The ColoRowdies came out in force to celebrate at the Sedona MTB Festival last weekend. The CR MO proceeded as usual: establish an enormous base camp in the desert, have a dance party around the campfire until much later than is prudent, then emerge blearily into the sunrise and drink coffee until it's time to strap into the chammies and GO RIDE BIKES!!!
A few Rowdies (and CaliRowdies) arrived Thursday evening to secure the campsite, and they were joined on Friday morning by several others for a solid tour of some trails on the south end of Sedona. Liz Cunningham kindly provided these photos of the day's adventures, and since I wasn't there I will now attempt to caption them in absentia:
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| Wait a second, Liz is friends with identical twins? |
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| So many spiky plants here! Don't fall right. |
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| Synchronized trail stretching is so enduro. |
Sadly, the crew had to split up on Saturday, since Rowdie ladies Liz, Tricia, Brittany, Bri, Betsy, Sarah, and yours truly had taken on coaching duties for the VIDAmtb skills clinic taking place that day. We awoke early and started cooking several pigs' worth of bacon and brewing gallons of coffee in preparation for a long day of not-riding as we watched hot air balloons full of tourists rise above the desert like hung over bumblebees. Apparently hot air balloon piloting is not an exact science, because on our way back to town our progress was repeatedly hampered by retrieval crews:
We fought through the fallen gasbags and proceeded to have an excellent day of clinic-ing, with only a few instances of cactus-on-rider violence:
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| Teamwork makes the tweezers work. |
The rest of the crew buckled down for a ride on Hangover trail, one of Sedona's most iconic routes due to its beauty and technical difficulty:
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| #soenduro |
The Rowdies crushed the challenge, took a brief break to also crush an inordinate amount of Mexican food, and decided to engage in bad parenting by taking their bulging food babies over for a pedal up and down Hiline, another famously tricky trail in south Sedona. We were later told that there was a harrowing incident on the climb, wherein Garrett from Durango caught a handlebar on a tree and went tumbling down the steep hillside, saving himself from further disaster by grabbing hold of a bush about twenty feet down. Sienna captured the aftermath:
The damage was surprisingly minimal, and after finishing the ride they arrived back at camp, thoroughly worked but grinning like fools, to trade war stories with the coaching contingent, who had each ridden less than five miles of actual trail that day but were pretty mentally exhausted by seven hours of nonstop instruction.
Everyone settled in for an evening of campfire, food, beer, and music under the supposedly UFO-riddled Sedona night sky, and the proceedings were later dampened but not damped by a brief rain squall sometime around midnight. Bed was sought by those who wanted to be (relatively) fresh for the next day's adventures, and tequila was sought by those with a primal need to stay awake until dawn.
On Sunday the crew split again: four poor souls who had to be back in Denver for the grind on Monday lit out early to pedal hard and get back on the road:
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| ColoRowdies Matt, Eric, Don and Brittany |
The rest of us eventually made our way to Broken Arrow trailhead and met up with a few Rudeboys for a lap or three on Pigtail. The trail that took us there, Hog Wash, provided some excellent photo ops:
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| Pedaling to the good stuff |
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| Ben shreds an optional rock roller |
There is a wonderfully built little drop on Pigtail that we spent some time on, taking photos and following each other off of it in a delirium of happiness about being back on bikes with good friends in such a beautiful place.
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| Pigtail drop-in with Arturo, Colin, Ben, and Meredith |
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| Tricia drops it like it's HOT! |
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| Rowdie train!! |
The crew shrank again as more Rowdies had to return to the real world that evening, but on Monday we still mustered a respectable group of 11 riders for a morning assault on Hiline. About two miles in, Rowdie Ambassador Ben had a ride-ending derailleur malfunction, and had to retreat, Aaron Gwinn chainless-style, back to the trailhead to do some repairs.
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| Knee pads are key for on-trail bike maintenance. |
The rest of us kept on, took a photo at the tippy top, and dropped in to the descent with much hooting and hollering. We stopped several times on the descent to work on tricky sections and take photos:
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| Obligatory jump photo! Tricia, Betsy, Meredith, Liz, and El |
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| Liz on the drop-in to the gnarly stuff |
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| Almost got a good photo of Tricia. Almost. |
Suddenly, a cry went up from higher on the trail: it was Ben! Back from the dead, with a new derailleur and a burning passion to rejoin the ride! He swooped through the gnar on a fusion tail of rainbow unicorn farts, and the Hiline crew was complete once again.
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| Ben's butt! |
The day was a particularly good one because several of us rode sections that we hadn't attempted on previous occasions, and besides the derailleur, there were no incidents. It was the perfect way to cap off the weekend, and the only thing that would have made it better was having the rest of the Rowdies out there with us. Here's to next time!
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