Up at 0400 for a dawn start.
This trail is in Williams, AZ, and is less than 5 minutes from Highway 40. If you are traveling cross country, it is well worth your time to take 2-3 hours to ride it. You can search the trail reviews for directions. It would be a definite trail to hit if you were going to the grand canyon.
It starts at the ranger station at the bottom of Bill Williams mountain. You will finish the ride with a stupendous downhill that ends right back at your car.
First, you have to get to the top. On the map above, you start at the upper left corner, take the green #21 trail to #124. after about 10 minutes of riding, this dumps you out onto the southern outskirts of Willams. You have to ride across the southern end of town, which is no big deal because the town is quite small.
Turn left here to ride through Williams:
Once mostly through town, you take a road South and up. Good scenery ensues, but my photos were crappy. I was passed by zero cars in 1/2 hour of road riding.
Scenery shots by Jayem here.
Just past a cattle guard, you turn right, and start climbing Benham trail. This trail brings you up the south face of the mountain, and is 4.5 miles, and 1580 ft of climbing, the majority of that in the last two miles.
Various shots of the climb:
There must be 20 switchbacks on this trail, and honestly, though I usually love them, they were very tight, and I dabbed most. I finally gave up on riding around them, and had better luck stopping, and hopping trials style around them.
The climb was steep enough for me to leave it in 22X34 for the entire thing, about an hours worth. The good thing is that it is mostly steady until the very top, so very little hike a bike was required despite numerous dabs.
Views near the top:
What a descent! 2200 feet in three miles. Amazing, brake burning descent through trees. Tons of rock gardens, that launch you into other rock gardens, with tons of alternate lines.
As much as I like riding SS, this ride begs for and rewards gears and suspension, the more the better.
Don’t know what made these marks?
The Curtlo performed superbly. Despite the lack of damping, the fork tracked true, and steered great. Overall, I felt very comfortably in control, and comfortably out of control the whole time. I think part of this was riding in more loamy soil (read GRIP) than I am used to. We have very low traction surfaces all around here, getting up into the high country was an education in how you can safely push a bike when the ground grips back.
Nevegal’s were outstanding, never felt out of their depth.
It was just great to haul through stuff smoothly and in control, looking for the most fun line, not the smoothest one. I need to break out this bike more.
Good stuff.
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