The night before the ride my throat was pretty sore. I was fighting off a cold with throat spray and lozenges. When I woke it wasn’t any better but I was not about to stay in bed and miss the opportunity to ride some new singletrack on the Black Canyon Trail.
SuLing on a picture perfect fall in Arizona day
It was 8am when I met with Jeff, SuLing, Craig from UT, and James at the Soap Creek trailhead. The ride was dubbed the “Slacker” ride since we were doing this on a Friday when most of us should have been at work. On the way up the road to the trailhead I passed the professional trail crew building brand new trails north of our start point.
James and James cruising up the Skyline trail segment
As we begun our journey we quickly discovered that the dirt on the new trail was very soft in sections resulting in three of us hitting terra firma within the first 100 yards. Once the new single track gets burned in it will offer some spectacular valley views. The crews have done an amazing job with the construction and flow except for the HIB at one of the river crossings.
Mucho exposure on one of the new Soap Creek trail switchbacks.
The trail heads south begininng at the top of one canyon dropping down to the Agua Fria river and then climbs back out where it intersects with the trail from the Black Canyon trailhead. After riding up to the top of the Skyline segment I was done. Fatigue from not sleeping well and fighting off a cold had got the best of me. I parted from the crew and headed back to our start point on my own. The GPS read 15.72 miles with 2372 feet of climbing. Not too back for a “Slacker”.
James coming through with SuLing in hot pursuit
