Another day, another ride. Again, we borrowed a route from our friends at Dirty Freehub. The Patagonia 30 is a gravel loop in Patagonia, AZ a charming little town of about 1000 down by Mexico. This loop was 30.3 miles with 1862′ of climbing. The day before was a tough ride so we appreciated the easy nature of this one.
From downtown we rode pavement out of town toward Harshaw. This is a nice ride that wraps around into the canyon, passes the Trailhead for the Arizona Trail, and climbs to a split. We turned right and climbed some more, past signs for South32, which is the Australian mining company that recently purchased Canada-based Arizona Mining Inc for its flagship project, the Hermosa Mine. The $1,300,000,000 deal closed in August 2018. That’s a lot of zeroes! Zinc is what they are after and in full production the Hermosa mine will be among the top five producers of zinc in the world.
The climb eventually levels out and we knew we were in for a big descent. Sure enough. San Rafael Valley is spread out in a dizzying expanse of open grasslands. Simply beautiful. We passed a couple border patrol trucks and continued descending back into town. The oak canyon and rocky washes flew by as we rejoiced over another successful ride.
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