Craig and I bikepacked most of the Gila River Ramble route (more info here). It’s a ~100-mile route incorporating some of my favorite parts of the Arizona Trail from Passages 15, 16, and 17, including the “Ripsey Hill” from this ride. We cut off part of the route, the northernmost loop, but still did about 80 miles and 9000 of climbing over three days.

The route crosses the Gila River twice, once on the Kelvin Bridge that’s the standard AZ Trail crossing, and again downstream from that. When the river is running high, there’s a bridge crossing downstream of a diversion dam, which is shown on the route descriptions above. At low flow, it’s possible to wade across the river upstream from the diversion dam, although it involves hacking through thick tamarisk that’s overgrown the riverbanks. In November when we did this ride, the river flow was pretty low and we were able to wade across it, although the tamarisk was very thick! You can check the USGS stream flow data for the Gila River at Kelvin, AZ, to see if crossing the river might be feasible.

Stating out in the parking area along the Florence-Kelvin Highway

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I recently bought some bikepacking bags from Rogue Panda Designs in Flagstaff, and wanted to give them a try on a short trip. We rode some of the Arizona Trail near Tucson, taking Passages 7, 6, and part of 5 from the Gabe Zimmerman Trailhead to a small campsite a few miles north of Kentucky Camp and back. We rode about 62 miles, and it was definitely not flat, with about 4300′ of climbing on the first day and 2450′ on the way back.

Here’s a post from last year of a long day ride I went on, which covered these sections of the trail plus a bit more.

Here’s my bike and new bags at the trailhead. I still have a handlebar bag on order, which will be good for stuffing a sleeping bag and other things in. I carried some of that in a backpack for this trip.

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Well, I was hoping that by this point I’d be writing up a 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo race summary, but things did not work out this year. In trying to get everything ready for the camping and racing, as well as get some necessary work done last week, I was not sleeping enough and running myself into the ground. By the time I was packing up my truck (in the rain) and heading out on Friday, I was feeling like I was on the verge of getting sick, with barely enough energy to set up camp that evening, much less ride for most of the weekend. I called it off, unpacked all of my stuff, and went to bed. Given how tired I was on a Saturday afternoon, it was pretty clear I made the right call, even if I was still a bit upset about backing out of the race for the second year in a row.

It’s not a total loss, as the race did motivate me to ride a lot in preparation, and the 24 mini cheesecakes that Karen made will not go to waste. But it did get me thinking that I might just not be that into these big, organized events anymore. This is not the first time recently that race day arrived and I was burned out or lacking enthusiasm. I love riding, and a challenge, but it seems like I enjoy it the most when it’s just on my own terms.

As predicted, it started raining today, but the forecast calls for it to end by Friday. I hope that doesn’t change! And I hope the course is not too muddy by the time of the race. Ideally it’ll dry out enough that there’s no standing water or mud, but the ground will still be a little damp and that’ll keep the dust under control. The last time I rode, it was like biking thorough a snowstorm. My beard was almost white at the end of the race, and I can’t imagine what the inside of my lungs looked like.

In preparation for the race, Karen made 24 mini chocolate peanut butter cheesecakes that she’ll be bringing! Those will certainly be a hit at camp.

One cheesecake per lap should cover a good fraction of my calorie needs…

The 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo is less than a week away! I went out to the course for a test ride today, mainly to see if there were any tricky spots that I should be aware of during the actual race. And as a test of what kind of shape I’m in, I wanted to see how I felt on the “bitches” section, a gasline road with six or seven short but steep hills in a row. I rode through them at a decent speed without stopping, vomiting, or dying, which is a good sign. Not looking forward to repeating that particular section lap after lap, though. There is a bypass trail which is pretty nice, but it takes significantly longer so I will probably only ride that on the final lap.

“24 Hour Town” was already starting to come together, with a fair number of people parking RVs and setting up tents. By the start of the race this weekend, there’ll probably be a few thousand people there.

