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

My favourite National Park from my last visit to the States, I just had to go back & show Valerie Zion. Kept awake for most of the wee hours, I was decidedly slow & not really in the mood for walking around in the sun. But after not having been long in Zion, the beauty of the place & then seeing a woman with a stump for a left arm & no right arm at all snapped me out of that. I still love Zion – there’s something about being at the bottom of that canyon with such sheer & red walls. We did pretty much the same things I did on my last visit, with perhaps one extra short walk. For the first time on this trip, I wished I was traveling with someone who would be keen for a big back-country hike (there were a few groups around starting/finishing) – not a lot of Zion is easily accessible, hiking is one of the few ways to get out & see more of the park away from the canyon. I tried to spend more time appreciating the scenery & not taking photos – I think I succeeded in this, but still ended up with a lot of pictures.

The Virgin River was running quite high – couldn’t walk up to The Needles

These thistles were bigger than I was – just as well the bees weren’t.

Back in Hurricane in the prevening, I set out to ride the Gould’s Rim/JEM Trail/Hurricane Rim loop again. It was a blast & I whipped out the 33 km in just over two hours of riding (less than 2.5 total) – so quite pleased with that as there was over 600 m of climbing as well (mostly a big hill at the start & then riding around the rim at the end). I also managed to cut out about the extra seven kilometres I did last time when the trail wasn’t marked very well. It started off overcast, but the setting sun dipped below the clouds – with the light breeze it made for very pleasant riding conditions. I shared the trail with a lot of chipmunks & lizards again – also a lot of nice flowers out as I whipped down the JEM trail (that’s always a pleasure, fast flowing singletrack that gets rocky & more technical in an instant).

Gooseberry Mesa – would be riding up there two days later

It was with great pleasure that I awoke to a lack of sound from the wind chimes – things were a lot calmer than yesterday.  We left town by 8.30 & headed west back into Utah briefly before dropping south back into Arizona & towards Grand Canyon North Rim.  Once we hit the small town of Fredonia I was back on roads I’d traveled before – the first time since Bragg Creek almost four weeks ago.  After a brief stop at Jacob Lake for me to get a forest road map & Valerie to buy more souvenirs, we were driving through the Kaibab Meadows.  It must have been cold there last night – there was still some fresh snow that hadn’t melted just yet, seems I can’t get away from the stuff.  With the long winter, all the spring growth was not completed & the meadows weren’t quite as pretty as last time I drove through – but they are a still a magnificent sight.

We didn’t stop too long at the rim, maybe an hour, to get a good view of various parts of the canyon.  The sky was wonderfully clear all the way down to the horizon & this enabled us to see some of the mountains a hundred-odd kilometres away – I don’t think I saw these last time.

We drove out of the park & soon after turned onto Forest Development Road 22, continuing on for about 22 miles & 40 minutes to the Parissawampitts (I don’t know how to pronounce it either – I prefer Paris-saw-armpits) trailhead so I could get a ride in.

I was most excited to be riding along the rim of the Grand Canyon on good singletrack.  The trail in its entirety is almost 29 km to the Timp trailhead.  It forms a sawtooth route (roughly) to keep on a reasonably similar level by following all the little side canyons in & out.

This was a great fun trail – I would grade the trail itself as beginner-intermediate level, but at the higher end of that due to the length & elevation (all between 2260 & 2270 m).  The start of it is rocky, but later on it’s mostly dirt.  You do spend a lot of time in the trees, but every so often you get a glimpse of the canyon & then all of a sudden there is a magnificent view that you can be sure not many other people ever see.  I had heard that there’s not much climbing, but there is a bit (apparently I did almost 600 metres all up) – but it’s all pretty easy (middle ring the whole time, & mostly in a small cog).  Despite having been up in the mountains for over a year, I was a just little shorter of breath than normal.  The last eight or so kilometres is great fun as it only has one decent climb in it & you can let it rip on the flatter sections.  I saw quite a few deer, some beautiful birds & flutterbys (the bright yellow ones were the best) & something that may have been a marmot. Only hitch of the ride was losing the seal on my tubeless rear tire – a bit of rest while I had to go back to a tube.  Unfortunately the smog rolled in from California & obscured the view a little in haze.