Dec 19, 2010

Warpain Foothills

So this morning I got up and wanted to get some trail time in, but I'm fighting off a little bit of a cold, so I wanted to keep it pretty easy and brief.

My plan was to play on the small foothills at the Warpaint entrance to South Mountain (these hills are found immediately at the entrance of Warpaint - a bit to the south).

I've climbed the foothills few times before, but generally ignore them because I'm usually out to pedal more XC oriented riding (Desert Classic). Sometimes though, I will pull out the heavy big travel bike for some rolling on DC and the Helipad, and will include the little loop that rips around on these hills.

The terrain up on these foothills have some established yet not recognized hiker trails, and the trail composition is loose-gravelly gnar on a steep fall line. Although it is a hike-a-bike to get up on top, I did find one primo line off the top that is actually pretty freaking schweet. If you click on the Google Earth Tour below, it is the loop in yellow, and the really fun line is the north section of trail (in yellow). The yellow line loop is exactly 1 mile, and as I was saying it is normally overlooked because of the nasty HAB.


I did a little exploring, but instead of doing the normally little hiker loop, I wanted to drop off the west end of foothill and and tie back into Desert Classic/Warpaint. There is a little bit of a rogue trail that doesn't get much use that I was able to connect to Desert Classic/Warpaintw with.

I'd like to know is how hard would it be to get Park Service at South Mountain to allow this section of trail to be established?

I suppose if these trail sections are on private property, then that would stop this discussion in its tracks right now. But it would be kinda kewl to have an established connector to the west between the foothill and Desert Classic/Warpaint.


HOLD THE PRESS!!! IT LOOKS LIKE THIS AREA IS OUTSIDE OF SOUTH MOUNTAIN PARK/PRESERVE.


Below is an interactive Google Earth Tour (you need to have Google Earth installed and the trail photos may take some time to load up), and after the tour plays you should be able to navigate around the area and click on the pics.






Here a couple pics of my small adventure:



No comments: