| Description: | New Years Day was the day for the big ride out of Fountain Hills into the McDowells. Not too keen about riding for miles on the road to access the south end of the preserve, I picked the Thompson Peak access road to get to the county park trails, then took Dixie Mine to Coachman to Windmill into the Scottsdale's Sonoran preserve. From there I headed to Bells Pass trail, it does climb ca. 400 ft to the intersection with Prospector trail and another 400 ft to the pass. It was reasonably smooth and steep so all rideable. Descent from Bells pass is steep and in the lower parts rocky. It's much easier to ride this trail down than up - a mistake I learned last time. Then I went onto Levee trail, which is rocky on a levee. This part of the preserve has quite a network of trails, after a while I went north towards a big trailhead where I snapped fotos of good trail map and profiles. From the trailhead I went north on Desert Park trail, wihch is mostly fairly smooth and climbs gently through a fancy golf course community. At the junction with Windgate trail I went back south and rode the Gateway loop. The first part of the loop is somewhat steep to reach the pass and then has a fun descent towards west. The loop was busy with hikers though so I had to be careful. The second half of the Gateway loop was tougher with a few steeper climbs, which continued on Windgate trail as well, the toughest stretch was right before the viewpoint at ca 2700 ft, I had to take a breather in the middle. After that it was only about 300 vertical feet to the pass, so, the grade was more mellow and the trail mostly smooth. At the path I had a chat with a couple from Cortez and then headed down, at the intersection with Bells Pass trail I went back up ca. 400 vertical feet to Prospector trail. Here I realized that it's getting late so I raced down the trail to the Thompson Peak road and took the road back to the house. I got in at 3:03 - 3 minutes late, which was within the tolerance.
Overall a great ride, I was tired at the end but would still be able to ride an hour or so. The trails are tough though, as can be seen from the average speed and the total climbing. |
