Sedona Day 7 - High Line Trail

Sedona Day 7

Well I opted not to rest on the 7th day and after a stack of panckakes and bacon headed out on the last ride of the trip.

Today started out with nice temps but the clouds started moving in and it was colder than the previous 6 great days. Can't complain really. Highlight of the day was watching the blur speed by of a team sky jersey descending the trail we were climbing and man that guy can fly off road as well. Impressive !!

Decided to end on a pretty tough trail called Highline. Rode out Bellrock to Bike Park loops to Templeton to Slim Shady to Highline and to Baldwin return ( that was the plan ) but bypassed Baldwin and got kind of lost so just as well ended up on the road as the rain started.

Life Behind Bar picture atop Highline courtesy of the Go Pro.



Got a solid 7 days of riding in and enjoyed the Santa Cruz. Be back behind a desk in 2 days but Sedona will get a repeat visit very, very soon. Met some really neat people and rode a small ( very very small ) fraction of the trails....

Sedona Day 6

Sedona Day 6

Today was EPIC. Huckaby, Mund's Wagon, Hangover, Cowpies & Schnelby Hill ? Fear Factor was high. Video to follow.

Sedona Day 5.0 & 5.1

This was shot just before Chicken Point and on the run off after the slick rock

This trail " Slim Shady " is becoming one of my favorites as you can use it as a out back and as the launching point to many trails instead of the Bell Rock which is way more of a multi-use trail. This video ( along with day 2 ) shows 2 different finishes within a block. 1 at the Resort the other at the doorstep of Bike & Bean.

Day 5 Continued.....

The ride today was a great epic and I can't really describe it so the video tonight should help with that. Here is what the Fat Tire guide book says about the ride ......

" The Most bang for your Sedona buck. Slickrock, stairs, and Mr. Toads Wild Ride. Danger lurks around every turn in the trail. If you've got time for only one Sedona ride, this is it. Sedona's Premier Shred "

Here is the Life Behind Bar shot from the Chicken Point Vista...

Sedona Day 5

What a day !!! Cant believe the weather and the TRAILS. Day 5 out the door and up the Bell Rock to Mystic to Hog Wash or Pig ? to Broken Arrow ( Submarine Rock pic below ) to Chicken Point down Little Horse a.k.a Mr. Toads Wild Ride to HT to Slim Shady back to Bike & Bean so the Santa Cruz Tallboy can get some TLC for the final 2 days.

Trail Shots....

Love the names of these trails. Today covered, Chuckwagon, Earls Cabin, Gunslinger, Mescal and Lower Lizardhead. Even on the more traditional xc loops ya gotta pay attention.

Crack Kills Baby !!



Lastly the Life Behind Bar shot for the 4th day.....

Day 4

No video today just a few pics of the ride. Hit up Chuckwagon Trail and did a bit more of a x-country loop today. No major rock strewn trails with exposure but almost 2ooo feet of climbing.

A few downhills from today....

Hump Day Options

So many trails so little time. Ventured out on a fairly long loop today and the goal was not to rely on maps or suggestions, we eyeballed a loop and set out to go.

The thing that I find good is the difference in terrain as you can go from sandy singletrack to slick rock to small forested areas all within miles.

Today had a good amount of slickrock and I guess the best way to describe it ( imo very different than Moab )is imagine sprinkling baby powder on kitchen tiles and ride it. That's what the sand / rock combo feels like to me.

Trails today were: Made in the Shade, Slim Shady, HT trail, Bell Rock, Little Horse, Llama, Little Bell & Courthouse to Bike & Bean to Hot Tub. 3rd day of riding to the ride. Legs are tired but you forget about than 15 min into the ride. Temps are HOT can't imagine what they do in the summer. I guess go north to Flagstaff ? Going to link with the OTE shop ride on Friday afternoon which will introduce the Sedona West trail systems.

