When we left off, we were conceptually halfway through the Arizona Trail, resting up in Payson. I had to be on the computer the following night, tracking the Elk Mountains Grand Traverse, a ‘skimo’ race in Crested Butte, CO. So we had a mellow day ahead of us, with only a half day’s ride to Pine, AZ.
The route takes some neighborhood roads, followed by a nice forest path out of town. I did good.
Everything north of Payson felt nearly brand new to me. It’d been 9 years since I’d ridden any of it. I was excited to check it all out, and one of the goals of the trip was to refine it for AZT racers, collect a fresh GPS track.
We coasted and pedaled through Cracker Jack mine road, a pleasant diversion from the highway. It lulls you into a false sense of security — mellow grades, smooth surfaces, trees and shade!
Well, the trees and shade are here to stay, but the route is anything but mellow and smooth from here on out. Thanks to Payson local Wayne Gorry, I was able to piece together a quicker return to the AZT, by Oak Spring.
First you pass through the peaceful community of Arrowhead Estates, which allows pedestrian and bike access through a hiker gate. They even have a trail register right in the middle of the community.
As we were milling about, trying to find the register and the trail, we heard a voice, “Hey! Are you doing the 750?”
“No, or yes, or, well, I put the race on!”
We met Rick and Bev, AZT trail stewards and all around trail heroes. They’ve met quite a few racers in the past, and asked if they could offer them water. They also apologized for the state of the trail, both to get to the AZT and once you’re on it. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy.
Checking the trail register it was fun to go back and see entries from Max, Forest, Jill, nearly everyone that has made it this far on the 750. This is a unique trail register, in that thru-hikers and day riders would never go here. It’s only a connection thru-riders use to join the AZT after Wilderness. So we only had to go back a few pages to find racer entries.
Seeing everyone’s sign-ins, while standing there in the quiet of the forest, having pedaled the route myself, really hit me. It made the race more real to me. More real than watching dots on a tracker, or seeing everyone off at Parker Lake (even if I was racing to Picketpost). This is a really cool thing I have done. I hope it can continue indefinitely.
The trail up to Oak Spring and the AZT was not as bad as it’s been made out to be. I never remembered it being bad, but was prepared for the worst. I usually have a selective memory for hike-a-bike. A trail with 40% HAB gets logged as 5-10% in my optimistic mind. So when Eszter asked if she should just forgo the bike shorts and be ready to hike, I said, ‘yes’, wanting to keep expectations appropriately low. Turns out, with some pruning, it could be mostly rideable.
Some may not agree that getting to rejoin the AZT early (before Pine) is a good thing. As Rick told us, the trail was not laid out well, and is full of rubble.
Full of beauty too, and some chunky descending. I call it a win. Knowing that we were almost done for the day made it easy to enjoy it. Plus it had been a couple days since we’d seen actual singletrack, or AZT.
Along the way, we had been picking up rumors of a brewery in Pine that maybe had cabins available for AZT folks. We had a reservation for a room in Strawberry, since it was the only place we could find. But Strawberry was a hefty climb off the route. I think we might have been able to figure out a singletrack way to get up there, but we had our fingers crossed, as we approached Pine, hoping we wouldn’t have to ride up there.
We exited the AZT at the Pine Trailhead and headed towards town. We both expected the brewery to be several miles away, probably with some hills or headwind twixt here and there. This isn’t our first rodeo.
The next few minutes were magic. “THAT Brewery” was first thing we rode past, almost too close to the trail. AZT banners everywhere. They have pizza. We inquired about rooms. Yes, they have a cabin available, and it’s 50% off for AZT thru-peoples. They have wifi. I have no taste for beer, but Ez was stoked at the options, including one named after the trail.
our little cabin in Pine
Pine may win as the best trail town, and THAT Brewery gets huge points for their support of the AZT.
We ate pizza for dinner (maybe technically second dinner, since we had burgers late in the afternoon), and they played our song!
No, not some romantic special song of ours (though that is something that you might expect from us). No, you see, we were looking down the barrel of the Highline Trail, arguably the hardest piece of the AZT 750, and full of unrideable agony.
