Flagstaff Ride & Grand Canyon South

A quick bit of research on the interwebs the previous night had me at the trailhead for Mt Elden just outside Flagstaff on Sunday morning.  The parking lot was strangely busy for early Sunday morning - it turned out there was a local Super D race on (a mostly downhill race, with a little bit of climbing).  From the trailhead there was six kilometres of easy climbing up through beautiful forest.  Near the end of that I stopped & chatted for about twenty minutes with a friendly local pharmacologist - got some good tips for Sedona the following day.  I continued up the Schultz trail before eventually hitting Sunset.  Here the climbing got a lot steeper & I was having to work now - ended up at nearly 2800m!  I was continually being warned that soon fast racers would be coming the other way, so that was a good excuse to walk up a very steep rock garden.  Slightly past that, the racers started passing by very quickly - as the trail was quite narrow, it was safest for me to walk so I could quickly get out of their way.  I saw the second rider completely lose it & go flying down the side of the hill about ten metres, stopped only by a lone pine.

Grovelling up the fire road to the lookout, I found the start line & watched for a little while before starting my big descent on Upper Oldham. It was fantastic with a great variety of trail, some techy rocky switchback, followed by with fast flowy bits & then back to the technical rocky stuff. I really enjoyed the ride & the great variety there was in the twenty-two kilometres I did. It was nice to earn all the downhill with the (mostly) very pleasant climb.  The last part of the ride was around Rocky Ridge - aptly name.  The whole area was very popular with bikers & hikers - great to see so many people out using the trails, I think I could quite happily live in Flagstaff.

I still love riding through meadows at high altitude

Back to the motel it was definitely time for lunch before we headed back to the Grand Canyon. This was my third visit to the GC, but my first to the more often visited South Rim. I loved seeing it from a different perspective, even if it was busier & somewhat windy. I still can't begin to describe the vastness of it & these few photos may not be much use. Very interesting place, especially seeing all the different strata. This time we managed to get glimpses of the Colorado River - something you can't see from North Rim.

Looking west, the haze had definitely set in as the sun set