The weather forecast has been worrying me a bit. After weeks of above-average temperatures and no rain, there’s a storm coming through the area this week. All indications are that the rain should pass by the weekend, and I hope that holds rather than creeping into the weekend. Highs are supposed to be in the mid to high 60s which will be nice. The overnight lows under 40 might require some good insulation, though. Some rain in advance of the race could be a good thing, helping to keep the dust down and make the trails faster. As long as it doesn’t turn everything to mud and wash out parts of the trail…

My goal is to ride through the night and do 12 laps (~200 miles), hopefully not running out of steam in the middle of the night like the last time I rode it. Not eating enough was my biggest problem on that ride since I was trying to handle everything myself, but Karen will be helping out at camp this time so I can just focus on riding and maybe some occasional bike chain cleaning. We’ll see how it goes!

There’s only about four weeks left until the 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo. I’ve admittedly been feeling somewhat under-trained for this, but I rode 50 miles at the Honeybee Canyon Trails today and felt pretty strong (and not overly tired afterwards), so that was reassuring.

Granted, I’d like to ride ~200 miles (12 laps) in the 24HOP, which is a big jump in distance, but I think that if I stay on track over the next few weeks my conditioning will be fine and the main issues will be staying in a good mental state for the race and (especially) taking in enough calories to keep going. Not eating enough and bonking at around 2 am was what got me last time, and what I need to try hardest to avoid this time around. Having a little feed bag on the top tube of my bike will hopefully help this year, as I can more easily grab things out of it to eat on some of the smoother dirt road sections or short breaks along the trail. I remember more than a few times during my last 24HOP race when I knew I should eat but just didn’t want to bother digging something out of my CamelBak, and I paid dearly for that growing calorie deficit when it caught up with me in the middle of the night.

More to follow…

Today I rode Passage 2 and Passage 3 of the Arizona Trail, between Parker Canyon Lake and Patagonia. I set up a car shuttle with a few friends who wanted to do it as a trail run. It was about 30 miles with ~4000 feet of total climbing, and took me around 7 hours since there was a fair amount of bike-pushing on difficult and/or loose sections of trail. The trail runners finished only about a half hour after I did, and were actually ahead of me at the half-way point! I don’t have the time/motivation to write up a detailed description, so I’ll just copy my notes below along with a few photos. It definitely had some nice scenery at points, but the overall difficulty of the terrain made it something that I don’t have much desire to ride again any time soon. Passage 15 as part of the “Ripsey Lolipop” is probably still my favorite of the sections within a few hours drive of Tucson, and Passages 5-8 between the Santa Ritas and Rincons are pretty fun too. I’d probably even give Passage 14 another shot before this one, but I’m sure I’ll try this again sometime once I forget about all the hard parts…

Passage 2 started out fairly smooth for the first few miles, but after a while there was a lot of bike pushing and stretches of steep, loose, rocky trail. There was a reasonably long and smooth stretch of jeep road in the middle, which was a nice break, but the difficult terrain came back after a while. There was some pretty nice scenery, including views of the San Rafael Valley.

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I did this ride with my friend Neil last year when he was back in town over the holidays, and we repeated it with a somewhat bigger group this year. It’s a beautiful area and I’d highly recommend it as a good dirt/gravel ride. I rode it on a mountain bike, which was nice for some of the washboard sections, but it’s totally rideable on a touring-stye bikes with moderate-width tires. You can check out Last Year’s Ride for more details, including a map and GPS track.

Climbing through the Patagonia Mountains

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I rode the Ripsey Lolipop route earlier this year, and once before in 2015. It’s definitely one of the best MTB rides in southern AZ, so when my friend Craig mentioned that he wanted to ride it sometime I was more than happy to do it again. I won’t repeat all of the details here, but to quote from a previous post:

“The Ripsey Lollipop route (info here and here) heads north on Passage 15 of the Arizona Trail and then loops back on the Florence-Kelvin Highway (a wide dirt road) and some jeep roads to rejoin the trail and return to the start point. The trailhead, and most of the trail, are basically in the middle of nowhere.”

The ride is about 52 miles with over 4,000 feet of elevation gain. We rode it in a little under 10 hours, comparable to my previous rides. There’s lots of photos and descriptive info in my earlier posts about this ride, so I’ll just add a few new photos here.

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Aengus and I rode Passage 14 of the Arizona Trail, making a loop back on some dirt roads in a route similar to the Antelope Peak Challenge. Antelope Peak (seen under the trail sign below) is near the endpoint of the trail, and always seems distressingly far away. This section of the trail does not get a lot of traffic since it’s long (~28 miles), remote, and dry.

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