KTM Rallye 2016 – KTMs all over the place

This entry is part 11 of 18 in the series Adventure Rider Issue #18

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Putting on a quality ride to equal or even surpass the many ride options available at the moment was always going to be a massive task. KTM Australia headed to the Snowy Mountains in NSW and staged a ride for KTM owners that turned out to be as good as the bikes themselves.

Recently, KTM Australia enlisted the services of Rosie Lalonde as Marketing Coordinator. Once Rosie settled in to the KTM family the initial planning stages for the first ever Australian KTM Adventure Rallye started to take shape.

The Victorian High Country and Snowy Mountains seemed the best places to run the event. They offered great accommodation, scenery and massively mountainous trails running forever. With the help of KTM Brand Managers Brendan Roberts and Ray Barnes, a solid handful of knowledgeable riders with tons of experience in the high country were selected with the likes of Nick Selleck, John (Sprocket), Glen Hough and Grego helping coordinate the 1500km of tracks and lead the way early every day.

The organising factor

A very thorough dossier was sent out to the riders explaining luggage didn’t have to be carried on the bikes, and a small overnight bag would be allowed in the support vehicles starting from the Rydges Horizons Snowy Mountain Resort on day one. The support vehicles included the hard-working team of Rob and Anja Turton with the Tyres For Bikes truck, with tyre changes an ongoing part of every day.

A photographer and videographer were signed up, and there’s sure to be some great pics and footage with a lot of riding with, and around, Toby Price.

Rosie didn’t leave a stone unturned. From the support vehicles through the accommodation and on to the free over-night dinners included in the entry fee, the organisation was superb. In total there were 20 KTM staff riding as support and back-up, including the likes of Ben Grabham, Jeff Leisk, Angus Reekie and Colin Ross, as well as six support vehicles carrying probably another eight crew.

At the riders’ briefing on Sunday night, Jeff Leisk opened the event and thanked all the riders for coming, with Nick Selleck as main course coordinator and Rosie Lalonde going over the proceedings of the days ahead.

It was explained the course was broken daily into two routes, the first being the main route which was like the easy way, and the second being what was named the ‘Breakout Route’, or the hard way.

The thought before the event was that approximately 30 per cent of riders would take the Breakout Route with the rest taking the easier option. There was no doubt a bit of shock and horror for the organisers at the riders’ briefing when, not surprisingly for KTM riders, nearly 100 per cent wanted to do the Breakout Route.

Not to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm, it was calmly announced that the first day’s riding would not be as hard as the following days, and basically riders would work out which course was best suited to them as the event went on.

The heat factor

Temperature conditions were well above the average and this was confirmed reading a paper in a store in Bright. It appeared there had only been a handful of two- and three-day hot spells since the early 1900s, and the current excessively hot spell had been ongoing for between seven and nine days. It’d actually broken a record in being the longest and hottest spell since the 1890s – just great for a fairly full-on, five-day ride.

No wonder people were thirsty at night.

KTM Factory/KISKA staff

In somewhat of a first for the Austrian KTM Factory, two KTM representatives in the form of Reno and Anita attended the Australian KTM Rallye as a research project. The idea was for them to gather information from this Australian event that may be utilised to create new models and future KTM products. They want to build a bike for riders with the assistance and feedback of riders, so the fact the Australian KTM Rallye was a part of this, and will continue to be in the project going forward, is very exciting.

The course

Not only was the course fully set up on GPS for each rider, there was also a full set of route sheets and notes with a wealth of track information. To back this up, the zero riders went out between 5:00am and 6:00am every day to check the course and make it foolproof for the GPS-challenged by sticking either green ‘Breakout’ or orange ‘Main’ arrows on every corner.

Great work Nick, Huffy, Sprocket and Grego.

It would be impossible to mention the number of track names we traversed.

It actually surprised me that every track we rode on actually had a name.