Day 2 - Out the back of Avage

Day 2. First Blood & The Devil

Today rode out the back of Red Agave and up on the trails (Slim Shady, Made in the Shade & Highline ?) It was a tough ride and the baby head rocks were relentless. Got the first real taste of Sedona exposure and it is a definite attention grabber. Front tire washed out and snagged my leg on a trail side cactus...First Blood :)

In the afternoon post ride ventured into Sedona proper from Oak Creek and hiked up to Devils Bridge. Prolly not too smart after the morning ride and the fact that the hike is fairly short but steep. Views at the top from the actual bridge were worth the effort.

A little clip of Day 1

Taking it all in. Sedona Style.

The sun's gone and the moon is up over the Red Rocks of Sedona.

Day started out with some trail intel from Bike & Bean and then off to explore.

Once you know the names of the rock formations ( courthouse, bell, cathedral, etc ) it's pretty easy to get your bearings. It is also pretty clear that there will be zero need to drive & ride this trip as there a ton of options right out the door. Paved bike lanes and lots of dirt connectors means the possibilities are endless. Turned out to be a killer weather wise day as well

Sensory Overload...

Too many pictures to take, too many videos, too many vistas. Day 1 was incredible. The network of trails these guys have here is un-real. Options x 10 and they are built for bikes by riders.

Best part about leaving Vegas is...

Leaving Vegas !!! Cant quite believe how many trails run right out the back of the resort. Impressive and the riding has not even started yet. 9 a.m tomorrow for the rentals.

Sedona, The Desert Mecca is calling....

S E D O N A ~ A R I Z O N A

280 miles South East from Las Vegas lies Sedona. Sedona sits on the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau, the land mass that gives us Moab, Fruita, the Grand Canyon. Sitting at 4500 feet there are aprox 130 trails in Sedona that you can access with minimal if at all driving.

Throw in some incredible scenery, super tough rides with mega exposure, cacti, yucca and HOT temps if your here in the summer this is a perfect winter get away from the incredibly drab and dull time spent on rollers in front of the TV in Toronto.

February should be hovering around 60 to 70 f which is perfect for this trip. 25 miles up the road is Flagstaff which sits 3000 feet higher and tends to have more fast, open trails but as you can see from the map below having options and choices directly in town is not going to be a issue, the only issue will be packing as much in to a 8 day window as possible......

Now that I have the intro out the way the next posts in 2 weeks time will be the vids and pics of this desert mecca.

There is a local trail named Damifino and apparantly someone asked the name of the canyon the trail emptied into the reply was - Damn If I know !!!

Kelso Conservation Area

November started off with back to back stellar days which suggested a drive west to Kelso in Milton for a good day of trails. This was only visit # 2 this year for no planned reason the north of Barrie trails have been getting the repeat visits. Kelso may not be big but what it still the only ski lift climb trails we have in the GTA.

Long Weekend Rides

What a killer weekend, one more day and one more ride to go. It doesn't get much better than this. Videos are from Sat / Sun from the Brock & Walker tract & Durham Forest.



Kinda liking the 960p verses the 1080p for shooting, the part duex is on the lower setting wide angle and the video ends up a coming out fairly stable.

Re~building Brodies c/o Dathan R.I.P.

July 24th, 2006 was a bad day, we lost a great friend and amazing rider. Dathan was primarily the guy that got me into collecting old Canadian Handbuilt bikes and after he passed away his brother made sure some of the collection made into the hands of those that would truly do the bikes & Dathan proud.

Enter Juice, sent me a email link to the Brodie Blog and it was a post from another friend of Dathan's that had just finished a classic Sovereign. Build came out mint and it was even better to see it on the trail.

I was one of the fortunate few that Juice gave frames to and I restored my eXpresso with a new paint job, original decals, a Gatorblade fork and it has seen a few good events. I decided I could not risk thrashing this particular bike so retired mine to the bike room wall.

Have a read on the Brodie Blog and in the meantime, here's another bike. Thank's Dathan......

A Trail In The Woods, In Southern Ontario.....

What a weekend, no rain and the trails are in mint condition. There are so many trail networks that fall off the overly populated locations it makes days like these even better. Only saw 2 other riders the entire day.

