Arizona offers endless amounts of outdoor adventures, even close to the masses of Phoenix. The Black Canyon Trail is one of them. Commence bikepacking!
Jeff and I met up at Emery Henderson trailhead just North of the Phoenix metro area late Friday afternoon, leaving work, emails, and busy life behind. Left one (of our two Tacomas) vehicle here and drove North, cached some water halfway’ish.
We were ready for another epic bike packing adventure.
Left another vehicle at the start area, loaded up bikes with beers in hand (and a cold 8 pack in an already overloaded backpack), we set off from Highway 69 and headed south on The Black Canyon Trail (BCT). The BCT was used by ancient Native American travelers and traders linking settlements together. In more recent times; it was used primarily by valley wool growers to herd sheep to and from their summer range in the Bradshaw Mountains and the Black Hills up until the mid 70’s.
We only had 30 min of daylight left, so we decided to ride until we either found a good camping spot, got tired, hungry or whatever. All while enjoying the trail and scenery
The simple pleasures of simply setting up camp whenever and wherever you want to. And we were treated to a spectacular starry sky, so we left tent sides open.
South we went after a solid breakfast and clean up of yesterday’s dinner events, and prepping bike and gear for the adventure ahead today.
We made stops whenever scenery was right or the legs requesting it
Even found a slow moving stream and enjoyed the last two cool beers while getting some shade.
Made our way to our water cache in almost 100 degree weather, while climbing. It was toasty. A river crossing followed shortly thereafter
Did a side stop for a large pizza in Black Canyon City, and saw some legit cowboys with boot, spurs, and hats. They were equally perplexed by our outfit as we were of theirs, as they drove off in a pickup with two dogs in the bed, and 2 horses in tow, we rode off on our fully loaded bike rigs. Back up the hill.
Made our way to our goal for Saturday night, after bushwhacking our way, we were quickly settled in water side and dipped in the water for an hour. Heaven!
Also, does anyone know what these sounds are from? Frogs?
For Sunday we had an early start to avoid some of the heat. We also knew that it would only get warmer the more we dropped in altitude.
Another river crossing
Jeff showing how it is (kinda) done:
Familiar territory in sight for me.
And we are done! 65 miles, lots of exposed sides, flats, climbs, downhill, rivers, sand, boulders, and gorgeous canyons!
