throet

I'm definitely riding today and tomorrow!

1/4 Notch and Picnic were good yesterday evening although still tacky in some areas. With another day of sunshine on the way, everything should be primo by mid-day. Saw other posts in the Brushy thread indicating that Mulligan was good and that Peddler's probably needed another day to dry out.

Yep same piece posted above by ATXZJ. Great guide!

For sure unless it rains between now and then. I'm planning to ride.

1/4 notch is mostly dry with several shaded areas still tacky. Nothing sticking to tires though and no slick rocks. Haven't checked anything else out here. EDIT: Rode Lower Picnic and Picnic X and both were fine, although another day of drying out will make conditions ideal. A lot of leaves covering the trail, but nothing slick. Only a few spots on 1/4 Notch and Picnic showing evidence of riding during wet conditions - nothing too terrible.

I'm getting ready to head out to see how things are looking. Generally if anything's going to be OK it is 1/4 Notch. I'll go in on the west end, climbing up the Swag Bail. Assuming everything is OK going up the climb, which I'm sure it will be, then I'll know within about 500 yards or so how the rest of the trail is going to be. Assuming I'm not having too much fun, I'll stop and post a report.

I rode the regional trail between the YMCA and Brushy Creek Lake Park. Didn't see any interlopers on the trails, and actually from what I could see, things were looking pretty good for possibly mid-day tomorrow. Then I got home and it started pouring down rain again - damn! Hopefully I didn't anger the trail gods by sprinting up and down the jeep road and the other climb up to Avery Ranch where the old Deception entrance was. Both of those sprint tracks were in fine shape.

Hopefully another day or two of sunshine will get things dried out sufficiently.

While Bend, OR would be a great place to spend a few days riding and checking out the great vibe, Hood River offers a better option for a quick ride if you're not wanting to stray from your route. The vibe in Hood River is great too. It is home to Full Sail Brewing, but the town is loaded with great places to check out all within a few blocks. For local mountain biking check https://www.hrats.org/trails/trails.

Me and my big bro on our first bikes

It's like the POD of MTB. You pack things up and then hook up whenever you're ready.

Make sure your GoPro is turned on!

Hopefully all the fires will at least be burned out by the time you go

Should be fine, although of course anything at high-elevation is going to be subject to unpredictable snow events. When I lived up in that area I generally was riding trails from late Feb thru mid Nov, with the highest elevation stuff being best between Aug-Oct.

Just make sure when you interview her there is nobody named Mike hanging around.

I haven't been on a bike in almost 2 weeks, and things aren't looking great for this weekend either. Just learned from a post on another thread that RPR is closed to the public this weekend, which I confirmed on their website. Although the rains have subsided some, it seems we're getting just enough every day to keep things really wet. In the 4 years I've been riding trails in Austin, I don't recall ever seeing such a lengthy period of wetness like this.

Thanks for the heads up. It does appear from their website that they are closed Sep 15-16 for a shooting event but I may call up there to see if they will be open to public riding this afternoon.

I'm very satisfied with my Kuat NV 2.0. It works great, looks better than the 1-UP, and was quite a bit cheaper after applying a Backcountry discount. Not sure what you mean by "all covered in plastic". There are some plastic pieces, but it's mostly glistening, powder-coated metal. If it fails me, I'll be the first to admit my mistake and post up here.

Really depends on how many ride-stops you want to make and how willing you are to add a few hours to your trip. You could easily re-route through Grand Junction and do some nice riding around there. Likewise, a re-route through Bend, OR would afford some nice riding without too much of a detour. There's great riding around Hood River, OR as well though, which is right off of the route you have mapped.

Ha I'm taking advantage while I can, since I'll probably have to go back to work eventually. I'm working on a deal now with a start-up and they're talking about an 18-month "lockdown" development period. That doesn't sound good at all! At my age, you never know even when you've got 18 months of riding left in you, although I'm shooting for another five years.

I've compiled many of the reports from the old Mojo site into the main post in this thread for future reference. Hope nobody minds me doing that. Lot's of good info that I felt would be beneficial and prevent folks from having to repost. Each post is in quotes with the OP credited.