A couple of re-con rides equals a perfect single track day with everything thrown in, rocks, wooden stunts, jumps, climbs etc.

I want to also thank GoPro for the deal on the replacement camera in case you were wondering why this years videos have been on the low side make this note to self.

Self.. don't see if your GoPro works under water if you have not double checked that the skeleton housing you have on is indeed the waterproof one, NOT the one with the cut outs for incoming audio.

Retro Days, Retro Rides...

For those that know me personally also know I like anything old school and also anything unique. Digging through some old pictures and came across some old bike photo's. I don't know how many years this spans and this is not a complete bio of bikes long gone by a few bikes not pictured at least but a fun look back.



It all started ( the serious addiction for high end bikes that is ) with the Rocky Mountain Cirrus. I had to talk my dad into driving 2 hours to Precision Bikes in Niagara Falls USA to get my hands on all the 3-d Violet Ringle & Cook Bros parts I could save up for. I still own a fully built Rocky Mountain Altitude T.O. complete with Tioga Disc drive.



Then came the ProFlex a.k.a Slow Flex ( which lived up the nick name ) and the bike I still wish I owned, The GT Xizang with the fork I still wish I owned, The Lawill Leader 3. The Nuke Proof carbon hubs, snowflake twisted front wheel spokes were all trademark parts that carried over from frame to frame.

More pics and Retro posts to follow....

The $15 Dollar Fix for the Mavic Crapmax29 Rear Hub

My.. Mavique ( french for W.T.F. ? ) saga has been going on for a while now and I am happy to say I finally have a fix. So here goes. I originally got this wheel because I wanted UST with no rim tape. In the short time that I have had them they have been back to the distributor twice. The second time they rebuilt the wheel with a crossmax hub from another platform but the issue still occured.

I am not sure why a big company like Mavic can't fix this as it's no secret this is a problem. So if your reading this your probably having the same issue or trying to find a fix. The problem on these otherwise good wheels is the rear hub. Particularly the bushing in the freehub body. The premature wear of the stock one creates slop, shifting issues, play, noise and more importantly fustration. You don't want to spend $600 + and have these problems occur.

Enter Bike WCM. Found their store while on e-bay seeing what I could get for my used cmax29'er wheels as I had made up my mind to scrap them and stick with my Industry Nines. Read a bit about their bushing and decided to buy a set and give it a try. I ordered the oversize bushing pair as I thought since my rear hub had so much movement they would fit the bill.

When they arrived took the hub apart and decided to install them right away. There really is not that much of a difference
between the stock bushing and the bike wcm version until
you put the calipers on them and the size difference is noted.

You get a pretty detailed info sheet but there is not much to do.

In hindsight I should have gotten 1 standard and 1 oversize
but again given all the aggro I have had with these wheels
I was sure the oversize would work.

They went on with no problem and the sloppy feel that the cassette had was instantly gone. So we threw the hub back together and put it back in the frame but it was evident pretty quickly that I got the wrong size. The cassette would not freewheel so took it back off and emailed John.

Explained to John what happenned and he sent out the standard size for me to try no charge ( again hindsight being 20/20 I should have tried this first ). 1 week later the bushing arrives and again swapped them out. This time perfect fit and no more play, hub feels great.

PROBLEM SOLVED !!!



( note: there are few knockoff's on flea bay but make sure you buy from john5w76 )

Ganaraska Forest ( IMBA Epic RIde )

IMBA has listed the 100 km course form the Paul's Dirty Enduro as a Epic ride. I myself have never finished this event. That being said we have been hitting up the different distances over the past few rides.



The other great thing about the Ganny is the fact the 3 course distances ( 100, 60 & 30 km ) are now permanently signed so you don't really need the Garmin for route finding anymore. Still think you could never ride everything this place has in one summer ( after all the 100 km course is 1 lap ).

