Flagstaff
In between Tucson and Virgin, UT, there’s Flagstaff. After doing a bit of research about the place, I learned a few things. Route 66 goes through, it’s 75 miles from the south rim of the Grand Canyon, and interestingly, has some great mountain biking. Given my time here got condensed to 1 full day, I had to make it count. All indicators pointed to Mt. Elden and the Schultz Creek Trail.
We got in around noon, packed the bike, and headed to the base of Mt. Elden. I was expecting to ride up 2K ft over 6 miles on fire road then descend 2K via singletrack via Schultz Creek. After hammering the climb, no small feat given the starting elevation was 7,200 ft and I added a mile of uphill singletrack traversing cause I started from the wrong trailhead, I was greeted with an amazing view!
The initial part of the descent was great too, right up till the snow! Come to find out, at 9K feet in mid-may, not all the snow has melted. It’s a bummer too cause it’s quite obvious the trail would’ve been awesome. Smooth, flowy singletrack weaving in and out of tall pines. Alas, I’d get up to 20 mph and lean back and hold on for dear life as I approached the various snowbanks.
Then, as luck would have it, I ran into a couple of locals, Bobby and Vince. No joke, Bobby recognized the yellow Santa Cruz bike from pictures at the recent ProGRT Rd. #1. They offered to show me some trails that were better than Schultz Creek and I was happy to follow. Alas, more snow. We back tracked a bit and went with option #2. Not sure the name of the first trail, but it was tight and mostly flowy. Then we hit Red Onion, another tight trail with some great switchbacks. It all ended on a super fast, flowly trail that seemed to go on for miles and miles.
What became evident as I descended… there’s an ungodly amount of trails here. From old-school xc to new-school dh, for all levels of rider. With Sedona a mere 45 minutes to the south, I’m surprised there’s not been more hype about these trails. Additionally, this has mtb destination written all over it.
Thanks to Bobby and Vince for guiding!
[...] World, left for southern Utah in the morning. You can get the full scoop on the ride over on my 529 Legion blog. Categories: General Tags: flagstaff, mt elden Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Leave a [...]