Flagstaff – The Ramblings of MTBBill

Mountain Elden Playtime

Here is the first video from my August vacation. A bit of playtime on Mount Elden in Flagstaff. August is monsoon season and getting out early was part of the plan. You can see just how quickly things can change during a ride. I managed to get on quite a few new to me trails on this outing with the star of the outing being the Full Sail trail. Hats off to the builders who made this amazing flow trail that ends at the top of the Schultz Creek trail. The Broadside trail which is a dedicated for the climb back up to the top of Full Sail is awesome a great add to the expanding network of trails on the mountain. The advocates and builders out here have been doing a bang up job!

BIG BANG!

I thought I had lots a grip of footage from my August 2023 MTB vacation. Turns out I outsmarted myself and found my backup right where I had left it. I will get through most of that footage at some point. While in Flagstaff, I checked out a new to me trail (The trail is a newish legal trail) called Big Bang. I enjoy Flagstaff scene a great deal and this trail most likely is going to into the routine rotation.

Fort Valley Video

For Day 5 of the August MTB Vacation I cut my wife some slack and we did a shuttle up to the top of Schultz pass. We then did the half of the loop I climbed on day 2 as a descent (Previous video). We did a snippet of Secret to the AZT. Then Lower Moto to Chimney and the the lower bit of Schultz Creek. She was most appreciative of not throwing a beat down on her out of the gate. Pretty much all green trail goodness.

Mostly Downhill Cruisin!

Roadtrip Part 1 – Flagstaff

So I am on three-week MTB vacation. These posts are quite a bit time late as I typically have the choice of riding, enjoying tasty beverages, chilling or posting stuff on the internet. Guess which one gets bottom billing? Here is a quick recap of the events of the first part.

Day 1 – The MTBBILL Mobile Command Module moves to Flagstaff

Day 1 was the transit to Flagstaff with the travel trailer. The first ride was on day 2 in the Fort Valley area. I climbed up Chimney, Lower Moto, a bit of the AZT, connected up with Secret and then descended Schultz Creek. Schultz Creek was ever bit as good as I remembered it

On Day 3, I checked out the Flagstaff MTB skills park which was right next to where I camped at Fort Tuthill. This is an impressive skills park with access to the regional network of trails. After playing around at the park, I hit up Soldiers Trail and The Bridge trail to loop right back to camp.

Day 4 – A good chunk of the Walnut Creek segment of the Arizona Trail

I also did a side trip to check out Fisher Cave which is down in the valley shown in the previous picture.

Day 4 was Chicken Noodle Soup for the MTB Soul. The Walnut Creek Segment of Arizona Trail is simply amazing. I did about an 18 mile loop that included the AZT, the Flagstaff loop trail and other tasty singletrack. Later that evening my lovely wife and dogs arrived to join in the vacation festivities.

My lovely wife joined me for MTB vacation time.

For Day 5 I cut my wife some slack and we did a shuttle up to the top of Schultz pass. We then did the half of the loop I climbed in day 2 as a descent. Secret to AZT to Moto to Chimney and the the lower bit of Schultz Creek. She was most appreciative of not throwing a beat down on her out of the gate.

For Day 6, I did a 24 mile dumbell looking route from camp that included Highland, Soldiers, Flagstaff Loop, Rogers. Gold Digger and Two-Spot. It was a glorious morning when I started. Pretty much at the apex of my ride the thunderstorms rolled in. I had 10 miles with a hill in the middle to get over. I arrived back at camp a waterlogged mess. It was kinda awesome in its own way.

Day 7 – MBB Mobile Command Module Underway

Day 7 was move day. It sucked having to pack up all the stuff that got caught out in the storm. Everything has “its place” with our little house on wheels and stuff being wet meant stuff had to go in different places. I managed to get rolling by 10AM enroute to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Now I have been to Locust Point a handful of times but I had never traveled those 20 miles of dirt roads towing a trailer. A handful of miles down the main dirt road. I parked my truck and trailer and hopped in my wife’s Outback and we drove the rest of the way to access the remaining roads and potential spots. After a successful scouting mission in the Outback (Dubbed the Lunar Lander), I was back in the truck with the Command Module in tow. We got a primo spot with the Rainbow Rim trail about 30 feet out our door with the canyon a few feet beyond that.

The adventure continues…

The long way to Flagstaff

My work projects in Bahrain finally got to a point to where I could come home for a few weeks. Combined our schedules have been kinda nuts lately which included Nichol needing to move a vehicle across the country. I was able to swing my schedules around to allow for a few days at home before getting back on a plane to the east coast. There I would join Nichol for the country drive that started in Norfolk VA.

Day 1 was spent taking care of business in Norfolk before heading off to my folks place in North Carolina. Along with a great visit, my Dad cooked up some of the best pulled pork BBQ I have ever had. On the evening of Day 2 we pulled into Asheville NC. We spent the evening enjoying some of the tasty microbrew scene along the Asheville Ale Trail that included Burial Beer and Wicked Weed Brewing. Not that we had much of a plan to ride here but any thoughts of that were pretty much washed away with all of the thunderstorms they were having with more planned for the following day. Day 3 we made our way to Little Rock Arkansas where we enjoyed some more tasty beers at Lost Forty Brewing before hopping into a hotel for the evening. The next day we made our way Albuquerque NM for tastings from Ponderosa Brewing. Yes, why yes we were making exceptional time! Don’t worry we left no contrails.

The following day we made a rather quick jaunt over to Flagstaff. We had made arrangements for some rentals bikes from Cosmic Cycles. I must stay they some really good rentals at a very reasonable rate for what we got. If we would have been super on our game we could have gotten out for late afternoon ride, but we somehow managed to find ourselves enjoying some tasty grub and beer at Flagstaff Brewing Co while we planned out what the ride was going to be the following day.

The route we were going to do was a sampling of the Arizona National Scenic Trail. I had ridden this section of trail back in summer of 2010 and figured this would be a great intro to the countryside of Flagstaff for Nichol. We parked at the trailhead along Forest Service Road 418 and took the forest service roads back south along the bottom of Hart Prairie before catching trail that took us up near Aspens Corner and the junction with the Arizona Trail.

Working our way up to Aspens Corner

The connector trail up to Aspens Corner passes by a nice little pond. This views did not suck

Once on the AZT we were treated to a mix of single track goodness through stands of Aspens

Views from Hart Prairie

Stands of Pines

A ferns that were sometimes head high. The last few miles along this route were just “La La La La La” singletrack awesomeness that required very little pedaling and very little breaking as you swooped through pines, aspens, ferns, wildflowers etc…. all the way back to the trailhead.

We enjoyed some tasty Asheville goodness we brought with us for a post-ride refreshment at the trailhead.

And what a great place to enjoy a tasty post-ride beer. This was our view next to the truck. By the end of the day we would make our way to Las Vegas where we delivered and the truck and other move related goods. The following day made our way back home.

Flagstaff Sampler Pics

Got back from Arizona last week and I have a ton of pictures from this awesome trip to sort through.

Here are a few pictures from the first half of the trip in Flagstaff. All of our riding was done above 7,000 feet of elevation so there was plenty of huffing and puffing on these rides.