.com

It’s the final day tomorrow – 185km into Canberra and our final dinner. I’m looking forward to seeing Angela and the kids who are driving down to wave me in.