Some friends wanted to go bikepacking in Arizona over New Year’s, and we decided to connect chunks of three quintessential Arizona mountain bike experiences: The Coconino Loop, the Black Canyon Trail, and the Arizona Trail. By stringing together the low-elevation portions of these routes, we ended up with a nice winter trip. Coming up with the connector segments was a rewarding experience, as I’d never put together a route this big before. Luckily, everything worked out great. All the roads I found existed and we never ran afoul of private property.
We started in Sedona and ended in Pine. This route is not a full loop; it’s more like a “U.” This meant that shuttling cars only took a couple hours. Not too bad for a 300 mile route. We took 6 days, which allowed a nice leisurely pace.
In summary, the route starts in Sedona and follows some singletrack (most notably the Lime Kiln Trail) to Cottonwood along the Coconino Looop route. From Cottonwood, we took some empty, occasionally rugged dirt roads (a bit of hike-a-bike on this stretch, but not much) to the northern terminus of the Black Canyon Trail. The southern end of the BCT dropped us in Phoenician suburbs.
The crux of the route was getting across Phoenix without meeting a grisly death-by-automobile. I think I did a pretty good job stringing together bike lanes and recreational trails, but there were still a couple scary spots that didn’t even have a sidewalk we could bail onto. Luckily these stretches were brief.
A highlight was the Four Peaks road, which is a popular 4×4 area about 20 miles outside Phoenix. It was a major part of the connection between the southern terminus of the BCT and the point where we joined the AZT bike route. I’ll never forget bombing down that dirt road at sunset toward Roosevelt Lake to link up with the Arizona Trail bike route.
This route had a nice flow to it. It seemed like every day of hard singletrack riding was followed by some “recovery” on flat-ish dirt roads. Resupply options were plentiful.
Anthony M LeBaron 