**** I am praying the poison ivy gods spare me. This place is totally overrun with the stuff ****

2011 Shimano XTR Trail Disc Brakes

I have had these on now for about 200 km so definitely not a long term review by any stretch but have to say that they really do feel a lot better than the Hope X2's. Not in actual stopping power but in the modulation and the ease that the lever engages. True 2 finger braking. Reminds me of my old Grafton levers.

The brakes themselves have a few bells & whistles like improved lever ergonomics, oversized ceramic pistons and cooling fins etc. The brakes themselves are also very light even with the trail version that I ended up with. ( the race version loses the reach adjustment dial )

I originally picked up the Hope X2's 3 years ago for a summer trip to the Colorado high country and thought they would make a safe bet for the kind of braking / descents I would need. They worked well but what bugged me about them is the constant fiddling you needed to do to either keep them from rubbing or the way the brake felt under long extended braking. Did I mention set up aggro ? I don't understand for this kind of money why you would need to bleed right out of the box to get rolling. They will end up on the Niner when I get them back from the sticking piston issue that had me remove them and replace them.

Canada Day + Tour Start + Killer Weather =

ROAD TRIP!!! What else to say other than another killer wknd under the belt. Not even the mosquitoes could phuck this up. This spur of the moment shot was trying to capture Hockley Valley's version of the Tour passing through fields of sunflowers. Not sure what these weeds or plants were but they did the trick.

Almost 140 off road km's, over 6000' of climbing from Durham to Hockley to Mono to Mansfield. This wknd also served up running into old friends at far off trail heads.....

Hockley Valley, Mono Mills.....

What a killer day. Decided the hump day epic was in full effect. Took out the Tour of Georgia climbing jersey so we knew this was going to be a hilly loop. Headed off for a mini epic of sorts. ( GPS info and ride profile below )



Parked at Hockley Valley Resort and started the ride of with a 2 km climb up to the first section of single track. Basically the forest tracts are broken up with a grid of dirt roads to piece everything together.



Not a cloud in the sky nobody and I mean nobody on the trails ( we did not see another person for the whole 50 km loop ) Pristine singletrack at every turn and vista what else could you ask for. Epic Days!!

Hump Day Epic Rides

Copeland Continued.....chute's & ladders......

What's to say about this place other than EPIC. Riding for days if you know how to string it all together. Having spent several years exploring this from time to time and then mapping out the single~track with the Marathon course from 2 years ago it FINALLY makes sense.



You can't get much better than this and if you can erase the mental block of driving up here on a weekend and then returning in cottage country traffic then this place is the spot. Going to try to add this to some of the other forest tract's leading down to Hardwood Hills.

Copeland Forest ( Horseshoe Valley )

Finally some half decent weather...

So met up with the boys in Durham for a few laps of the forest. The weather was a welcome change to the 3 weeks of rain we have had. Durham is nice and empty during the days so perfect vacation day criteria. Weekends are getting way to busy for a uninterupted trail rip.

There is also a few new sections of single track in there this year and for the most part are pretty good with the trail on the north boundary having the most potential once they get worked in. ( Look for the red flags were all the logging has taken place ).

Asheville N.C.

We got a great week of trails and road and the weather held out for us nicely. Pic above was from the Dupont Forest Ridgeline trail. Want a great example of a multi use forest ? ok here goes...

We normally ride in the Jim Branch, Hooker Falls, Cedar Rock, Burnt Mtn trails and after doing a ridiculous climb we were catching a break when a guy in a Forester drives down the forest service road to go hiking with his Lab. After a 10 min or so chat he tells us about a great trail they just finished that was done with mtb'ers in mind and we should check it out. The trail was unreal and the guy turned out to be the President of the Friends of Dupont Forest and does not bike.



So after a few days of trails we ended up on the Parkway for a uphill torture session which did not dissapoint. The Parkway has just been freshly paved as you can see from the picture below so the 2 hour climb took just over 30 min to do as the DH and it was butter smooth.



So in the end the week looked like this and Jay we will ride this summer for sure, see you soon.



Video coming soon....ish........

