My rim tape got screwed from my morning rip
Back on course 5 hours behinder

Just keep plugging away at it.

Historical time splits are here.

Just click on the appropriate year, 2021 for Nate's.

Next project is to add a 'Records' tab so those are easy to find.

Thanks.

Current record holder Nate tracked in Payson at 5:05:24 while Jefe tracked there at 5:04:45. So neck and neck...

Close yes, still a long ways to go but he's moving past Pine with out stopping.

Hopefully he only lost about an hour, I don't know how to tell if he's on record pace or not.

I saw that looked like ZF did the same thing, not that it would be that bad for quiet a ways.

Yeah looks like he is following the normal NB routing. Could be he is on a time constraint, is just tired or is trying to avoid any issues with the road construction happening on AZ88. Guess we will find out eventually.

Interesting keeps us dot watchers on our toes.

Super crazy that there were multiple people crazy enough to take the Lemmon Drop. I see your point about being "safer" but man I would take cars on the HWY all day rather than push up that. Haha. I have never felt too sketched out by traffic on Lemmon to be honest. Good shoulder for the most part as you know and bike traffic is pretty normal and expected up there.

Yeah there have been more issues with jeeps on Reddington and any bypass of that is also ridiculous, not that I didn't look at it.

Did Dustin Foudrey go the wrong way? I thought he was doing the green line?

Can someone explain why there are two red lines routes towards the top of Lemon on trackleaders? Ana & Alexandria are on course but on two different routes at the moment.  Is there some strategy at play? Single speed vs geared route?

Alex is doing the single track of the Lemmon Drop in the up hill direction, part of a small group all single speeders. Ana is using the hwy as is standard.

While the trail silly hard it's likely safer.

I will be touring south to the start and am looking for somewhere in Tucson to leave a small bag of extra kit, so I can give the Lemmon Drop a try, around Oct 12-13
thanks

your welcome to drop by my place on the west side near downtown.

Pretty sure the structure is leftover from Border wall construction, it would be a huge spot if they cleared it out. There's also a clearing .2 up the Ida cyn road FS 771 also called Oversite cyn on the old map. Hopefully Border activity will have moved on to some other area.

Last year the driver told them the van wouldn't make it to the border, coming from Parker he drove them past 103 Mesa to the top of Copper Cyn. So they sat in the van longer and got to ride a slightly tougher route to the start.

Looking at the map I can see where the change back to a split shuttle sending them to Parker first, and I is hard to see that the purple line continues past the red. In the dark for a driver who's never been there, didn't know how much better FS 4726 is then the Copper Cyn rd.

Not seeing anything at the link assume the plan is to get dropped the night before as in past years.

The border was hoping this spring, did not make for a good nights sleep down there, hopefully things have calmed down for that area.

Last fall the grass was too tall to safely park anywhere except right at the border, anybody planning to camp out the night before?

Tim

Once again the fine folks at Homegrown Shuttles will be offering their services to help get riders to the start from either Picketpost trailhead or Tucson. Sign-up for a shuttle here:

*Registration for the AZTR has not opened yet and having a shuttle reservation does not guarantee a spot in the Grand Depart.

https://homegrownmtb.com/event/arizona-trail-300-800-race-shuttle/]https://homegrownmtb.com/event/arizona-trail-300-800-race-shuttle/[/url]

Somebody should print John's shuttle directions map and give it to the driver, there's no reason the van can't get you all the way to the border fence if that's where you want to go. On the other hand if they go thru Sierra Vista you might be sick of the van and want to get on the bikes at Montezuma Pass.

Thanks for the comments! It actually has turn by turn dialed into whatever route I load on it, so it?ll use the same file the Etrex would be using I believe. And I can just follow the arrow on its map if I need to as well. It?ll tell me I?m off course, and it?ll be mounted to my bars with a nifty Garmin adapter used for such a use.

Any other thoughts on possible drawbacks? So far its seeming like it?ll work.


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OK so bar mounted, and you have used it enough to feel comfortable with following a track. Assuming your a rookie from out of state, I would also say you could study the course, print the cues and study the course on a full sized screen, print a map with the right scale to sow overall landmarks and main gravel roads. If you know that Canelo Pass road will lead you to Sonoita, you won't have to spend hours following the track, if things go wrong you should be able to navigate back to civilization.

