On a glorious winters day like today, the destination picked itself: Mount Glorious. It’s days like today that I understand why it has that name.
Paul, Wayne and I started the ride from the bottom of the Goat Track and rode up to the trail head on Dundas Road. From there we enjoyed the long steep knuckle whitening descent to England Creek before beginning the long climb up Joyners Ridge Road.
I’ve often wondered how the road came to be named “Joyners Ridge Road”. I asked my friend, local historian Leith Barter, who told me that in the 1870’s Henry Plantaginet Somerset (what a name!) made a three day journey on horseback from Cressbrook Station in the Brisbane Valley via Kilcoy and Caboolture to get to the property of William Charles Joyner at Samsonvale. Somerset wanted to arrange the purchase cattle from Joyner. Somerset didn’t want to go back via such a circuitous route and William Joyner showed him a ridge that might be a useful starting point for an ascent of the D’Aguilar Range.
Somerset became the first European to cross the range on horseback, but had to travel further north than he planned (probably near Mount Glorious) before he was able to find his way through a thick belt of rainforest.
It’s possible that “Joyners Ridge” is named after this historic route although historians point out that Joyner himself had not climbed the range, so he wouldn’t have known about the terrain on the western side.
The ironic thing is what took Somerset 3 days can now be done on a mountain bike in about 4 or 5 hours. Isn’t that amazing?
Our climb up Joyners Ridge Road took us about 70 minutes. It’s hard work, but the gradient is moderate enough so that most reasonably fit mountain bikers can do the climb if you keep a reasonable pace and don’t push yourself too hard.
By the time we got to the top we were pretty hungry, so we stopped in at the Mt Glorious Cafe for a bite to eat and a chance to enjoy the view.
From there it was a very fast roll down the mountain back to our cars at the bottom of the Goat Track.
Overall this ride was 35km, with 1390m of ascent and 3200 kcal. With todays cool weather and the social pace, this one rates 7.5 out of 10 on the tough-o-meter.
Total climbing: 1421 m
Average temperature: NAN
Total time: 04:09:56
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I love the history. Being that I own 3 horses, any history that includes happy horse spirits is a good thing 🙂
My 9 year old daughter Lilly loves horses 🙂 Having ridden a lot of that country on a bike, it would have been quite an achievement to cross it on horseback. Incidentally, the park is still open to horse riders, but I don’t see them very often in that part of the world.