Riders: 7 and 1 Pup
Time: 4 hours
Distance 19 miles
On Sunday we headed down to the Black Canyon Trail (BCT). Mike, used to ride with us this fall when he was overseeing the construction of the new 89/69 interchange, but lives in the valley, invited us to go on the ride. With the weather being only a high of 42 degrees and raining in Prescott, we hopped on the the chance to go riding somewhere warmer. I called Micki and she was in as well. We all met up at 9am at the trailhead.
Since I am still waiting on a part for my "trusty steed", I took my single speed. Micki being the BFF she is, brought hers too. There are 7 of us total. 1 dog- Jessi, 2 girls on SS's and the boys all had gears! I believe the trail is rated a moderate to difficult. The first part is all climbing, switch back after switch back. I thought for sure I was going to die on the SS. I really haven't gotten used to the whole "standing up to pedal thing", but I soon got into rhythm. At the river bed crossing, we all gathered to make sure everyone knew where to go. Off in the distance you hear Jessi barking, Andy whistles, and here she comes racing back with a big grin on her face, like yeah I just showed them! We figured she was barking at some cows, or at least that is what we hoped.
We start out again and there is rough rocky section full of sand, it sucks so bad! Some people took a good line, some did not. I did however, make it the whole way cranking it out on the SS. My legs were on fire! I was pretty proud of myself though... some of the guys didn't make it and they had gears!
We start to make a turn to the right and we holler for Jessi. We look left up the mountain and there she is chasing cows! I don't know what she thinks they were but she seemed to be having a good time. We reeled her in and continued on. We get to the top and start the fun downhill and boom...... someone gets a flat tire. The rest of the downhill was pretty fun. It is has lots of curves with some rolling hills, so it keeps you interested.
We get to another intersection and we decide to eat a little bit. We felt a couple of sprinkles but nothing that scared us. As we approached the Little Pan Loop, we took a vote as to who wanted to do the loop and who did not. We were a little concerned about Jessi and the weather. Jessi can do 15-17 miles and if we turned around right then she would be at 19 miles total, so we opted to just turn around and head back. As we got back to the intersection we could see the rain closing in and we could feel more frequent drops. Micki and I chose to put our rain jackets on.... Sugar melts in water you know.... the boys toughed it out. As we got closer to the end the rain started to mist a little more... it wasn't a down pour just a heavy mist. Enough to have water dripping off my helmet and my jacket. It started to cool down too, but we had a nice long hill to climb back up so the temp worked for us.
We were almost back to the trail head and someone else had a flat tire. I guess they had been working on it for a while by the time I came up on them. I was not going too fast on the way back. I was just spinning trying to conserve, so I could make it back without bonking. While the guys stayed with the flat tire, Micki and I kept going... there were two very steep switch backs to do before coasting down to the cars. I took Jessi with us, she was very tired to say the least. She really doesn't like to be wet, so with the rain on her and her being tired, she just had this look of " are we done yet... really? I want to lay down".
We get to the cars and dried Jessi off, she hops in the Subie and lays down... she didn't care what was going on outside of the car, she just wanted to sleep. We changed clothes and headed for Rock Springs Cafe... I needed a cheeseburger to make it home. We had some burgers, warmed up and talked about the ride. It was very nice sharing conversations with everyone.
We made our way back to Prescott as everyone else had the short drive home to Phx. When we got home Jessi promptly got a bath and us too. She and I took a well deserved nap! We had a great time and want to say thanks to Mike for inviting us. We will have to do it again sometime.
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