The start

Day one started from Jindabyne and had the main route at 302km and the Breakout route at 297km. The routes traversed the Barry Way and Snowy River Road through Ingebirah State Forest, took a detour to McKillop’s Bridge – which was as spectacular as the ride to get there – then returned to the Snowy River Road, only to go either right for the Breakout route or left on the main track heading towards Omeo.

To the credit of the organisers everyone arrived well and truly before dark, with no real injuries to speak of and only one mechanical breakdown. The breakdown turned out a couple of days later to be more of a self-induced wiring problem than a part failure.

Second day

Day two, with 262km for the main route, and 193km for the Breakout route, saw riders on dirt 100m from the Omeo Hotel and straight on to dirt roads traversing the Omeo Bushland Reserve, the edge of the Cassilis Historic Area, through Wentworth, McDonald’s Hut, Marthavale and the Lower Dargo-Tabberabbera Road to Dargo itself. There was even another loop leaving Dargo for anyone who took the easier main route and wanted some more riding for the day.

Due to the super-hot conditions, and the reasonably challenging riding on the Breakout route, most riders were happy to do some bike maintenance and laze on the grass around the Dargo Hotel while doing whatever form of rehydrating they thought was appropriate. Once again there were only minimal body and bike failures for the day.

On the third day

Day three was a casual start from Dargo heading towards Bright, with only 121km on the main route and 247km on the Breakout route. This track had probably the most challenging hill, and quite a few riders elected to turn back towards Dargo to rejoin the course further down the track. Basically it was just one very long hill with well-spaced erosion woo boys, a couple of eroded gullies and a few loose rocks. Most people could’ve ridden up if they either didn’t get psyched out, or if they waited and had a clear run at it.

Aside from this the riding was once again classic gold, with a variety of tracks that were nearly single lane, gravel roads including the amazing Blue Rag Range Track, a seven- kilometre-each-way ride traversing the Blue Rag Range summit.

From Blue Rag we had another 160km of following narrow little 4WD tracks, as well as some of the largest continual up-and-down mountain riding with massive woo boys. This definitely would’ve tested the suspension on some of the big V-twins if anyone thought they could jump them.

From there we turned left on to the picturesque Buckland Valley Road and rolled into Bright.

Rider stories

• A rider dropped his phone out of its holder on the handlebars into the Murray River. With its black case and the fast current he thought it was gone, but 10 minutes later someone pulled it from the river and, lo and behold, it still worked. Long live LifeProof cases
• Glen Ingram on a 990 had a small side-impact crash with another rider, resulting in a broken radiator and broken fuel tap. Yours Truly pulled up and asked what he needed, then casually replied, “Yeah. We might have epoxy to fix that. The fuel tap? Yep. Should have a spare one of those.” Half-an-hour later he was riding on
• Scott and Clint Gralow from Bullet Bikes bought down a handful of their customers like John Trovato and John Teske. Scott grabbed a new 1050 off the showroom floor, slapped an 18-inch and 21-inch wheel set on it, rode it and said it was a great bike. Good food for thought for the future
• Father-and-son team Bruce and Alex Bolton from Bolton Motorcycles brought along the sales manager Fred Butterworth and several of their clients.
• Father-and-son team Scott and Lincoln Pukallus made the trip from Queensland. Scott rode a 950SE with Lincoln on an 1190R. Until Toby Price turned up, Lincoln was probably one of the fastest riders there
• The boys from Action Motorcycles on the Gold Coast were there with Colin Duck leading the team
• A load of Queenslanders came down in an F350 Dual Cab, probably getting all of three kilometres per litre, with a massive trailer full of bikes. The likes of Greg Poole, Jeff Mawston, Terry Staib, Scott Summerville and Stuart ‘Woodsie’ Woods tagged along. Woodsie enjoyed the more casual pace after the trials John Hudson puts him through with the recce rides for the APC Rally

Toby Price

The third evening was when Toby Price made his appearance and rode into the Bright Brewery on his Dakar-winning 450 Rallye. With the bike parked centre stage, Jeff Leisk and Toby did a Q and A, then the floor was opened up for the riders to ask a few questions.

