We left Superior in the morning and started heading up into Whitford Canyon. The riding in Whitford Canyon was fantastic, nice trail, not overgrown and we made really good time. We turned off at the AZT to go climb up to a high pass at 4500 feet above Haunted Canyon. This begins our detour route around the Superstition wilderness that we had pioneered through several recon trips over the past couple of months. It’s not exactly an easy route but it’s more appealing then the other two options which is to ride pavement for 70 miles on busy roads either to the east or west side. So our detour begins in Haunted Canyon where there is a faint trail but towards the bottom the trail disappears completely. It was flooded out and just turns to a huge hike a bike. It took us the better part of the day to get down the canyon. It was definitely worse then we remember from going before. But it wasn’t too bad.
After Haunted Canyon we rode a little bit of forest road into the evening. We had a nice climb as the sun was setting heading towards Apache Hill where we made Camp Gunslight. This was a temporary place to rest before we attacked the next section which is to go through Apache Pass and then down through another Canyon and then up to Gunslight Canyon. There is no trail. We had hiked through and scouted it before so we knew how nasty and brush it is. Lee had found a pair of jeans that he had fashioned into suspenders to protect him from cactus. I cut up cardboard box and taped it around my shins. By the time we made it to the other side (which took a lot longer then expected) my boxes were completely shredded.
Once we got up to the road on the other side of Gunslight Gap, after hours of pushing our bikes through brush and over rocks, handing the bikes up and down, we got out onto the road. The road looked pretty bad. We weren’t sure where it was going. We didn’t make it very far until we started having flat problems. First my tire went out, and we kept patching and pumping it up. Lee ripped a knob off his rear tire that shot fluid all over the place. After patching it several times, it held. My flat problems continued all the way down to Roosevelt Lake. We’re now at the lodge and trying to patch tubes. We have one tube with 12 patches.
So, the plan is to wait for my friend Shane to run up some tubes. We’re not dead on the water, but we have a lot of cactus to go through. So we’re a bit delayed. So next we’re heading to El Oso road.
We went over 350 miles with no tube problems, but in the span of 10 minutes we used up all the spare tubes.
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