Samaniego Ridge

Photo courtesy of Scott Morris

From the top of Mt Lemmon, we descended off the backside of the mountain on Meadows. Not before long, the cloud cover begin the slowly dissipate, revealing Catalina and Oro Valley some 7,000 feet below. That was temporary. For the first 4 hours of the ride, we were riding in the clouds.

The trail continued to Sutherland before we re-routed off trail to bushwack down Samaniego. It was slow, very slow. Some hikers had previously marked the next section of the trail, although had failed to do any real trail work. Louis hunted for the trail markers and blazed a trail, often choosing some nice freeride lines. At one section, I went ahead (big mistake) and tried to ride a line down a steep rock. Disaster. My derrailleur and hanger bent back so far into my spokes when I hit a tree that we had to turn my bike into a singlespeed (much to the patience and help of Louis).

After about 30 minutes, we continued down some nice singletrack (see picture above). More sweet single track followed as we neared the 50-Year Area, although the few sections of uphill on Baby Jesus forced my skip to jump up and cause some minor problems. Louis' family made me feel like home with some gatorade and pizza. We chatted a bit about the ride. His house is on the edge of the 50-Year Trail, so we had a great time eating and drinking with the route in front of us. I kept looking up and following that crazy line down the mountain, thinking that took us 7 hours and we only rode 12 miles.




12.68 miles
7 hours total, GPS said 5 hours of "moving time" although that might be with all the route finding we did
2381 feet of climbing, 8,005 feet of descending
You can see pictures from SunDog and Krein's last ride here.



Louis gave me a ride home back to my car at Starbucks. The benz managed to start after a few turns. I was not really tired from the ride, although I was a little hungry. My roommate and I dined at Sushi Garden and decided that we would try to have Sushi Sundays when we can. I love Sushi.

Machetes and knee warmers?

Mt Lemmon is the mecca of mountain biking in the summer months in southern Arizona. During the past few months, I have ridden on it continuously on the front side. The front side is like the crown jewel of the entire mountain, technical single track and paved rides abound. The backside remains mostly a mystery for me, its trails are said to be overgrown with cat claw, brier patches, and downed trees.

Frankly, I know very little of the condition of some of the trails on the backside. My only sources are Louis and Scott, and their reports are from almost 1/2 year ago on Sammy. I rode Oracle Ridge and the Traverse of Death in February and recently I went down to the Sammy and CDO intersection of the Meadow Trail a few weeks ago.

Enter the proposed routes: Meadows-CDO-CDO east-Red-Danny-Control Rd or Meadows-Sammy-CDO/CDO east-Red-Danny-Control

Foothills

430 am in Tucson

Instead of driving to the base of Mt Lemmon and riding up, I opted a nice ride in the Foothills. I was curious how much climbing my 40-mile hill route had, so I took the GPS with me this morning. I was pleasantly surprised to see some good climbing and nice grades, the highest being 18%. I skipped the morning coffee run in favor of a recovery milkshake, and breakfast, carrot juice and tea a bit later. The profile below shows the elevation/distance, the shaded colors correspond to speed, blue-green-yellow-red is 5-10-15-20 mph respectively (approx.).


Miles: 41.18
Climbing: 3319ft
Average Speed: 15.4 mph

Yellow

It was hard to watch this today and not want to resume riding my road bike a few days a week. If you missed the past two stages, stop what you are doing, and find them on the internet. Now. Evans is simply amazing. This few stages combined with my recent trips to Lemmon and Flagstaff has led me to believe that I need to ride higher and climb more. The new plan: to ride Lemmon once a week on the road bike. Anyone care to join?

Around Mount Humphreys

A post a few weeks ago on MTBR sparked my interest for a ride along the waterline in Flagstaff to the inner basin. Later, this dream was fueled by Nathan's Crazy 88 race that will be held on the same route, although his route continued on from Inner Basin and circumnavigated Humphreys. I emailed Nathan to get the GPX track a few days before we departed for Flagstaff. The route was a 50-mile loop around Mount Humphreys with a touted 7,386 feet of climbing.


The route started up Waterline Trail, a jeep road that begins at Schutlz. The Waterline Trail was built in the early 1900s for routing water from the springs in the Inner Basin, once the heart of a 15,000 foot-high volcano. The route along Waterline is the only way of riding through this wilderness area. The slow and steady climb on this section of this trail has breath-taking views, aspens, and wildflowers. At one point, the aspens seemed to go on forever.


Dave riding along the Waterline Trail
Inner basin and Lockett Meadow with Humphreys in the background. Wildflowers were the highlight during the next section of the route.

The first section of the route could be summed up in a few words: amazing views, aspens, and forest roads. The second half was technical singletrack and green. The route veered off the jeep road to a singletrack used by motorcycles, known as Sherlock before cresting at the Snowbowl Road and continuing on Viet Springs.

We veered a little off the race route to ride Lower Super Moto and the Fort Valley singletrack to the camp.

We managed to dodge most of the rain that you can see in the above pictures (courtesy of Dave) until the last mile into camp.


Moving time: 5:29
Miles: 44.42 miles (GPS was turned on at the Schutlz Tank)
Average speed: 7.9 mph

During the Friday and Sunday rides, we logged in some good climbing on Elden, hitting up some of the best trails on Elden. During the weekend, we accumulated about 100 miles with 14,000 feet of climbing. This is probably the last ride that I had with Dave before he moves to Montana. Dave is not only one of my best mountain bike friends, he is partly responsible for my crazy addiction to mountain biking (Max and Scott being the other two).

Col du Lemmon: Climb or Die

After multiple failed, solo attempts at climbing Mt Lemmon via singletrack from Tucson, Scott M and I finally succeeded last Friday after a little less than 9 hours. We started from the bottom of Catalina Highway at 4am, before beginning the long trek up La Milagrosa. Humidity and nerves were high during the first half of the route, but both quickly began to fade once we completed Green Mountain, the 2nd hardest section of the route.

The route consists of approximately 90% uber technical singletrack, more than 12,000 feet of climbing and multiple road crossings that scream bailout, bailout, along with the tradition of drinking a mandatory tall boy Coors Lt before making the final push to Aspen Draw. Cameras were not taken on the route in order to preserve our secret formula for riding up such technical trails (that and my camera is still "drying out" from a canyoneering trips two months ago and Scott forgot his in the car).



Miles: 30.27
Elevation gained: 12,506
Some of the trails climbed during the adventure: La Milagrosa, Sunset, Bear Wallow, Aspen Draw, Secret, Bigelow, Butterfly, Prison, Molino, Bugs, and Green
Average speed: 3.8 miles
Moving time: 8:40:27

Pedal1Long

Dave has a sweet design for a bike t-shirt, check out them out here. Not only will I be sporting one soon, I plan on buying more in the future. One can never have enough bike t-shirts.

I heard some interesting facts on the Pentagon with gas prices today on NPR.

Lt. Col. Brian Maka puts the Pentagon's fuel expenses in perspective. "Generally, a $1 increase in the price of a barrel of oil on the open market translates into an increase for the whole department of $130 million," Maka says.

Over the last six months, oil prices have increased by roughly $50 a barrel. That translates into a huge spending increase.

More reason why we should be driving this around town. It looks like a bike can fit in the trunk.

Finally, it is time to buy a new saddle. Going on some suggestions from Dave C., I hope to have a new saddle in the next few weeks. Some other future purchases in the bike department now that money is flowing in: customized tubeless wheels and overnight bags.