***If you would like to join this ride but it is cost or transportation is prohibitive or you cannot afford all the gear, please let us know. We’ll gladly help you out.

Are You Ready for the Adventure?

This ride is brought to you in partnership with Oveja Negra. They have sent us some cool raffle prizes to stoke everyone out! If you’re not familiar with Oveja Negra, they are a rad outfit where everything is designed and built in Salida, Colorado. They make fantastic bags in both amazing colors and fantastic utility!

To bring things together for our bikepacking ride series, we’re headed down to do Sarah Swallow’s Sky Islands Odyssey East Loop. We’ve come up with our own slightly modified version of this fantastic route (Running Clockwise this year).

The plan is to park in Amado at the Elephant Head / Anza Trailhead. We’ll ride around 30 miles with 2500+ feet elevation gain and camp near Kentucky Camp. The next day we’ll do another ~45 mile ride including riding down the AZT through Gardner Canyon (option to go around available via Fish Canyon to the 83) with a resupply lunch stop option at Senoita and dry camping off Hershaw Road. For the last day, we’ll be doing a ~45+ mile ride through Patagonia with an opportunity for resupply as well as breakfast/brunch in Patagonia followed by a big rough climb through Solera Canyon to get back to our vehicles. Plan on being able to carry at least 5-6 Litres of water per day as well as 1.5 days worth of food at a minimum.

This ride is advanced bikepacking with Challenging terrain, steep and rough climbing with hike-a-bike sections, remoteness and dry camping the 2nd night highlight the challenges. The terrain is mostly gravel roads with some rough and sandy sections as well as some singletrack. We recommend a hardtail mountain bike or a minimum of 50mm tires.

Ride Pace is ride at your own comfortable pace. This is not a race. We generally ride at a party pace with many meetups and stops so we can re-group. Campfire Cycling will always have a mechanic at the back of the ride so no one is “stuck” alone at the back or incase a mechanical issue come up.

Additionally cold temperatures during both nights camping at around 4500 feet necessitate colder weather gear. Average lows in Patagonia during February are reported at 30 degrees. So being a little higher up, anticipate a low of 20 to 25 degrees. A 20 degree bag (or warmer!) and insulated pad, as well as down jacket, long underwear and wool socks is the general recommendation though this of course varies depending on how hot or cold you sleep as well as constantly changing weather patterns

We will be contacting everyone who signs up for the ride to make sure they are prepared for the challenge. Please sign up if you plan on joining us.

The weather can be prohibitive in February, so if it is overly challenging we may have to cancel. The dirt changes to very sticky peanut mud very quickly!

Read more about the route HERE

NonPremium RideWithGPS users can get access to premium features for this route and other Campfire Cycling routes.

• Go to CampfireCycling’s Ride with GPS page.
• Click Join Now.
• If not already signed in, sign in to your Ride with GPS Account.
• OR Setup a Free Basic Ride with GPS Account.
• You will now be able to access this route and our Route Library.

***We strongly recommend all participants who do not have offline access to the route on their phone or other navigation devise, setup a free RideWithGPS account and use the above process to access the route and download it to their phone.

Protect the land/area that we recreate on. We will be on the traditional lands stewarded and still lived in by the Tohono O’Odham Peoples. Right now the Santa Rita’s are in danger of more damage from large scale mining operations. Learn more and donate here: Sky Islands Alliance, Patagonia Area Resource Alliance, Indivisible Tohono, Save the Scenic Santa Ritas

*Please note-Route is updated!