Rain and Mud on the AZBDR and NMBDR

after the 3 days of snow on the way from the UT/ AZ border back to Phoenix we sat and waited for the summer to arrive and not just there, watching the weather closely it appeared in a few days it would be here, every place that we planned to be near in the next week or so had an increase of around 10-20 degrees – time to ride, again.

Egle had been identified when we were at OX, a lot. So while I was doing a last few little details with the bikes she was doing the final work on her new disguise so none of you will be able to spot her in a crowd

Southbound from the eastern side of PHX we rejoined the AZBDR and a mix of other tracks i had, our destination was @MaddBaggins in the outskirts of Tucson. We hit the dirt in Superior and before we knew it we were running on a track parallel to the AZBDR, oh well still good, seeing what you’d expect in this part of the world.

The riding for the rest of the day was good and the impromptu passenger was enjoying the ride

all was good in the dirt until about 7 miles from Tucson and a steep climb on the Old Mt. Lemmon Rd Egle had an off in the rocks severely bending a shifter

eventually finding somewhere on the bike after removing the shifter to gain leverage to bend it back into shape we reached the pavement and get to see Tucson in the distance. If you haven’t ridden in this area this is a must ride paved road to the summit

Coming out of Tucson and switching states and linking to the NMBDR the riding was great…

right up to the point where it all went horribly wrong…

the day started out good, long stretches of graded dirt

interspaced with a few sections of choice pavement

then back to the graded and dirt stuff for the rest of the day, all looked good for a fun days high-speed ride

then the rain started, we tried to outrun it but the track got worse and worse, the photo doesn’t do the brown river flowing down the track justice, traction was virtually zero, the direction was mainly uphill which didn’t help matters and it kept getting worse, both bikes snaking all over the place at a pace of around 3-5 miles an hour was all we could manage as the tires got more and more filled with sticky NM mud/ clay mix

no choice but to bail and set up camp with soaking wet gear in amongst cow shit off the trail

so at 2 pm, we were in the tent making food listening to the torrential downpour, checking the GPS to try and find a way out of this slop…the GPS showed no other roads, but it did tell me that it was 25 miles backward or 23 miles forward. At this point, I pulled out the Bulter map for NMBDR, thx @eakins. Determined exactly where we were and the little addition to the map “TRACK MAYBE IMPASSIBLE WHEN WET!!!”

All I could think is – YEP!!!

The following morning a section of blue sky appeared with the menacing black sky following and we packed and rode out and kept the blue sky above us. An hour later sticky mud was a memory and we were back to easy riding with well-drained roads