I think the question and the answer that I liked the most was when Jeff asked Toby, “At what time during the Dakar did you think you had won? ” and Toby’s response was, “When I was within about one kilometre of the finish line, and knowing the lead that I had over second place, I was pretty damn sure I could push the bike over the finish line and still win.”

Toby rode the next two days of the Rallye in and among the riders on a an 1190R, usually with Adam Riemann somewhere close handy with one of his cameras.

Overall, Toby is just a laid-back, knockaround sort of a bloke with no tickets on himself. The biggest difference with Toby from mere mortals is, he just happens to be one of the fastest cross-country and rally riders on the planet.

Family groups

You could nearly say the KTM Adventure Rallye was a family affair.

In total there were seven family groups with: long-standing adventure riding brothers Clive and Brendan Carre on 990s; Kieran and Liam Pelly; Simon, Andrew and Drew Mitchell; Tyson and Cody Walker; Scott and Lincoln Pukallus; Bruce and Alex Bolton; and Scott and Clint Gralow.

Day four

This was a different style of loop with the 287km main route finishing at Dinner Plains, except along the way we traversed two different loops which travelled through Mount Beauty and Mitta Mitta. At Mitta Mitta riders could either make the decision to head back to Bright and then on to Dinner Plains, or they could take the Breakout route which then offered great riding on trails that would have been nicely suited to a dirt bike, but was still really flowing on an 1190.

After this loop we flowed into Bright, refuelled and ate, then traversed the last 87km with spectacular views of Bright and the surrounding country. This was followed by more great trails that perfectly suited any form of adventure bike. Every day just pre-sented great riding and spectacular views that mere mortals just don’t get to see.

Once again at Dinner Plains, Rob and Anja Turton and the Tyres For Bikes truck were kept absolutely flat out. I think at one stage I counted 17 bikes with the back wheels off, lined up waiting for Rob to change tyres.

The accommodation, food and organisation at Dinner Plains was once again outstanding.

Day five was to be a different day, as it rained that night.

Stats

Some interesting statistics:
• Two riders under 25 years old
• 10 riders between 25 and 35
• 32 riders between 37 and 46
• 59 riders between 47 and 56
• 19 riders between 57 and 67 From a home-State point of view, 31 per cent of riders were from Queensland, 27 per cent of the riders were from NSW, 22 per cent from Victoria and three per cent from SA, WA and Tasmania (not including the KTM staff).

Finally

From Dinner Plains back to Jindabyne and the finish was 374km on the main route and 392km on the Breakout route.

The last day wasn’t a casual ride back to the finish. Some of this was due to the rain the evening before which created nice, slippery, challenging riding early in the morning, and which did see a few people tasting the local dirt. But overall the rain made for better riding with no dust, fresh air and lots of great and picturesque creek crossings.

This section was finished off with the king of creek crossings – the Murray River – where many bikes and riders went down in the water, and many photos were taken of the misfortunes of drowned bikes and riders. I think at one stage there were around 100 riders on the far bank helping dewater bikes and viewing the demise of oncoming victims.

Of course Toby Price rode the 1190 across as if the crossing wasn’t there, and Ben Grabham doubled Anita from the KTM factory across on the 1290 without so much as putting a foot down.

After the Murray River it was a fairly casual ride back to Jindabyne for the finish, but as was expected, the actual finish time of the event ended up being around midnight, with pretty much all the entrants staying for the usual final-night debrief.

For its first event the KTM Adventure Rallye was a full-blown success. There were absolutely minimal injuries and a very high finish rate. The overall mix of short days combined with the easier main route and harder Breakout route proved completely successful, and what was better was everyone was getting in early to be able to socialise and do bike maintenance if needed.

There’s rumour the 2017 KTM Rallye may be in and around the northern or central coast of New South Wales, so stay tuned for information. I’m pretty sure everyone who attended this year will be back for more next year, so if you want a spot for 2017 make sure you enter early.