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| Day 1, England -> Phoenix |
| Day 2, Phoenix , Hawes MTB Ride |
| Day 3, Phoenix, Pima & Dynamite MTB Ride |
| Day 4, Phoenix -> Flagstaff via Sedona (MTB Ride) |
| Day 5, Sedona MTB Ride |
| Day 6, Flagstaff -> St George, Flagstaff and Kingman MTB rides |
| Day 7, St George, Goosebury Mesa MTB ride |
| Day 8, St George, Little Creek Mesa & Slickrock swamp MTB rides |
| Day 9, St George -> Fruita, 18 Road MTB ride |
| Day 10, Fruita, Western Rim MTB Ride |
| Day 11, Fruita, Hike & Kokopelli trails MTB ride |
| Day 12, Fruita -> Gallup Phil's World & Sand Canyon MTB rides |
| Day 13, Gallup - High Desert Trail & Zuni Mtns MTB Ride |
| Day 14, Gallup -> Flagstaff, Zuni Mtn's MTB Ride |
| Day 15, Flagstaff -> Phoenix -> England |
| USA Spring 2009 |
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Today I decided to go and ride a trail I'd not done before the Western Rim Trail, on a previous trip I had gotten as far as driving out the trail head before finding out I'd forgotten key items of riding gear. So this time I made sure everything was packed.
This time the only thing that went wrong for me was I forgot to reduce the number of way points on my gps tracks before transferring them to my GPS, so I did not have the full trail to follow on my GPS. So I had to rely on the small paper maps I had instead. Which led to a couple of unintended diversions along the way. |
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From where I had parked the suv I dropped down a steep rock dirt road and then headed along trail 2 towards the McDonald trail head. |
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| Trail 2 was fairly wide single track used by motorbikes, it joined onto the road to the McDonald Trail head which followed the course of a river bed to the the MD trail head. |
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At the Mcdonald trail head, I saw a sign saying there was a lot of rock art down the canyon, so I stashed my bike in a bush and walked down the canyon to have a look. |
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I only saw one panel with a few pictures, and as I was worried about my bike being nicked I didn't go any further into the canyon. |
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Video (8MB) |
From Mcdonald Parking I found some nice singletrack which went through the grasslands, But I took a wrong turn and ended up down at the Knowles overlook, so I backtracked up a dirt road until I saw some promising looking singletrack heading west which I took, this trail was good apart from a couple of too steep to ride up sections. |
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I saw a couple of amazing dust devils in this small canyon, but they didnt come out in my pictures. |
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Eventually after a another wrong tunr I got onto trail 6 and back onto the Kokopelli trail, which I rode along until I came to the turn down onto the western rim trail. |
| The trail dropped down steeply down a wide sandy track, before starting to contour along a bench. There some motor bikes tearing up the trail in this area. |
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The trail rolled along smoothly with a few small ups and down , and I arrived at the western rim overlook section of the trail. |
| The trail had a few little ups and downs along side the rim edge but was mainly flat and smooth. |
Video (7MB) |
Video (26MB) |
| The trail eventually came away from the rim and started to climb back up towards the Kokopelli trail again |
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Video (9MB) |
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The trail had some fun downs as well as climbs as it headed back towards the kokopelli trail. |
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The singletrack connected back onto the kokopelli trail double track, and I rode back along. The trail climbed up and offered views down to the western rim. |
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| I stopped for a bite to east at the point where I had originally joined the western rim trail, before then heading back along Trail 2 back towards the suv |
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Video (52MB) |
Trail 2 had some great downhill sections as well as a couple of very steep ups. |
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| Once the hill section as over trail 2 became wide singletrack for motor bikes again, and was pretty easy to cruise along on with little jumps. After one last climb up the rocky road I cam back to the SUV. |
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The ride was about 23 miles in total, and had quite a lot of variety in riding. Hardly anything of a really technical nature on the ride, just a couple of too steep to ride moto-x-hills, other than that just fun singletrack mixed in with some double tracks to get you to the good stuff. |
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After eating my cold Pizza back at the Hotel I went back over to 18 rd and rode Joe's ridge, then rode up Kessels run and then down prime cut, back up 18 rd and finally down Kessels run. The trails were quite muddy in places due to all the rain that fell the night before (I picked my bike up and avoided making the very muddy spots worse). I finished riding at about 9.40pm and stopped off at the City Market in Fruita for some food., before heading back to the Hotel. |
Video (14MB) |
DAY 11
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