rangersac
Medically diagnosed OMS
There's been associated chat about the St Helens trails in various other threads, but now that the network has expanded with several new trails opening recently I feel like it warrants its own stand alone placeholder so here we go. The other catalyst is that our annual club group ride were up there on the weekend to check it out, so it's fresh in the memory from an awesome weekend!
Official website can be found here. There's basically two sections of trails close to St Helens that are either accessed from the Flagstaff trailhead carpark, or from the Loila Tier shuttle point. From town it's about a 6km ride up the foreshore track and Town Link trail to the trailhead carpark, or a five minute drive. The ride from town is a nice warm up though, with the climb pretty gentle for the most part, and a nice series of switchbacks taking you up the steepest section.
Facilities at the trailhead are good. Toilets, a small cafe, merch shop, bike wash and seats to sit around chilling at the end of a run waiting for your mates or the next shuttle. The series of loops that kicks of from here are all very friendly trails, but good fun nonetheless with nice features thrown in occasionally to keep it interesting. The trails that kickoff from the Loila Tier shuttle point, are all steeper, faster and longer and will be of more interest to most here. Shuttles take about 15 minutes to get up the hill, and cost just over $10 a run if you buy several. They also do $10 on demand shuttles after 3:00pm. I will give a plug to Gravity Isle, the shuttle company here, as they were friendly, efficient, and did a tailored package for our group which was tremendous value, so if you are going to spend a couple of days there it's worth getting in touch with them to discuss what they can do.
Pick of the trails for mine from Loila Tier were:
Our group also did the bottom half of the 42km Bay of Fires trail, from Ansons Bay Rd to Swimcart Beach, as the Blue Tier to Ansons section is currently closed. Reports from those who have ridden it say the first 12km of this trail is an awesome descent. The middle has 10km of forestry tracks, from the Ansons Bay Rd drop off point we rode around 4km of this before the single track starts again, and it's a bit of a slog, although it is undulating, so you do get some respite in between the pedaling. Once off the forestry the single track winds more up than down to a lookout through some pretty awesome granite boulder and grass tree country, before the final 7km is a beautifully flowy descent with a few jumps and rock slabs to take on before running out at Swimcart Beach.
There's a part 2 to the trail story but I am leaving a placeholder for it here for reasons to be outlined later
So, in summary it's a great network of trails, and there are more in the pipeline. I would say that it's probably the most family friendly of the networks in Tasmania, along with the Wild Mersey tracks. It will be interesting to see how trails go in summer, there's been a lot of rain recently around St Helens, and the trails were all dry and grippy. With an underlying substrates of mostly shale and granite based rock, I'd imagine things could get pretty dusty and loose, and you would need to take a lot of water on the longer rides. Still having a good winter riding destination is definitely a bonus!
Last plug, our group stayed at the Big 4 caravan park in St Helens which has sunk a fair few spandoulies in some dedicated mountain biking facilities. There's a bike washdown and servicing station, a dedicated bike lock up shed, both indoor and outdoor kitchen and dining areas including a wood fired pizza oven, and a big fire pit and outside seating. Pretty hard to top if you are in a group.
Official website can be found here. There's basically two sections of trails close to St Helens that are either accessed from the Flagstaff trailhead carpark, or from the Loila Tier shuttle point. From town it's about a 6km ride up the foreshore track and Town Link trail to the trailhead carpark, or a five minute drive. The ride from town is a nice warm up though, with the climb pretty gentle for the most part, and a nice series of switchbacks taking you up the steepest section.
Facilities at the trailhead are good. Toilets, a small cafe, merch shop, bike wash and seats to sit around chilling at the end of a run waiting for your mates or the next shuttle. The series of loops that kicks of from here are all very friendly trails, but good fun nonetheless with nice features thrown in occasionally to keep it interesting. The trails that kickoff from the Loila Tier shuttle point, are all steeper, faster and longer and will be of more interest to most here. Shuttles take about 15 minutes to get up the hill, and cost just over $10 a run if you buy several. They also do $10 on demand shuttles after 3:00pm. I will give a plug to Gravity Isle, the shuttle company here, as they were friendly, efficient, and did a tailored package for our group which was tremendous value, so if you are going to spend a couple of days there it's worth getting in touch with them to discuss what they can do.
Pick of the trails for mine from Loila Tier were:
- Send Helens, a wickedly fast, almost pedal free descent with stacks of doubles, gaps and big rock features if you want to take them all on, but everything is roll-able and b-lines are obvious and well sighted. Despite its black rating, unless you take on all the features it's really only at the level of about a Maydena green run!
- Icarus, which is accessed after a climb from the first section of Send Helens. This has some more rocky, technical features, and some nice berms to hit. At the bottom both Icarus and Send Helens can link up with Shucka, which is a decent sized jump line
- See Ya Later. Fast flowy descent but does need a fair bit of pedalling to keep the speed up.
Our group also did the bottom half of the 42km Bay of Fires trail, from Ansons Bay Rd to Swimcart Beach, as the Blue Tier to Ansons section is currently closed. Reports from those who have ridden it say the first 12km of this trail is an awesome descent. The middle has 10km of forestry tracks, from the Ansons Bay Rd drop off point we rode around 4km of this before the single track starts again, and it's a bit of a slog, although it is undulating, so you do get some respite in between the pedaling. Once off the forestry the single track winds more up than down to a lookout through some pretty awesome granite boulder and grass tree country, before the final 7km is a beautifully flowy descent with a few jumps and rock slabs to take on before running out at Swimcart Beach.
There's a part 2 to the trail story but I am leaving a placeholder for it here for reasons to be outlined later
So, in summary it's a great network of trails, and there are more in the pipeline. I would say that it's probably the most family friendly of the networks in Tasmania, along with the Wild Mersey tracks. It will be interesting to see how trails go in summer, there's been a lot of rain recently around St Helens, and the trails were all dry and grippy. With an underlying substrates of mostly shale and granite based rock, I'd imagine things could get pretty dusty and loose, and you would need to take a lot of water on the longer rides. Still having a good winter riding destination is definitely a bonus!
Last plug, our group stayed at the Big 4 caravan park in St Helens which has sunk a fair few spandoulies in some dedicated mountain biking facilities. There's a bike washdown and servicing station, a dedicated bike lock up shed, both indoor and outdoor kitchen and dining areas including a wood fired pizza oven, and a big fire pit and outside seating. Pretty hard to top if you are in a group.
Last edited:
