Hobart: Mt Wellington Summit Bike Descent & Rainforest Ride

5.00

(262 reviews)

What’s the experience like?

“You’ll want to zip your jacket,” our guide Matt grinned at the top of Mt Wellington, hair blown sideways by that wild Tasmanian wind. I could barely hear him over the gusts, but honestly, my heart was louder anyway — that first look down at Hobart from 1270 meters up is something else. We’d piled out of the minibus (still clutching our helmets), and everyone just sort of stood there for a minute, squinting into the pale sunlight and that weirdly clean air. The road curved away below us, already looking steeper than I’d expected. I remember thinking, “Okay, here goes nothing.”

The actual bike descent was fast — like, blink-and-you’re-already-halfway-down fast. My hands got numb gripping the brakes (they warned us about that), and every time I looked up from the road there was another slice of valley or a flash of blue water way off in the distance. Matt kept checking on us, calling out tips about cornering or where to watch for loose gravel. At one point I caught a whiff of eucalyptus so sharp it almost stung. Not sure if it was adrenaline or just mountain air but everything felt kind of electric.

We stopped at Lost Freight Cafe after that first ride — it’s this old shipping container tucked among trees near the Springs. Everyone shuffled in for coffee and pastries; someone ordered a hot chocolate and immediately had three people ask if they could try it (it was good). There was mud on my shoes already. Nobody seemed to care. Then we loaded back into the bus for a quick drive to start the second part: an 11km rainforest ride down gentle dirt tracks under these massive ferns and eucalyptus trunks that looked older than time. It got quieter here — just tires crunching softly, birds somewhere above, Matt pointing out little details (“that’s sassafras,” he said once, which I promptly forgot). The air changed too — cooler, damp in a way you feel on your skin.

I didn’t expect to love the off-road part as much as I did. The track wound past clear streams and old aqueducts you can actually walk under — kind of surreal after all that open sky up top. Someone spotted a wallaby (I missed it), but honestly just rolling through those woods felt good enough. By the end my legs were tired in that nice way where you know you’ve done something real. We finished back at their Hobart office; everyone grinning, mud-splattered, swapping stories about who braked too hard or who nearly missed a turn.