I’ve been seeing pictures of snow in parts of the country and I do miss my ski adventures. That said, it’s been warm enough in Tucson to usually ride in shorts and short sleeves. The couple days it dipped below 70 degrees caused me to break out my arm warmers! haha! This post is more like a highlight reel of a couple of the rides we logged since our last post. I won’t bother posting everything we ride or I’d be a broken record!
Pistol Hill + Arizona Trail
If you follow our blog with any regularity I’m sure you’ll notice that we mention the Arizona Trail a lot. That’s because it’s a great trail with so many different fun sections. This time we added on some warm up trails to get out to the section by Colossal Caves just east of Tucson. Our ride was 21.5 miles with1413′ of climbing.
We started right off Camino Loma Alta and hopped on a no name singletrack that wove around the desert before crossing over Pistol Hill Road and hooking into the Arizona Trail just past La Posta Quemada Ranch. The trail is VERY narrow and lined with ever kind of cacti found in this area so there isn’t much room for error. From here we turned left and climbed up through a few rocky technical sections and over a notch before dropping back down to Rincon Creek. At this point the trail passes through Saguaro National Park and the mountains and cacti are amazing.
There is one more climb left to get to the parking lot for this end of the park and then we hit a short road section to get back to our car. I do wish there was a full trail loop instead of ending on a road section, but I can’t have everything I want.
The Loop
I really wish every city could have such a gem of a bike path network. Tucson has “The Loop” which is a non motorized separate paved path all the way around the city. One day we decided to ride the whole loop. Our ride was 58.8 miles with 1108′ of climbing.
After the significant flooding in the Phoenix area in the late 1970s, the Arizona Legislature required counties to create special taxing districts to raise money for the construction of regional flood control improvements. Pima County began building soil-cement bank protection along the Rillito and Santa Cruz Rivers after the massive 1983 floods.
Nearby residents were using the unpaved maintenance access paths on top of the banks to walk their dogs, go for a run or ride their bikes. The County started building river parks with improved paths on top of the banks, including pavement. Parts were added piecemeal and today it’s a full loop!
The loop is technically easy and aerobically it can be as easy or hard as you make it. We saw walkers, runners, someone roller skiing, an elliptigo, an of course cyclists. It’s nice the community has such a great place to recreate. Something like 50+ different art installations dot the path and we snapped a picture of a few of them. Check out The Loop Interactive Map for details.
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