“Doubletrack’s getting old, singletrack just leave me cold. There’s just one trail good enough for me, YEAH, me. Don’t gimee no crummy triple track, I know what I need…. Singing I love Hike-a-bike!!”
The hike-a-bike song! Sung to the tune of “I love Rock ‘n Roll”, with lyrics adapted from Weird Al’s version, “I love Rocky Road.”
It was a good omen for the ride ahead. THAT Brewery wins again — they have the HAB song on regular rotation!
That night I struggled to manage tracking from an iPad, but was able to accomplish enough to get it going and adapt to the last minute course change (avalanche danger). It wasn’t a restful night, and I learned a lot about what an iPad can and can’t do, but it was fun to do something other than just ride bikes.
I couldn’t get out too early, still working the race, but eventually was able to cut the tether.
Time for Highline! We met a trail crew at the Pine Trailhead. No, they weren’t working on Highline, sadly. Everyone knows it needs it, but it’s almost too big a project to consider.
Pure pine needle bliss. The kind of trail desert dwellers dream of.
Yep, nothing but pure bliss here!
Here too.
Ah, there we go.
And so it goes, through the entire 18 miles… alternating between bliss and brutal, but never staying on one or the other for very long.
I remembered that the views, as you traverse and “contour” just below the Mogollon Rim, are incredible.
I had forgotten about the prime slickrock sections! Just like Sedona, only 2000′ higher, and followed by hike-a-bike instead of burned in and over-ridden tread.
Highline is anything but overridden. I noticed the ~10 chainring marks on this very old water bar and joked that you could see Max’s, Tim’s, Blake’s, Aaron’s and all other ~8 people that have made it this far in the AZT 750. No one else would be stupid or persistent enough to get a bike this far into Highline!
I suppose it’s debatable whether the trail has a place in an AZT thru-trip or race. I vote yes. The BS factor is high, but you do get to ride some nice stuff, and it’s not continuously hike-a-bike. It’s just really slow, for a really long time.
And it’s one of few pieces of AZT that feels like Colorado, and has plenty of high quality water sources. Pick your stream.
Plus, when you’re done with Highline, you get to do a real hike-a-bike. Up to the Rim! Beautiful place to be, difficult place to have a bicycle. We took the tunnel trail, rather than the powerline, but I’m still not sure which one is the AZT. It doesn’t really matter — six of one, half dozen of the other.
Attaining the Mogollon Rim is one of the most victorious moments of the AZT. I couldn’t help but raise a fist and shout. Flat ground and smooth surfaces are in front of us for the first time in more than a day.
Things definitely improve as you descend away from the rim, but there still aren’t any gimmes. It sure gets a lot more rideable.
We pushed up a short hike-a-bike before calling it a night on top of a hill. It had been pretty warm on Highline all day, but above the Rim it’s a different world.
A chill in the air, we made some warm tea and wondered how cold it would get. It ended up being a very pleasant night. Perfect forest camping.
We could feel Highline’s effect in us the next day. Luckily the trail is pretty mellow. I figured out several lingering questions in routing and re-routing for the GPS file as we made our way towards Blue Ridge campground.
Hey look, there’s trail across this meadow now. That’s an improvement!
The condition of the many 2-tracks and 4wd roads that follow, on the other hand, was anything but an improvement. The soil was just loose and uneven enough to knock several MPH off our speed. Throw in some strong headwinds out of the west, and it made for some slow and demoralizing progress.
This section has some good trail, and wins huge points for giving you a ‘lost in the woods’ feel. But it was a bit too long and slow for us. Mostly it was just a case of improper expectations. I had remembered making good time here on both of my trips. Not so much today. We had to curtail our expectations of making Mormon Lake in good time. And I even misjudged our water, too.
Rookie mistake. Eszter was a good sport in going along with it. We ended up pushing to make Mormon Lake on the last bit of highway. Eszter declared she was OK with getting a room, if we could secure one.