No problem it was actually this thread that prompted us setting up the new Forum section. I'm trying to compile much of the information that's been posted here and on Mojo.

https://goo.gl/maps/ArLGgbEFr352 https://www.mtbproject.com/directory/8011366/sedona "There's a lot of stuff in Sedona that is seriously high consequence with little room for error and not super obvious lines. I'd consider getting a guide or hooking up with a local for some of the bigger / more difficult stuff, if only just to follow lines through the slickrock and drops. If you ride do by yourself, it'd be a really good idea to at least have some type of tracker app on when you're out on the bigger trails. It can get real real quick. Pads and sticky-sole shoes (i.e. not had plastic XC shoes) are a good idea too. FWIW I like the stuff on the south and west side of town most. Triple H is your best bet for a mega loop that takes in most of the best hard stuff in one go. For bikes, I would really consider renting a bigger bike than an XC rig if you truly want to try to ride everything and have fun doing it. I'm not a more-is-better kinda guy when it comes to travel, but there were definitely times on a 120mm rig that I truly felt outgunned in various spots. 140+ on a 29 or 160ish on a 27.5 is the sweet spot I think. Over the Edge, Bike and Bean, and Absolute Bikes are all good shops to rent from. Sedona miles are hard miles, especially this time of year. Kinda like BCBG back trails on steroids - they feel relentless with the technical ups and downs. I'm sure you're a very fit rider, but just know that doing something like Triple H is going to take pretty much anyone all day without mishaps (especially in the heat) and leave you totally gassed. Just plan accordingly, and take lots of food/water. There's not much shade. Anything that's under the radar out there is typically very hush-hush and VERY high consequence." ~ DSC "I happened to do 7 straight days in Sedona in March. Tried to cover all the classics and catch a bunch of the other "really interesting" stuff too. Several pretty big rides and a few shuttles that may or may not make sense for you, but should give you some ideas at least. Every day was awesome in its own way: https://www.strava.com/activities/885634707 https://www.strava.com/activities/886549364 https://www.strava.com/activities/887908524 https://www.strava.com/activities/889400821 https://www.strava.com/activities/890394375 https://www.strava.com/activities/891672755 https://www.strava.com/activities/892729318 Also, for Arizona in general and Sedona in particular, Trailforks will show significantly more trails than mtbproject and will likely guide you through the maze better if you really want to explore. That's because Trailforks allows unfiltered user-generated uploads, while mtbproject's trails are subject to approval by IMBA moderators, and while lots of Sedona's maze has gone legal, there's still a bunch of weird stuff on the ground out there, so... Trailforks FTW." ~ FoldsInHalf "Airport loop- Not a double black but definitely a black. nice little decent then Grueling Baby head ridden 400 foot climb. Kinda like riding through TC with smoother rocks but up hill. Then you get to the exposure around the Mesa and it is suhweet. find the loop on MTB project. Brewer DH to Adobe Jack area. We rode this once for recon and once with the family. I prefer to ride up Grand Central and ride down everything else. Adobe Jack and Javalina. Make sure you go up to the top of the rock while climbing up. https://www.strava.com/activities/1086536038 Bandit to Old post loop to Cathedral rock tour, including slim shady, Made in the shade, Hiline. You can refill with water at the end of slim shady, then take made in the shade up to hiline. My advice if you do this loop is to not take old post trail back up this climb sucks. Instead ride Herkenham and Skywalker. Skywalker is great and reminds me a lot of Flat rock ranch at times. There is good pizza and gelato near the end of this ride at Pisa Lisa! https://www.strava.com/activities/1088599321 Bell rock tour with Family. Probably the only beginner friendly trail in Sedona. Brewer DH over to Hangover and back for a lap of Airport. ~18 mi Probably the craziest ride I have ever been on. It didn't help that My XTR pedal broke as soon as I got to Hangover. This is the only place I wanted A tire other than a bald Ikon 2.35. It can be a Hike-a-bike in a few select spots if you don't want to risk death. I rode some insanely exposed lines at times and in a few spots my wife was the voice of reason. BTW did I mention she was on a 90/90mm bike? When you are coming down off the backside on "lower Hangover", this is the only part of trail where I really wanted a bigger bike or a guide. A guide to show you where to roll the lines would have been almost more beneficial than a 150mm bike. You are busy looking for white dots and get to the drops with no speed. I walked a few 5' drops and took a B line option on some others. Its just bare rock so you can go where you want. drops are pictured 30 second into this video Lower Hangover, Sedona Arizona Check out his