Round the Peaks

With the help of some friends (thanks Troy and Nathan) I was able to piece together a singletrack heavy loop around Flagstaff’s biggest landmark — the San Francisco peaks. I’d done a loop around the peaks some 8 years ago, as part of a now-defunct race, but it was all on dirt roads. I wanted to do a ‘proper’ loop.

I rode from home (of course), hit the usual trails, and made my way over to Super Moto. I’d ridden down it for the first time the night before, and didn’t see any reason it wouldn’t be a hoot to climb.

It was. But progress was a little slow for making it round the peaks.

I was also conscious of my rear tire, with ~1500 miles on it including the AZT 300, Grand Loop and CocoMingo. I hadn’t had time to change it, and knew it was on its last leg. Every time I slid on a rock or gouged a sidewall, I winced.

The Crazy 88 route took me through ‘secret’ trail and over to Gimpy’s gully. I expected the climbing up to Snowbowl road to be steep and possibly have some hiking. Not so, not so.

Pretty soon I dropped off Aspen Corner retracing the classic AZT route of Andrea Lankford’s book, but today there was real AZT to explore.

Ohhhhh… yeaaaaah! Contour-o-rama, meadows, flowers, aspen groves.

It exceeded all expectations, and I was giddy as I pedaled through it all.

The rumor in town was that the AZT had just recently been punched through to FR418. No one knew for sure, and there’s only one way to find out!

It was all done, and even continued on the other side. I’m a sucker for new AZT, so I had to follow, even though I had no idea how to loop back around.

Fun descending ensued, and then some 4×4 road. I knew I was getting close to Kelly Tank, so I bailed onto moto trail, thinking it might take me where I wanted to go.

I almost bailed on it, thinking it was climbing to the very top of the White Horse Hills. It was difficult to get a read on. But as long as it stayed rideable and swoopy fun:

It was OK with me.

It burned a bunch of energy, but it sure was fun and incredibly scenic. Classic moto.

Finally I rejoined the graded road route, and the smoothness was too much for my tire….

It bubbled out and busted a seam. No way sealant was going to seal something it couldn’t really get to. Pulling the tire off I found the whole tread area was full of bubbles. Strange.

My spare tube required two patches before it would hold. But, hey, I was in the forest, under shade, and it was a beautiful day.

I dug hard into the pedals climbing up to the Interior Basin of the Peaks and was surprised to find myself on singletrack — not road as I had assumed the last climb was. All a good climb until the last pitches. At the top I met a crew working on rerouting the trail and also responsible for completing the AZT just two weeks ago. It’s always fun to talk AZT with trail heroes. And these heroes told me how to find this:

Inner basin water… cold and oh so refreshing. Better than the 20oz of tepid water in the pack.

The rest was elementary. Go down waterline road, enjoyable iff (if and only if) you like coasting endlessly through aspen groves. Then yet more descending on Schultz Creek back into town.

61 miles, 8 hours moving time.