"Turn by Turn" seems to be a really bad idea for mtn bike backpacking, where you are going through mazes of trails at trail centres and every un-mapped naturally occurring game trail or cow trail, or social trail looks identical to the trail you should be on, especially if they already have tire tracks on them.

Even zooming all the way in won't save you from some of these, the trail is getting better and better with use and signage, if you end up on a cow trail north of Oracle the key thing is having a track to see what direction to head to find the trail.

It seems pretty easy to me, to follow a gpx. line displayed on a device. Just keep your "you are here" arrow on your coloured line, and the racers that have got badly lost (such as Tour Dividers crossing the border into the US in the wrong place) were trying to navigate by "Turn by Turn"

Sounds like he'll have that just on a smaller screen.

I didn't know how the TD rider got so far off course, obviously it's best to keep an eye on the track as well. Now if someone finds their way back south to the International border and can't tell what side they're supposed to be on then we have real problems.

Haven't used a watch before, my immediate thoughts is that having to take a hand off the bars to check the route would be kinda annoying. Not an issue in a lot of cases I am sure, but I always tend to check my position on the track especially when going downhill just to make sure I am not off track and needing to go back up if I made a mistake. Fairly easy to glance at the bar mounted unit to double check myself. taking a hand off the bars to do that would be less than ideal for me.

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/641375
It's an interesting gadget had to scroll all the way to the bottom to see that it has turn by trun navigation.

Speaking of navigation, I?m thinking of doing my first AZT300 attempt navigating from my Garmin Fenix 6x solar watch. I?ve used it for other bikepacking trips. Any thoughts out there?
 

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Does it have a way to warn you if you get off track, I see it has a turn by turn and I have heard of people using apps with TbT. Having the unit on your bars where you can always see it is of course better.

I would be great if the RD could get the same level of hero worship, can do no wrong, admiration that is given to the riders. 

Eventually found El Plier. Between trackleaders mytopo, google terrain, and topofusion it finally has a coordinate. Thanks for that one.

I actually meant to post a better link and then I got side tracked. Here's another shot from the trail https://scontent.fphx1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/275583199_3048542578728554_5066957991823398395_n.jpg?_nc_cat=103&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=174925&_nc_ohc=K5Ak1xwAuIIAX8v6uE8&_nc_ht=scontent.fphx1-2.fna&oh=00_AT-h3e2HuIOVw2qILdhIsckC-zb9AtcAGj5ykR_XTyfy3A&oe=62BE5B58

It's about .1 mile off trail to the water hole, mostly a flat meadow about 100 feet on a steeper cow trail. Not sure it will be a water source that everyone will bother with but it looked pretty good so hopefully dependable.

where is El Pilar?

South of the Flume trail once the new reroute is done.

AH and Slowpoke rode it this spring, John had posted the track but then pulled it a couple of days later, you have to lift your bike over a locked gate at one point and upper Hog canyon road has sand deep enough to suck riding down. http://trackleaders.com/aztrspring22i.php?name=Olivia_Flaversham_Reload she goes off course after the flume El Pilar Tank shows up in the mytopo layer.

The Cholla's likely broke loose in a high wind event, they can't really jump, the local club gives out combs https://vimeo.com/100524985

Fully Schillinged, Schillified for your hike a bike pleasure, and there's more single track to come in the Temporal Gulch reroute. If you look at AH and Slowpoke's southbound 300 runs you can see they went up Hog canyon and picked up some of the new stuff. There's a sweet water source at the El Pilar. https://scontent.fphx1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/275561729_3048541052062040_2486703640525308203_n.jpg?_nc_cat=108&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=VlQE1PUexQEAX_8wQEA&_nc_ht=scontent.fphx1-1.fna&oh=00_AT8aZEN1E9n9roe4gsxSH4RHsxrmvFu3sVgnLn0tWUfwVQ&oe=62BB994D

I've seen metric on topo maps before never really thought about it much, the I 19 from Tucson south is signed in metric, like some kind of warm up before going in to Mexico.

Happy planning and bounce that dot.

Tim

Greetings and salutations, heralding the return of the international field to the AZT 800.

More northern riders have wanted a fall run, at the end of their summer training season, forever, once it came so did the monsoons to cause grasses to overrun the trail. It will be interesting to see how the summer plays out and what affect either way it will have on the fall run.

You shouldn't have to worry about the ranger on the north rim as you'll hopefully be on trail.

Lots of changes in the last two years lots of stuff that hasn't as well.

Looking forward to watching the DW blue dot.