Last month’s Samaniego death ride (see: Five reasons why Tucson sucks…) yielded a promising piece of information: the top of CDO has been worked/logged/groomed.
I’ve had that tiny glimpse of blissfully groomed trail in my mind ever since. It haunted me, and there was only one way to exorcise it.
Ride it.
The drop begins….
The Canyon of Gold was arguably the most beautiful and challenging trail on Mt. Lemmon. But the fires were not kind to it. That’s an understatement, really.
The FS (or perhaps ATA) has done a tremendous job of resurrecting CDO. Some sections approached its former glory – shaded, quiet, and fantastic riding all around.
Sadly, the newly constructed trail ends a few miles down, and it’s back to trail sniffin’ and Catalina rough and tumble riding. So, it’s only half resurrected.
Nate and Louis (pedaling monster bikes on platform pedals) were hitting some grade A suffering coming up the backside of the ‘gap.
Louis knows the way…. trust in Louis….
Mucho singletrack and a few side moves to get us from the Gap to the High 50, then out.
I had gone into the ride planning on riding home – but I was also planning on being out of the mountains earlier. To my surprise, Nate was easily talked into riding CDO rather than the much faster (and more rideable) Red Ridge. Even with the resurrected section, it’s still slow going. Nate was taking it all in stride, though he made it pretty clear that when he shuttles to the top of the mountain, he wants to ride, not hike. Meanwhile Louis and I were eating it up – both the newly born trail and the route finding / bushwhacking. It was good of Nate to humor us – it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
If I’d had another half hour of daylight, I’d have taken the 50 into Catalina SP. But instead I blasted the ‘big ring’ singletrack, then climbed back up to Golder. From there it was ~20 mph riding down Oracle, with the sun setting and a slight head breeze.
That kind of riding really zaps me – more than any climb ever could. But I didn’t feel it until I was out of traffic, suffering up tiny rises on Via Entrada. It wasn’t an option to suffer until I was ‘safe’, but eventually the debt had to be paid.
I tried riding some singletrack to the river path and got woefully lost. Time to charge the headlamp, dummy. This is a trail I ride at least once per week, but I just couldn’t figure it out. I also couldn’t figure out where the darned moon was – it should have been up by now. But I wouldn’t see it until I was a mile from home.
At about the same time I saw:
Shuttle logistics proved one of its downsides earlier today – we had failed to meet up at the correct Jack in the Box (there must be fifty in Tucson). I ended up driving to the base of the highway to meet up, leaving a car that needed to be fetched the next day.
I had a great ride following suburban trails and the river path the following evening. Leave it to me to turn the simplest of rides into an adventure. The low traffic route to Mt. Lemmon goes the ‘El Tour’ route through Mr. El Tour’s house (graciously open to cyclists!). But it’s been over a year since I’ve been that way. And daylight ran out on me just as I got to ‘resort’ community on the other side of Sabino Creek. I fumbled around in the dark, trying to blow cobwebs out of my memory. My headlamp still provided only a dim glow. Intuition, or perhaps dumb luck led me across the creek and out.
Nothing like a nice little challenge.
CDO Resurrection stats:
45 miles
3,600 ft climbing
10,200 ft descending
6 hours moving time
8:30 total time
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