Route: Glenbrook Lollipop

Submitted by Dan Bleakman on Sun, 08/09/2020 - 07:25pm
Location
New South Wales, AU
Distance
100 km
Vertical Gain
2,500 m
Description

The route begins and finishes at Glenbrook in the Blue Mountains, Australia. Glenbrook is regarded as the start of the Blue Mountains National Park. It's pretty much exactly 100kms and contains around 2,500m of climbing and the same descent. 90% of the route is on fire trail and extremely runnable. There's approximately 10km of bitumen / road. This includes the first 2.5kms at the start from the Glenbrook track head, 2kms between the Woodford track head and the start of Murphy's fire trail and then 3kms from the end of the Ingar fire trail at Wentworth falls through to the old Queen Victoria Hospital site further down the road before it turns into fire trail. 

The first 25kms along the Oaks fire trail traverses through bush along an unsealed fire trail with a gradual elevation of around 800m over the first 25kms. From there, 2kms of road links to the next section of the FKT route through Woodford, before again hitting more firetrail and descending into the valley and crossing Bedford Creek, before a 2km rise to Ingar fire trail, further rising to a high point of 900m along more fire trail to Wentworth Falls in the upper Blue Mountains.

From there, 3kms of road (King Tablelands Road) links to more fire trail and a gentle, mostly 7km down hill run to Andersons Fire Trail. This again, is a nice gentle downhill run with a few undulations for around 12kms back down to the valley floor at Bedford Creek, which this time, is crossed twice, before a 2.9km uphill climb out of the valley to Woodford; retracing the road back to the Woodford track head. From there, it's back down the Oaks fire trail for 25kms to the finish at Glenbrook.

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