Words & Photography Charlie the Bikemonger
Charlie the Bikemonger urges you toward adventure. Even if it’s a sunburned, punctured, dehydrated, drunken, euphoric adventure in Arizona. Especially if it is.
This spring, I got back from a few days bikepacking on the Arizona Trail. It’s an 800-mile off-road trail that runs the length of the state from Utah in the north, heads over the Grand Canyon and winds its way down to Mexico. In a single day you can encounter several seriously different environments, from flat low desert to craggy snow-topped mountains. It’s one hell of a trail.
Ian (my Dorset local riding buddy), Gil (singlespeeding’s premier sticker printer), and I jumped onto the trail for three days. Well, I say jumped; we fell out of Dirty’s Industry Nine van with colds and hangovers, but also with coffees and super-welcome egg butties. We rode from near Phoenix, Arizona, heading south towards the 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo race – a three-day mountain biking Glastonbury of about 3,000 folk – and a Friday 5pm cocktail party at the whisky tree (yes, more on this later), loaded with minimal kit and around eight litres of water each.Â
Our plan was to be out of the afternoon sun in a bar with cold beer in a rundown mining town by mid-afternoon. Our reality was dragging our tired and crinkled dehydrated bodies and bodged bikes into the same bar a whole 24 hours later than expected. So what went wrong?Â
 Nothing; it was great, really bloody great. We rode nothing but singletrack, wonderful trails with vast and magnificent canyon and mountain views and lots of technical rock drops and switchbacks. The local stabbing trees and bushes were always nearby, ready to shank us for every error. The wildlife was amazing and didn’t attack us.Â
It was just really bloody amazing.
Not a simple fix.Â
OK, so it went a little wrong. Our map was based off a GPS file that claimed a scale of 25 miles to the bar. It was actually 45. The heat was incredible. A puncture almost turned it into a real disaster… Yeah, I know that sounds weird. Let me explain. A rock tore a small hole in my sidewall; Stan’s sealant didn’t fix it, so we started to add an inner tube only to find the tyre already had hundreds of Stan’s repairs and dozens of cacti spines in it. There was no way an inner tube would get me 15 feet out here. Luckily Gil had some superglue and Ian had CO2. So after an hour of brain-cooking heat we were back in business, but also kicked squarely in the balls by the reality of being over a day’s walk from help.Â
A day’s walk… think about that.
Afternoon turned into dusk as we hit what we thought was 15 miles distance in nine hours! We then had a night out with anonymous and obvious wildlife snooping around our camp. Coyotes, bloody coyotes. One of these desert dogs howled nearby, really nearby. We decided – for convenience, you understand – to agree that they are not pack animals and that this one was the only one for a hundred miles. However, this single lone coyote set off half a dozen others nearby, which in turn set off more… and more… The howls could be heard rippling through the valley in both directions, getting greater in quantity though distant from us. There were bloody loads of them. We also got visited by mice things and wild boar and bitey lizard monsters.
A super-early start led into the next 15 miles of singletrack that merely took us six hours and all our water reserves. A remote tap near a mine building gave us a chance to refill, and quit making contingency plans. We eventually reached a crusty old mining town with limping old geezers who had nothing much to say, but this town had a bar. Cold beer, shade, crap American food, tequila and more beer concluded day two.
Long days get longer.
Beaten up, a little humiliated, but still very jolly, we ducked out of the remote wilderness and sped along dirt roads, keeping the pace up, eager to reach the party on time. Once again the day was one hell of a lot longer than expected. Longer by many litres of water, a mere 12-mile climb, a few extra thousand feet, and countless ‘can’t go on’ moments. We eventually spotted the Old Pueblo camper van and tent town – a very American, white motorhome hazy smudge in the far distance.Â
Having learned not to underestimate this place, we judged it was five miles and 30 minutes away. So, two hours and 17 miles later we arrived as shabby, burnt and broken wrecks. The Drunk Cyclist gang were at the whisky tree (a tree with countless bottles of whisky hanging from it for anyone who is not a dick to help themselves to) welcoming us with open bottles.Â
We partied, ate, wrestled, fell over, didn’t race, but I did achieve a career highlight by giving Lance Armstrong a ‘What would Lance do?’ sticker. He raced hard, an impressive sight indeed. He also got mooned at by the turbo classy Happy Bottom Bum Butter pro squad.
When sharing pictures on Facebook we got lots of congratulatory ‘well done lads’, but also something that got me thinking… Quite a few ‘I wish I could go there’ comments.
OK, so I’m a focused ‘stuff everything, let’s go’ person. I learned years ago that no one else is going to take me surfing, no one will wax my board, and certainly no one else is going to get me out in 20ft surf. Hell, my old employers weren’t (they learned to check surf reports against my attendance), my family wasn’t… My friends would assist with petrol money and companionship, but only one guy can get me out into the waves. Ignore the surfing references – no one will ride your bike for you, no one will ride your bike up a mountain. Nothing other than you is stopping you from doing what I did (if we ignore US immigration and their grumpy attitude to minor UK convictions).
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Think it, feel it, f*cking do it.
Working all your fit and healthy years, talking about, but putting off, adventure – it’s all retch and no vomit.Â
Get out there. I did, Gil did, Ian did… even Lance got stuck in. Get out there and vomit. 
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This trip started with a bike ride, a few pints, and ‘Hey let’s go to Arizona’ and an ‘OK, yeah!’. Do the first thing, do the ‘first thing’ first… say yes. Don’t worry about details, just say yes, and book a flight.
Checklist for this trip.
- Flight to Phoenix at around £800 (stop buying bike parts and buy a flight)
- Bike (I know you already have one of these)
- A few bags
- Lots of Stans
- Superglue
- Sleeping bag, mat and tent. Screw hotels, sleep on the ground.Â
- Sunblock.
- No more excuses.
