13.1.06

Sedona, Day #1

Saving the best for last, in typical Cribb fashion, we headed out for Sedona at 5:00 am Friday morning.

After a short drive the ultimate section of trail was here--Sedona slickrock! Now I've been to Moab, I've ridden all over Utah, and I've even been in the Rockies for a couple days. But Sedona has some of the most rideable, technical trails that I've EVER encountered. Red rock is everyhwere. The canyon's red walls scale upwards over 3,000 feet toward the sky in all directions. The trail is scattered with perfectly shaped Mars-like red rocks, allowing our bikes to get amazing traction both uphill and downhill.

The day started out with a grand tour of Sedona with our tour guide--a resident of the rich-cultured town of Sedona--through Castle Rock / Templeton trail. Characterized by frequent technical, rocky downhills, switchbacks, and small drops, this trail was a great highlight of the Sedona mountain bike experience.

Unfortunately for my sacred Gary Fischer 29'er, my tires didn't seem to like all of the goat-head cactus thorns littered throughout the trail. The slime in my tubes didn't want to coorperate with the constant demand of thorn punctures, so it simply decided to give up! Frustrated that my tires were slowly leaking air and having to pump them up every 15 minutes, we cut the ride a bit short and headed back for lunch.

Crammed for time in the afternoon, and with a fresh set of tubes in the 29'er, Cribb and I tried to reach Chicken point on a similarly technical, rocky singletrack Sedona trail. But guess what happened? Can you guess it....

FLATS!

Only the rear tire this time. Oh well, even 3 or 4 flats in one day can't ruin sweet riding terrain like Sedona. Overall today was the best yet, as promised by Cribb!

Can't wait until we do one LAST epic Sedona ride tommorow--so the best is yet to come!

3 comments:

Ryan Baumann said...

Who are you? I'm me. You're you. Who are you?

Anonymous said...

It;s me mom, sorry, this is new to me.

Ryan Baumann said...

Ohhh....

Yeah, believe it or not, there was not a cloud in the entire sky all week long until Saturday night in Sedona. Since the sun is out all day long, the sky is a deep, dark blue, especially with the red rock canyon of Sedona in the backround.

I know, it's so much nicer than Green Bay...