Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Route Planning: "Santa Rita Showdown"

The Santa Rita Showdown mountain-bike challenge is intriguing: an 80-mile road/trail circumnavigation of the Santa Rita mountain range. The page displays a large-scale, low-detail map. I was able to fill in a small part of the course using the GPS tracklog from last week's ride on the AZ trail. Studying topos and scavenging tracklogs from everytrail.com, I've nailed down the rest. Starting in Patagonia and working counter-clockwise, the route looks like this:
  • Highway 82 northeast, leaving pavement at Hog Canyon
  • Hog Canyon northwest to Gardner Canyon
  • AZ Trail north to Box Canyon Road
  • West, then south to Madera Canyon
  • Elephant Head trail to Agua Caliente Canyon
  • Bull Springs trail to Patagonia
The original trio of riders completed the route in 13:18 total time, riding dark-to-dark on a cold January day. There don't appear to be any other takers. Hmm.

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