other video of the upper ridge which is exposed but 100% rideable. Its the climb up and over the top which gets interesting in spots. This trail ends with a sweet flowy downhill https://www.strava.com/activities/1091809698 Bandit-Skywalker, to other XC trails. There were three really nice steady downhills trails in this loop. This was a cool ride we took a wrong turn and headed up a greenbeltesque steep climb into a neighborhood near the end before the street. We also tried to use trail forks to connect into Chimney rock loop, but it is now a welded shut fence on private property. You can see the trail from the road but the land grab has blocked access to an actual Major park. https://www.strava.com/activities/1093408674 Again rode this loop twice in one day. It was so fun, I went back with other family. Chimney rock loop, Thunder (take the new bypass) Teacup, soldier pass to the giant Sinkhole, Jordan, Javelina I was just cruising along on a flat spot on Thunder and gashed the hell out of my Ikon. It was a fluke and I still cant believe it happened. The ground looked like plain walking path. https://www.strava.com/activities/1094926075 I hope this helps. We are definitely going back." ~ FJSnoozer "Good suggestions all around. The signage is pretty good in Sedona, but I'd also recommend downloading the region on Trailforks and MTBProject so you have them available offline. It will definitely make navigation easier in some of the trickier areas. In addition to FJsnoozer's recs, you may check out the Mezcal / Chuckwagon / Aerie area. Good trails that are more on the mild side with a few exciting sections, but really good riding overall. That's in NW Sedona. +1 on the Cathedral Rock Big Loop (as named on MTBProject), sounds right up your alley. Templeton is all ridable is you're a baller, but the only part you'll probably have to walk are the switchbacks going down to the creek. Watch for hikers on the tech downhill sections. The Baldwin section is good CCW, but flows well either way. On the way back I would suggest taking Easy Breezy, but then take a right on HT for a short bit and connect back up with Slim Shady and take it all the way back. Hermit Trail, which is the alternative, kinda sucks. That'll all make sense when you're looking at a map. The Hogs system is a good if you want more technical riding, but not as high consequence as Hangover. A good route through there is Slim Shady-HT-Little Horse-Broken Arrow-High on the Hog-Hog Heaven-Pigtail (if you want a flow trail)-Twin Buttes. From there you can either retrace your steps on HT/Slim Shady, ride Bell Rock path back, or take the road. Again, it'll all make sense if you're looking at one of the map apps." ~ DSC "1) We hit Flagstaff on the way into Sedona. Highly recommend. We rode the Shulz creek area. Up engineers dogfood, across on Secret, BLAST back down on Shulz Creek. (these names are on Trailforks.) Not steep, but a very steady, asskicking 1300 foot/5 mile climb up engineers dogfood. DECENT IS WORTH IT. 2) Trailforks is AWESOME. Find a segment you are interested in, click on ridelog to find rides that included your segment of interest. boom, route is all ready for you. you can also create routes on the PC/web version but I found it to not work very well. 3) Hogs area was badass! Hog heaven, high on the hog, broken arrow, pigtail, hogwash, peccary, subamarine rock... were all fun, scenic trails. High on the hog rivaled hiline for technical difficulty, awesome trail! one of my favorites. 4) In the northwest area, people recommended Chuckwagon and Mezcal. Mezcal was nice but chuckwagon was overrated, imo. I will skip this entire corner if I come back. Other stuff in the area had equally good vistas and this area had lots of meh sections (compared with the rest of Sedona, of course) 5) Slim shady to hiline to baldwin to templeton and back was the bomb. hiline had the adrenaline and stoke rev'ed up to 11. I loved the exposure but not everyone does and there is plenty of it on hiline. Hiline also has a few really technical downhill sections. We walked a couple. no big deal. Still worth doing. DO HILINE. We skipped hangover since a lot of the locals said that it was neat but that they don't do it on any regular basis. It was hotter than I anticipated in mid-October out there." ~ Anita Handle

Check out the new Forum Section called MTB Destinations under Mountain Biking. With the help of Albert, I set up separate threads for most of the destinations being discussed, and started each thread with links to google driving directions and MTB project trail info. For some that I'm familiar with, I've inserted other tidbits of info that should be helpful. For others, I'm in the process of copying-pasting from the wealth of information that's been posted historically on Mojo, which includes a lot of great info on Bentonville, Colorado Springs, and Sedona that I plan to bring over. So far I've posted up most of the destinations that are within a day's drive of Austin, but I'm hoping that others will join in following a similar structure, and start threads for other areas across Colorado, Utah, North Carolina, etc.