The journey’s finally back on track and heading east across the open vastness of Western Australia! Stage 309 leaves Lake Cowan behind and rattles alongside then through the huge Dundas Nature reserve to a clearing in the middle of nowhere. In terms of the profile, the summary version is short steep up, then long lumpy down, short steep up, short steep down, long up, medium down then medium up to the finish. That translates into 600ft of pain.
In terms of geography, the stage is almost exclusively a long gently curving right hander heading east, except for a two mile stretch either side of six miles where the Eyre Highway loops around the southern flank of a hillside in order to avoid going directly over the the top.
The climbs are steeply for a mile straight out of the pen, gently at first then steeply up from five miles to just before seven miles, increasingly steep from miles ten to sixteen, a bump back up at seventeen after cresting the summit of the long climb, and finally from twenty miles to the finish, although that one’s lumpy.
The descents are lumpy from one mile to four miles, steep from six to seven miles and lumpy from sixteen to twenty. There’s more climbing than descending and the finish is a hundred feet higher than the start. And there are no communities or townships anywhere on the twenty three mile stage: it’s just you and your bike so try not to break down.
Distance: 23 miles / 37 kilometres
Ascent: 607 feet / 185 metres
RGT Magic Road: ob61FcPfAf7R
Max elevation: 705 ft
Min elevation: 458 ft
Total climbing: 608 ft
Total descent: -506 ft
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