Beaver Creek

The window for catching Beaver Creek with floatable water in it is pretty small, but with the big snow storm that AZ this past week and subsequent warm up the curtains were flapping in the wind.
My big sister was in town, and she wasn’t an experienced paddler and I wasn’t experienced with this river – bad combination.
I met up with the Flagstaff crew (plus a few other from PHX) here at the Mcquireville exit at 9:00. I had rented inflatable kayak for my sister. We did the quick 15 minute shuttle down the river – prolly the shortest shuttle you find for the 10 mile stretch of river you will find in AZ. We parked here.
The river was flowing at about 800 or 900 cfs when we got on it, but I had no reference to how fast this thing was moving and how many obstacles that needed to be dodged. It didn’t take long before I realized that my sister was going to struggle all day, and she did. About an hour into the float, she ran into a tree, dumping her out and wrapping her boat around the tree. Bad things. She was alright, and she was alright on the two other times she went over. Each time she ate it, I did stoopid things too and ended up doing wet exits myself.
Anycow, despite my sisters struggles, I had an absolute blast rawking the river. The rapids were bigger than anything I had been on, and the carving around the trees was wicked fun.
I believe by the time we were off the river, the flow was down a to about 4 or 5 hunderd cfs. Still pretty fast for this tiny space to go down.
The scariest thing I was after we pulled out, a group landed about 15 minutes behind us and one of the lady’s had stepped walked backward into a submerged drainage pipe. It sucked her in, dragging inside the completely filled pipe, and spitting her out on the other end – about 25 feet. Terrifying. I don’t believe she was injured, but I can only image the terror. Shoot, she is one very lucky lady; that pipe could have been obstructed with a tree of something else.

Here is a graph of how the waterflow spiked:



Here is the vid of the day:

Sedona AZSF

The annual MTBR Arizona Spring Fling nearly passed me by this year, but I did get one ride in and it was suh-weet.

It was a repeat of last years ride, except I had my big bike and I had fresh legs. There is no way I could've pedaled that bike without fresh legs.

Any cow, there was 12 of us on our ride and a few other MTBR groups out on the trail (The video says we had a eleven, but I accidentally left Gary off my list).

Here is a vid of the day:

Lemmon Drop Jr. - Tucson, AZ

Did a little Lemmon Drop, down in Tucson, and it pretty much rule.

You aren't supposta be tired when you shuttle up about 5,000 vf, but dang it I was. I does make sense though, when you through another couple thousand feet of climbing...

Da DooDooboi, Adam and I split from my place in PHX at 7:00, and we met up with Helimech at Le Buzz (coffee shop at the base of the Catalina Mountains) at 9:00. An hour later, we had shuttle up to the Green Mountain trailhead.

The 6 hour gnar bash took us down, Greenie, Bug Spring and La Millagrosa.

No real mechanicals, utter than the clamp on my seat post is toast (rotating freely), and Adam's flat tire. I also banged my knee for the third time this week on my shifter. Ow, that freaking smarts.

Anycow, here is a Vid of the day: