9 days in the Arizona desert, or how I spent my summer vacation.

The first 3-1/2 days

Wow, what I time I had traversing the great state of Arizona on my mountain bike. It's been awhile since I've taken a vacation with a plan of just riding my bike. No racing, no one to worry about but myself, nothing to do but ride my bike everyday until I didn't want to anymore.

Work was a mess right up until I left. A couple of employees were headed back to school while I was gone so lots of jobs needed to be finished up in the weeks leading up to my departure date. It all came together, which is rare, although I was working in the office till the minute I walked out the door for the drive out to Flagstaff.

The plan was to drive out to Flagstaff on Thursday night/Friday morning and rent a one way car down to Sierra Vista where a shuttle company was to drive me out to Parker Canyon Lake on Saturday morning, a whirlwind start to my vacation for sure. It all came together on time and on schedule, a rarity for me it seems. At 8am on Saturday morning I was sitting in the parking lot at Parker Canyon lake for a 765 mile journey across much of the state on the Arizona Trail and the Coconino Loop.

I wanted to ride only in the daytime so as to not miss anything. This also went along with the fact that I had done zero training for this, in fact I'd been down to riding only a couple of times a week for the past couple of months. There were no 18 hour days in my legs, at least not day after day.  I hit this pretty spot on, I think I ended up riding about 6 hours in the dark to get to water, a prime place to sleep or occasionally just to keep warm.

Arizona had seen some incredible weather the past couple of months, the monsoon rains had been very severe and there had been flash floods across much of the state. The upside of this was that everything was incredibly green, I mean eye popping green grass and cactus everywhere. The downside to this was that the grass throughout much of the trip was nearly handlebar height which made for some pretty sketchy navigation on a trail that is hard to follow even in the best of conditions.

Unfortunately I managed to erase all of the first days pictures while I sat in camp at La Sevilla Picnic area. Doh... It had been an absolutely stunning day with rain all around and the tall grass juxtaposed against the threatening skies. Oh well, it's a good reason to go back again.The trail was in pretty good condition and as usual was just exceptional out past I-10 to La Sevilla. I had a great day, just cruising along taking pictures, hanging out at Kentucky Camp and just generally being in a good place. All in all about 75 miles of trail and dirt roads out of the 90 total for the day, not a bad ratio!

 I added some pics from the April trail race, just add 3' high grass to the pics and you get the idea....

Out in the Canelos from the April race

File footage from April.

Out past I-10 from April

More stellar trail from April.

Home for the first night, La Sevilla Picnic area

Nice to have a table.

I wanted to get here in case of rain that first night.

Morning glow

First days totals, all but 14 miles of that on dirt.

I had a great day the first day on familiar terrain, but the second day was on trails and roads I had never been on. I knew that the climb up to Summerhaven at the summit of Mount Lemmon would be rough and that the trails between here and there were tough with a decent amount of pushing. I was here for the adventure and adventure generally means unfamiliar surroundings, with that I headed off for parts mostly unknown.

 The first order of the day was riding the sweet trail of Saguaro National Park. This is a real treat given bikes aren't allowed in most National Parks. The trails here are super fun and flowy, a real treat for the locals I would guess. I had ridden this with a blown out knee in April, so riding it healthy this time was a pleasure.

Park cruising

Really cool gates.

Morning starting to arrive.

Lots of flowers around

Water in the desert, a theme of this adventure.

Old windmill from times past.

I needed to get some food for the coming days, it would be close to 120 miles before I would see my next resupply stop. The store on the race route was closed and for sale, a surprise which led me about 10 miles out of the way down into Tucson. Not a big deal but it put me a little behind getting up Reddington Rd. before the heat of the day arrived. The forecast was for low to mid 90's for the day as it had been the previous day, luckily the clouds moved in and gave me some relief as they had the day before.

Heading up Reddington Road, steep mutha.

I got pretty good at figuring out where we would be going based on how tough the terrain was. I'm heading out there...

Beautiful and rugged.

I found the Rubicon of Arizona.

Chiva Tank, full to the rim

Yes, there is trail in this picture. Welcome to the grasslands of Arizona.This is pretty much what all of the first day looked like. 

I meandered around on some steep roads until I finally came about the Arizona Trail as it exited the Wilderness of the National Park.  This would be a common theme, wander out of the way on marginal stuff so that you could ride nearly every inch of legal Arizona Trail, sometimes it was worth it, mostly not though.

Some great views out here, notice the water in the center.

Poppies? Yes, that's more "trail"

This was actually rideable, likely a lot better in April.

More good stuff, primitive, but good.

Finding water was at times hard, but generally doable. Clean water like this was hard to come by though.

Dino says" No, not the Molino hike a bike"

Getting up towards the first part of the Molino push. Stunning out there though.

The next 30 or so miles consisted of good trail and bad trail and some decent pushing. It was all good, the temps were nice and the views were awesome and I knew that eventually I would be on pavement heading up to Summerhaven. The first days efforts were being felt in my legs, but overall I was in a good place.

Catalina Hwy

Catalina Hwy.

Pretty good views up here.....I started yesterday behind those far hills in the center left  I think.

Windy Point?

The Catalina Hwy was a pleasant distraction. Not much traffic for the 4000' climb up to Summerhaven. The water was off at the Ranger Station which meant I was out of water for the last hour or so until I got to the summit and asked for water at the Fire Station. There was no way I was doing Oracle Ridge in the dark so I started looking for a place to get out of the 40 mph winds at the summit. I settled in behind the Community Center for a wild night that saw the wind moving me across the concrete in my bivy, not much sleep to be had... Managed about 81 miles this day with a ton of climbing thrown in.

                                                La Sevilla to Summerhaven on Garmin

My spot for the night

Gloomy morning start. 

Oracle Ridge started my third morning off. This was a pretty typical example of alot of the route. A huge effort to get up to a really crappy decent, essentially no payoff to some of this stuff, unless you consider pushing your bike downhill a payoff for a 4000' road climb. All in all it was a pretty beautiful day, the trail was completely overgrown and the exposure was pretty scary at times, but I knew it was coming and made the best of it.

Hey, a rideable section...

Oracle Ridge

Oracle Ridge "Trail"

Steep ass dirt road with an amazing view. I had to walk down some of this it was so steep and rutted.

Oracle Ridge, full of little ass kickers like this. 

 Oracle Ridge finally rolled out into the little town of Oracle. I needed some food for the next leg out to Picketpost trail head, some 120 hard miles away. I found the little grocery store and ordered up a couple of great burritos, crammed as much crappy food as I could on the bike and headed out for Antelope Peak.

Today would be my shortest, but most difficult day. Endless miles of crappy trail that seemed to go on forever and a building bad attitude made for a long day. I tried to make the best of it, but there I was at times screaming for the trail not to switchback in and out of the wash for the umpteenth time.

I'm headed for the little point under the middle sign, Antelope Peak, not the one above my bike.

Hey look, a rideable section.

Great views out there.

One of hundreds of gates you go through.

Antelope Peak getting closer.

I did this dozens of times throughout the trip, so much grass and stickers. Pull off socks and pick out stickers, repeat....

Pick your poison, Catclaw, Cholla, Prickly Pear with the trail running right down the middle....I can still feel the pain of the Catclaw weeks later....

I thought about tasting the salt licker...

Amazing amount of water in the desert.

Beehive tank.

I finally found my way around Antelope Peak and at what i figured would be my final destination for the day, Freeman Rd and the water cache there. I had plenty of water from the day, lots of tanks out there but it was nice to have the water box to lay my stuff out on. It was cool to see water still tagged for the racers in April. I had only managed 48 miles today, a pretty pathetic number that meant tomorrow would be a big push.

                                                        Summerhaven to Freeman Rd.

 I knew I had a real tough 75-80 miles to go the next day from Freeman so I set the alarm for an early start. Ripping through the desert out past Freeman Rd. in the wee morning hours is something I'll always remember, absolutely great riding.

Freeman Rd. water cache

Epic morning riding.

Interesting self closing gate.

Pretty much doesn't get any better.

An example of the hundreds of hand stacked cairns that dot the trail, very cool.

Yeah, good stuff out here.

The trail from Freeman rolled out as amazing as I had hoped. I knew the Ripsey and Boulders segments were coming up, as well as the two climbs out of the Gila River so i tried to enjoy the morning as much as I could. The Ripsey and Boulders segments were pretty awesome, although there was some HAB, it was mostly rideable and well built. I was at the Kelvin ADOT yard by 10 am, cool.

Good trail, a little steep but rideable.

Gee, a contour trail, what a novel concept.....

Headed out there somewhere...

More good trail

Jumping Cholla, took more than a few of these to my shins and calf.

Effects of the recent storms, lots of these sections.

More sock cleaning at the AZDOT in Kelvin.

From Kelvin I knew it would be a big day out to the Picketpost trailhead and into Apache Junction for a hotel room, I smelled really bad at this point.....The trail out to Picketpost is fairly new. Some of it is amazing, I would love to meet the excavator operator who built this stuff, bad ass is all I can say. This would be a really tough section for me, lots more climbing than I had anticipated. I would also run out of food and water on this section leading to some anxious moments until I crested the top and headed down into the drainage and eventually found water. This was certainly the adventure I was hoping to find.

The first climb out of the Gila was pretty straightforward, good riding mixed in with some wash riding. Nice views of the Gila along the way. I made a smart decision to hike down to the Gila just before the next big climb out of the Gila and filter some water, I would have been hurting for certain had I not done that. 

Some more storm damage.

Ever present Hike a Bike.

More good trail

Tranquility of the Gila.

One of many washes.

A little steep here...

The second climb out of the Gila was a monster. I had been seeing this spire all day and correctly figured we would be going right along it. What I didn't expect was the series of box canyons that the trail would climb and decsend on it's way to Picketpost. Amazing trail building out there, but boy it kicked my ass.

A little pushing here and there, much steeper than it looks.

First tracks for the first 300 miles, actually the first 550.

And up we go, a theme for the day.

I knew from 50 miles away we'd be going here....

Look hard and you can see epic trail on the far side of the canyon, this would get repeated over and over.

Cool sight, Desert Tortoise.

More amazing trail.

Contemplating life's choices. The roads we could have traveled and the roads we did....

Getting towards the top of the first box canyon, I would descend and climb another.

Really the only mechanical. A little rock got jammed in my front der. Had to take the whole thing apart....

Epic trail building.

Yeah, were going over there and eventually out through that saddle.

The first box canyon where I contemplated life's choices up in those peaks.

Lots of these guys, I managed to miss them all.

The end of the 300 at Picketpost TH

Not bad for only having ridden 3 hours in the dark. Epic down time of 12-1/2 hours. Those are daylight hours, I turned the GPS off in camp....What a slacker.

                                           Next installment: Apache junction to Sedona