Bent Creek Cobweb Ride 2011

With the long winter that we had what better way to wake up the lungs & legs that a day 1 ride at Bent Creek. As I have mentioned in other posts over the years this place is a their version of the Don Valley but with big hills and long fast downhills. There is supposed to be a pump track built in the forest but have yet to find it.

T minus 2 days.....North Carolina Bound

A view from atop the Blueridge Parkway near Mt Pigsah.

W O W

This video is going to get left up for a good long while. Normally we see trials videos mostly in urban settings from the likes of Ryan Leech or Danny MacAskill ripping up the UK streets or Stanley Park in Van.

Well Chris Akrigg from the Mongoose team takes this to a new level. Enjoy the video in full screen HD.

A Hill in Spain from chris akrigg on Vimeo.

Walker's Wood Weekend.

We had a unusually warm Thanksgiving weekend weather wise. Got to do back to back to back rides up in Uxbridge. I think I now have the maps for my fantasy dirt century ( 100 km ) mtb enduro. I am also going to try to post a video a week leading up to the end of season.



Picture Link

I am throwing up some random pics that never made it into a blog posting. You can get them by clicking this link. GPS tcx. files to follow.

Dufferin Forest a.k.a. Mansfield Mega Loop

Thanks to Stef for filming the video and Kris for the new kit, nice to see the Ride For Karen jersey in the dirt. Probably the last time we will get to ride up here for the year as the hunters are moving in soon and i'm the one normally filming not being filmed, so here it is......



As with all Vimeo links you can see it in a proper screen shot on the Vimeo luv2mtb home page or maximize it in the blog viewer. Music credits: Michael Franti & Spearhead. Sound of Sunshine.

Coulson Hill Video Teaser....

It's been a long time ( 10 + yrs ) since Tom dragged Ell & I up to do this midweek. Well the midweek is still growing and so is the network of trails. The best way to describe this place is big ring single track. You see it from the 400 just north of 88 and it has enough riding for 2 and a bit hours, lots of stunts, well marked loops and well its just different. Here is a little sneak peak and more to come.....

And yes those are arm warmers :)

For my Mum....

Today I went for a long ride in 40 degree heat but the weird thing was it seemed like the conditions around me were perfect. Sometimes ( and this is one of those times ) you need to do things like this and today's ride was extra hard in all aspects but nothing compared to what my Mum dealt with over the past 2 years.



This was her ride....

I am very glad I got the spend the last few weeks with my mum it is time I will never get back and always cherish.

This again has reminded me it is important, almost urgently to stop taking for granted two things; people and time.

I also saw first hand how strong the human will to live is and again I was left amazed at the strength and dignity my mum demonstrated on a daily basis.

I picked Mono Mills as this was the last outing we had together when we spent last years Mothers day at the local Inn. My mum had just lost all of her hair and did not want to go but did anyway as she always put others before herself in all aspects of life.

I hope I learned a little of this from you and just wanted to thank you Mum......

Rouge River ~ The View from Here.....

Just wanted to post something to let you know I am still here, and to thank you for the emails your sending on my mum's battle. We take our time here for granted ( at times ) but it is a gift.. so make the most of it....

Updated Niner MCR pic's

What a difference the ti makes over the steel / carbon cockpit set up I was running earlier this summer.

Bucket List # 5

Bike: XL Turner Sultan 29'er with XT. Jacket: Borrowed ( Thx Monte ) Trail: Thunder Mountain Loop from the bottom.
This was changed after jpickles a.k.a my Mum said she did not really like Price Fatty so we spruced up the video a bit and changed the tune. I should also say that all of these videos look better on Vimeo which you can link from the top of the page. A HD video cam is enroute as well. Enjoy

Thunder Mountain Utah Take 2... from Philip Hudson on Vimeo.

Thunder Mountain Utah

This is one of those places that won't leave you for a while. Despite the hail, rain and cold temps ( hard to imagine this while you watch the video above ) the Turner Sultan did its thing. When the soil gets wet it is like riding through cotton with velcro wheels.