More importantly, we were able to secure root beer floats and pizza! The pizzeria opened up just a couple days before, for the first time ever, so they were excited to serve us. We were excited to eat pizza!
It seemed brutally cold to our rootbeer and pizza laden selves, as we stepped out to wander around and try to find our cabin. The wind was ripping right through us. We declared the cabin to be a good decision given the wind and cold. Little did we know what was in store for us the next night.
We weren’t too concerned with staying on the trail out of Mormon Lake, knowing part of it was closed due to logging, anyway. We enjoyed a gentle warmup on the car-free pavement around the lake, before joining it on its way over to Lake Mary Rd.
We also weren’t too concerned about riding the bumpy trail up on Anderson Mesa, since I’ve ridden it many times as a part of the Coconino Loop, and Eszter will be riding it soon enough. We had seen that a storm was coming to the northlands, and were on a mission to make it as far as we could before getting shut down by death mud.
I did attempt to freehand a connection back to Walnut Canyon, since the last miles into Flag are good trail I wanted to show Eszter. We found a cool old Highway bridge, but no obvious and easy connection back to the AZT. Oh well, back to pavement into town. We’d be on forest trail soon enough.
We got suckered into buying far too much food at Sprouts in Flagstaff. We just couldn’t resist. So many choices of trail food we love, but haven’t been able to find anywhere. Eszter went way over the top in what she threw into the cart, but I contributed too.
It would have been OK, except that we got accosted by a sketchy character, right in the middle of our gear explosion. Normally when someone approaches and slurs, “Heeeeey, I’m really messed up,” then continues mumbling nonsense, you just walk away. We couldn’t, with food, gear and bikes all over the place. I tried to understand what it was he wanted from us (it wasn’t money), but “I’m really messed up” was about the only thing I could understand. I started asking him to please leave us alone, but he wouldn’t. He was so wasted that he could barely stand, so I wasn’t too worried about him, but we couldn’t get rid of him.
Eventually he did stumble away, going to bother others. We then proceeded to get out of dodge, liking our chances with bears and mountain lions much more than 2-legged critters that congregate in urban areas. We somehow got all the food jammed into our packs and stomachs, pedaling out of town to try to recover and get back on the trail.
ez go boom!
It was a little difficult to get back in trail mode. A short break from the heavy bike and sketchy feeling made a big difference.
It helps that the riding is so good. Well traveled, recently built. Just sweet, sweet singletrack, really.
Oh yeah, there we go. Back in business!
The climb up to Aspen corner was well shielded from the wind, and an absolute pleasure to pedal. When we started running into patches of snow, we knew the north facing descent would be worse. We decided to bail in favor of keeping our feet dry, and descending to lower elevations before sunset.
We took the connection Coconino uses, and the one I’ve ridden in previous AZT trips, before new trail was built. It’s beautiful, even if we’d lost our shelter from the wind.
Continuing on Hart Prairie road to rejoin the AZT was an exercise in beautiful desperation. The wind was so fierce that pedaling into it was almost unimaginable. It cut right through us. But light was golden, and the landscape had an other-world feel to it. We were fortunate to not have much westward travel. We could not have sustained much, with 40 mph winds and near freezing temperatures. We continued on and hoped to find cover. Somewhere, anywhere, that was less windy than *here*.
It was not to be. None of the cindercones did anything to block the wind. The trees, no matter how big, had no effect. It was ripping… everywhere.
We pedaled into the night, stopping just short of Missouri Bill, knowing that the trail descended into open plains from there. No cover to be found.
Surely the wind would die down after dark? And we’d get up super early to beat the wind in the morning, since we had westward travel on tap! It was the perfect plan.
The perfect plan that didn’t pan out. It ripped all night. I put my earplugs in to try to block out the sound. I never got that cold, but also didn’t get that much sleep either. A calm morning was not to be, so we got on the trail at first light, just because we were tired of not sleeping in our bags.
Onto the Grand Canyon, the storm is coming, and this next stretch is known for terrible, terrible mud!
Leave a Reply