| Name: | Riding south of Sedona | 
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| Description: | On the way home from Phoenix I stopped for a day of riding in Sedona. Since I did not have prepared maps for areas north of the town (and did not have an idea how vast that area is), I rode the south part, similar to what I did almost 5 years ago. I started at the crowded parking lot north of Oak Creek Village and rode north on Bell Rock pathway to north of Bell Rock, then on Bell Rock trail to Llama trail to Little Horse trail. On the slickrock I observed the Pink Jeep tourers and then missed first part of Broken Arrow trail and took the jeep road instead. Did a sidetrack to Submarine rock and then rode north on the highway through Sedona and on hwy 89 to the airport. Took the Airport Loop trail, which was pretty bad on the western side - a lot of large rocks in the trail that made for a long stretch of hiking. Drop down on Bandit trail was a relief. Then I was finding my way a bit on Old Post trail and took it down to Red Rock loop road. After finding that it leads nowhere (or, better to say, does not cross Oak Creek), I headed back and took Ridge trail back. To my pleasant surprise, the trail did not climb up too much and was pretty smooth. Then I was back in town on busy traffic road. Stopped at a bike shop to buy a map and get some water. Then went south on Hwy 179. Missed turnoff to Mystic trail so continued the jiggle with the cars all the way to Back O Beyond road. From there, I hopped onto Cathedral Rock trail and then onto Templeton trail, which took me all the way back to Bell Rock pathway and back to the car. Overall a mixed experience. Some trails were pretty nice (Llama, Ridge, Templeton), some sucked (Airport loop, Old Post). The crowds warrant avoiding the major trailheads next time, and rather check out the trails north of town. | |
| URL: | TopoFusion Home Page | |
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| Total Distance: | 36.60 miles (58.90 km) |
| Total Trip Time: | 6:17:03 (5:35:22 moving time) |
| Total Climbing: | 4594 feet (1400 m) |
| Total Descending: | 4488 feet (1368 m) |
| Average Speed: | 6.55 mph (10.54 kph) |
