Pedaling up Pinal Mt and down Six Shooter, Globe AZ

The heat is here, but that didn't discourage chollaball, Alex, skinnytire and myself from meeting up in Globe, AZ for a little pedal up Pinal Mt, and then down the sweet, sweet trail of Six Shooter. We split from the parking lot at about 8:20, under blue skies. We knew it was gonna be warm, but we also knew there would be nice long periods of shade and cooling from being about 4k vf higher than our starting point.

I did this pedaled this about month and half ago with Paul B., and we did the climb in 3.5 hours, but today with a couple stops along the way we managed to do the climb in 3 hours. Actually chollaball and Alex knocked it out in under 2.5 hours.

Skinnytire gets the guts award today for bringing the 40 lbs of Kona up the hill.

The trails were fast, but after the long climb up, I wasn't seeing the trail all that well. I struggled to track good lines down the trail. Today, we did some sessioning on some of the features on the trail. First tries didn't always meet up with success, but we also didn't get banged up either. I did take a stupid little spill, and cracked my knee cap on sharp rock. No blood, but it did kinda smart. I neglected to bring the bash pads up today. Last time I leave those in the car on this ride.

I got a 100 oz camelbak and sucked nearly the whole thing down on the roll up the hill, so I was outta water for basically the whole ride down. The bummer part about this was that it was getting hotter, and hotter again as we lost elevation. That and I had downed nearly my whole gatorade on the break at the top.

We found a new exit today, down by the windmill, thanks to some other doods that we came across that shuttle to the top of the hill. As hot as it was, I wasn't looking forward to the no momentum riding on the exit that I usually take, especially considering that it was prolly about 95 degrees outta water, and we'd been on the trail for about 5 hours.

Here's a vid of the day:

Click To Play

And for the patient, here's a high res - Six Shooter Ride Quicktime Version (it'll take about 3 or 4 minutes to load up)