Welcome!!
Cycling the Arizona TrailThe Arizona Trail travels from Mexico to Utah through the low sonoran desert to the cool pines on the north rim of the Grand Canyon (see map). It is nearing completion thanks to tremendous volunteer effort across the state.
This site focuses on a mountain bike route for the Arizona Trail. The trail enters nine wilderness areas and one national park, so off-road routes are needed for thru-cyclists. Scott Morris and Lee Blackwell left April 19th, 2005 to test ride their Arizona Trail Mountain Bike Route (AZTMBR). This site documents their trip. The intent of the trip was to ride as much of official Arizona trail as possible. Click here for more on what this means.
2005 Trip statistics
814.85 mi (327.74 mi uphill, 344.91 mi downhill, 135.37 mi flat) 114573 ft total ascent (116432 ft descent) 7.8% average uphill grade, 8.4% average downhill grade 25 days, 19:02:32 total time 5.4 mph average speed, 39.0 mph max speed 606.876 TopoFusion difficulty index, 1720.293 effortTrip Updates
Since the trip is over, see the journal page for an index to all the updates. Unfortunately the comments made by those following the trip were lost when the blogging software was updated.
Racing the AZT in 7 days
Later in 2005, Scott rode Andrea Lankford's AZT bike route in 7 days, 8 hours. The full writeup with photos can be found on Scott's Diary.
Scouting trip reports
Scouting and Trail design in the Rincon Valley / Colossal Cave