Another Glorious Day at Granite Mountain

Last Wednesday, a co-worker and I headed up to Prescott AZ to hit some of my favorite trails. My descriptions can't capture the beauty and serenity of this ride, but maybe my pictures can.






My co-rider was a bit out of shape, and needed to rest for 5-10 minutes out of every 20 minutes of riding, which was brutal...but it gave me time to take more pics than i normally would, so maybe it was a blessing in disguise....
But in actuality, we rode for 4 hours and only went 16.5 miles, which is slow-as-fuck even for a technical trail system.







Either way, it was one of the last beautiful days before snowfall, and a bad day riding beats just about anything else anyways...

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Windham WC 4x and DH track previews

Little known fact: The UCI Mountain Bike World Cup is paying our fair state a visit later this month at Windham Mountain, about 2 hours north of NYC. Above is a preview of the 4x and DH tracks. Both look amazing. Cannot wait for this.

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The Hundred Trail

decided to rise & shine early today and tackle the infamous 100 trail. this beauty runs 10 miles (one way) thru the heart of Phoenix, but don't think of this as an "urban" trail in any sense of the word. this trail connects North Mountain Park to Squaw Peak Mountain and there are no paved sections in between. although it may be described as "moderate" by some hardcore bikers, there were 4 times i had to walk my bike uphill, and not cuz i can't ride a fuckin bike. for every grueling uphill, there was some wicked chunky downhill that made me rethink my decision to ride without a helmet...

i rode the trail West to East, and intended to take the streets back to the starting point, but i still ended up on the trail for at least 1/3 of the return trip (and my streets experience was characterized by a looooooooooong gradual uphill and 2 near-collisions with cars...). in the end it was 18.3 miles in 2.5 hours. i had a raging headache that was due to the brutal abuse the trail dispensed thru my handlebars (and maybe a bit from dehydration although i drank 100oz of electrolyte enhanced H20).

Next time i'll probably be less strict about staying on the trail and try some of the dozens of off-shoots i passed...there's probably 500 miles of trails like this running thru the area. literally.

props to www.MTBikeAZ.com for the cool image

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