The esteemed Mr. Curiak decided he wasn’t ready for winter just yet. I know the feeling. So he headed south for a few days of sonoran desert chunk. First up was South Mountain in Phoenix. It’s been years since I’ve ridden there, and most of my memories of the trail are from the Squealer (Jim W’s race / time trial on the National Trail).
We started up National Trail. Burned some time retrying and scoping the alternate lines, such that I wondered if we’d get out to see much more of the mountain (not that I cared much).
We were having too much fun to notice we’d missed the turn for the Holbert descent. I looked up and noticed we were about to go under the towers. Doh!
So we flipped it and headed back to Holbert.
Holbert looks right down on Peenix, and is full of chunky goodness (my first time on the trail). I look forward to my next ‘run’ on it.
We rolled over to San Juan, first sliding around on the rubble-meister Max Delta Trail. Alta started off poorly (more rubble), but soon turned to bench cut trail with just rideable switchbacks.
Good stuff.
Alta wasn’t quite what we were expecting.
There were some exciting, exposure induced, moments. Neat trail, and one I’m glad to have seen.
Time to go down…
More switchback challenges kept us on our toes.
Far west National was rubble strewn. We hopped on the road to climb back to the good stuff, descending National back to the Pima Canyon lot. We were both sad to realize we were back at the bottom, though it had been a full eight hours on the bike, so we were ready to be done.
Well worth the drive up from Tucson. I’m going to have to make it back before it starts getting hot again.
rad,
I worked in Phoenix for 6 weeks once and rode s. mountain almost every day… at 4:00 am when it was only 98 degrees…
Those trails are so fun.
Wow, that’s some seriously technical riding. It’s cool that you guys rode together as you are both in my rss reader. It’s always interesting with paths cross and I read about the same ride on two different blogs.