Wow! Josh Bruhn finished the CSTR in 5 days and 9 hours. Congratulations, very well done!  

Josh posted very nice and sometimes a little less nice pictures of his journey on Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/bruhn13

Ok, thanks a lot Sean for your detailed report.
We will see how it looks when we are there.
You will see us on Trackleaders too and maybee you will find time to visit us out there and ride the nice part of the route! 😉

Mat,
I think that Phillip is spot on and you'll likely see just a bit less snow than the racers have. Those are the two highest sections and snow will probably be there for another month. There will be some snow in areas Phillip hasn't been into yet, but just north facing drifts.  There will be trees down all over the course, most of the course has really only been open for a month now due to the brutal winter we had and trailwork crews are just now starting to get some work done. Many areas are user maintained so no formal trailwork. You'll be fine, it's still in good shape for the majority of the route.

The racers all look great. Josh is very strong and has done some extra mileage by coming down into Truckee the first night. Sara and Phillip look to be riding back and forth together. They are both strong riders and know the pace they need to keep to finish. I predict all racers will finish this year, a first and hopefully due to the easier first day, which still included 15,000' of climbing in the first 100 miles. As for me, I only rode on Friday till about 5. I have too much work going on and the only way I could start with the group was to work Saturday to make up for Friday. Had a great time, though I'm getting tired of only doing the hard sections.....

Thanks Phillip, is there a lot of HAB because of the snow?

Snow at Tahoe meadows and lots more from start lake to freel pass.

The race is running.

What happens to Sean? Is the Donner Lake so beautiful? ;-)

Does anyone have current information on the snow conditions on the track?

We will start ITT in Bikepacking mode on Saturday...

Holy moly, there's alot of snow to melt until summer!

Picture shows donner pass near lake tahoe...(pic taken on february 2017)

The start date for the 2017 CSTR is out now.

Friday, July 14th, 2017 at 6:00 am

A new and shorter course is waiting to the participants.

See the details on the CSTR page http://californiasierratrailrace.weebly.com/

I did a short check of the changes made on the course compared to 2016. There are three sections on the course that have changed.
The blue track on the overview and on the detail pictures shows the 2016 version.

Section 1 is to stay longer on Elliot Ranch road
Section 2 is a shortcut around Soda Springs
Section 3 is an alternative track after Tahoe City

Maybe Sean can explain something about the changes?

We are two guys from Switzerland and we will do the course in bikepacking mode at the end of July.
Hope to see a lot of tire tracks of the race participants as these guys will start earlier in 2017...

We are two guys from Switzerland and like to do the CSTR in touring mode this summer.

I would like to ask the guys who know the CSTR track which version of the CSTR you would recommend for touring?

The 2014 or the 2016 version?

We would prefer as much singletrails as possible.

Thanks a lot and regards
mat

Is Joe Grant's Spot still working? He's a bit too long at the same place...

I use an emergency blanket as ground cover.
Retains/reflects back 90% of body heat and is relatively cheap.

We did the full AZT in 2014. We started at the northern trailhead and have reached the GC north rim after two days.

The next day we crossed the GC carrying all our stuff in one day. This took us 11.5 hours!

Pictures of that day:
Click to "Arizona Trail Tag 2" under the following link: http://mat-sa.ch/AZT/?page_id=11

Here are my two cents about crossing the GC when walking under its own power:

Would I do it again? Absolutely!
How though is it? It's a log and exhausting walk. Walking down and along the flat section coming from the north rim was harder for me than climbing back uphill.
I strongly recommend you to use a real large trekking backpack with a good waist belt and stable back support. Also a pair of running shoes. And not to forget trekking poles.
Also I recommend you to pack precisely and carefully. Otherwise you will suffer in the coming hours...
After crossing the GC you can leave the running shoes, the poles and the backpack at the south rim or send it back home.
I started the AZT with a very old backpack (smaller backpack inside), trekking poles and running shoes and threw all to trash after reaching the south rim.
Regarding environmental protection not the best solution I know but because we are from Switzerland we had no chance to send the stuff back home without much higher cost.
There is a ranger program where you can bring unused stuff at the south rim but we arrived late in the day and left early in the mornig. The ranger station was closed.
You can continue with a smaller backpack from there...

Hope this helps...

Thanks for the clarification Joe.
Would you recommend this trip (Rondanestien from north to south) only with fatbikes or is this trail rideable with normal bikes?
I saw some very gnarly parts on the pictures. Especially the duckboards... :-)
Is the most part of the trail that gnarly or are theses parts rather rare?

Thanks and regards
mat

Very nice pictures! Do you have information whether this can be done with a bike in summer?

I would love to do the whole Rondane Trail as a summer bikepacking trip!

http://rondanestien.turistforeningen.no/index.php?fo_id=1812

Would you mind sharing GPS data?

Thanks and regards
mat

The Navad-1000 2016 in Switzerland will start June 18.
You can now Register for the 2nd Edition of the Navad-1000. You should not wait too long to get one of 99 places.

http://www.navad1000.ch/Anmelden/Anmelden

Hi Ben,

This routes are built and maintained from the Swiss Mobile foundation. In general the routes are very scenic but not very difficult to ride.

The alpine route #1 is the most challenging and most beautiful of all the routes.

Total length: 665 km (415mi)
Double track: 335 km (209mi)
Singletrail: 53 km (33mi)
Elevation gain: 21'000 hm (69'000ft)

As you can see in the numbers, even this route has not really much single trail. But you need to consider that the single trails in the swiss alps are generally much rougher and have more elevation gain (are steeper) than the trails in the USA.

If you need more Information I'm happy to help...

Grip Socks works very well! Survived a complete AZT thru bike trip last year.

https://www.sandsocks.net/grip-socks.html

I'm watching the Navad 1000 Live Tracking every hour or so. The website is always open in the background.

I'm especially looking for three buddies I know. Hampe Ryf, Heinz Fruhwirth and of course Michael too. Hope the rain will stop now and the weather will be a little nicer to the participants.

The closest point of the race course is about 20miles away from my home. I hope I can visit the course and meet some rider and install some "trail magic" for the riders....

There is a coverage in a german Forum:
http://www.mtb-news.de/news/2015/06/20/navad-1000-live-blog-von-chris-david-und-marcus/
Below the article are the links to the daily coverage...

This segment is not allowed for mountainbikes because you will hit the Superstition Wilderness. I encourage you to respect the Wilderness closure for mountainbikes.

But if you like to do a lot of HAB and bushwhacking, you can try the Superstition Bypass over the Gunsight Gap section that Scott Morris proposed.

http://www.topofusion.com/azt/super.php

Good luck!  

Mat -- thanks for the brief trip report and link to photos.  Congrats on finishing the entire AZT, in great style.  Looks like you mostly took the 750 race route?

Dear Scott,

Thanks for the congratulations . Appreciate that...

Our plan was to follow mainly the AZTR Route but in the opposite direction (north to south). We had no plans for riding Highline trail. Instead we took the NF-road to Payson after descending the tunnel trail. For the rest we wanted to go on the AZTR route. Unfortunately we had to skip some passages because of weather conditions and its impact.
- We had to start at Jacob lake instead of Stateline Campground because the whole area around the AZT trail head was flooded and the House Rock Valley Road was impassable.
- We had to skip the whole Mount Lemmon passage including Reddington Pass because of heavy rain and fog. We started again at Pistol Hill after 1.5 days of waiting for the rain to stop.

"I thought we will encounter lack of water in AZ, not the opposite! ;-) "

Nevertheless it was a great adventure and one of the best things that I've ever done.

Sorry Mike for hijacking this thread a litte...

We did the whole AZT north to south one month ago (09-26 to 10-13). Therefore my memories are pretty fresh.

I liked the part between Tusayan (GC south rim) and Flagstaff but as already stated the snow is a problem in winter
Picketpost to Kelvin is a nice part too. Kelvin to Oracle I found less cool because all the ups and downs kill the flow.

I would recommend the part from Pistol hill (South of Tucson) to Sononita too. Altough there is a lot of HAB after passing Twin tanks.
We did this part in two days.

And of course there are the Canelos! This is a love-hate relationship to me. Starting from Parker Canyon Lake and heading to Patagonia might be a good choice.
In the other direction (that we did) only the part from Canelo Pass road to Parker Canyon Lake was fun. The part from Patagonia to Canelo Pass road is mostly uphill and the AZT is currently almost impassable by bike because of handlebar high grass and washed out sections. Nevertheless this is a very beautiful section.

From south to north the sections may be regarded differently.

Instead of staying on the AZT, you might look for a loop option that uses parts of the Trail.

If you like to see pictures of our trip splitted in daily sections, here is the link to our Gallery.

There is a daily trip report too but it's in German.

Have fun and regards from Switzerland
mat

Hi,
My name is Mat and I'm from Switzerland.
We are two friends who like to do the whole Arizona Trail by bike. We will start the whole AZT trip from north to south on 9-27 at stateline campground heading south.

My question now is aimed at experienced bikers on the AZT. As we all know water management is important on the AZT. There is the water sources page who describes the water situation. This will help us to add more or less water to our base water setup. And this would lead me to my question. How much liters of water would you take as base setup to work with? Or what is your minimum of water you would start to a segment? I know this is personal and may change. But with your personal experience I can see in which direction it goes...

We would be able to carrying a maximum of 6 litres each. But this is a huge load...

I hope, you guys can give me a hint...

Thanks a lot and regards
mat