Great lap at Thredbo

09/01/25 21:20 Filed in: Riding

This season Thredbo renamed the All-mountain Trail with 3 new names so as to bring it into line with other trail naming conventions up there. The traverse across the top to the top station of Gunbarrel is now Panorama - fitting with the sweeping views for most of the way. It is also now a Black Diamond trail. After spending a day riding it repeatedly, I feel like I know why it has been uprated.
There was quite a lot of rock armour on it before. But also long bits of open dirt. Now it is rock a majority of the way. Past seasons the melting snow would make mud out of the dirt and it took sometimes well into the new year to dry out enough for good riding. But now it is almost all rock, I suspect not only can people ride it as soon as the snow melts, but the upkeep will be way lower. The rocks are boulders so chunky and rough. Every small descent ends in a boulder with no downramp. There is a bit of a drop off on each one. Either you pop off the final rock or drop off it. It could overwhelm a novice rider with so many.
The lap becomes up the main Kosciusko lift, across on Panorama to Gunbarrel lift, and then down to the bottom of Gunbarrel by one of the choices available (Dream Catcher is the new name for a lower portion of the All-mountain and is identical to past seasons). Then up the Gunbarrel and across the traverse to the Flow trail and down to the main lift again. Obviously one could take that traverse from the first time hitting top of Gunbarrel, but that doesn't do the lap justice. With 2 lift rides and lots of traversing sections it takes around an hour to do the figure 8 lap. The roughness of the rock armour will leave an impression in your shoulder muscles too.
But it is fantastic fun and if you clean the little climb on Panorama it means you were paying attention to what's ahead - it is easy to get caught in the wrong gear if you don't see the climb approaching.

Michael Hanslip Coaching

If you want to go faster, you have to pedal harder

Great lap at Thredbo