[mewholobo]

Our Payson Summer Solstice Ride is still happening this Sunday June 22nd. This is not going to be the only ride we will do this summer. We will likely start doing these rides once or twice a month from here on out.

We are meeting in front of Stage (across from Safeway), right in the middle of town, at 10:00am this Sunday.

This is a soul ride. This ride will be to help create awareness, support, and advocacy for creating a good mountain bike culture and good mountain bike trails in Payson's Rim Country.

We will do a figure 8 loop around Payson on our Payson Area Trails System. To start, we are going to ride a few miles through town and access the Round Valley loop. This loop starts with a tough climb that leads to a killer downhill.

From there we will ride over and do our 24-hour race loop on the Peach Orchard trail. From there we will ride back into town, ride through one of our beautiful parks, then hit a local gas station to re-supply.

Anyone who is tired and finished with the ride at this point can call it quits. For those of us, who decide to keep riding, we will ride down to the Granite Dells and access the Boulders Trail and Monument Peak trail. This will take us back over to Star Valley where we will hit another gas station. From there we will hit the Houston Mesa loop and ride that back into Payson Proper.

We will then ride back through town to Rumsey Park and call it good.

If you'd like to help us advocate for a mountain bike culture and good off-road trails in Payson, come join us.

Since we plan to do these rides 1-2 times a month from here on out, whenever we finally get a good turnout, we will get the local newspaper and radio stations down to plug what we're doing.

We are also doing Saturday evening social/pub rides here in Payson to go to our local Music in the Park.

Any and all are invited.

Cheers Everyone,

Mick Wolf- Owner
Hike, Bike, & Run
www.hikebikeandrun.com

 

[cycljunkie]

Total ride distance?

 

[circusubet]

Payson Ride

Mike,

Is there a map of the route available that you can post?

Thx. John

 

[mewholobo]

Map and Mileage

Here is a link to the Payson town website that has a map of the Payson Area Trails System.

http://www.paysonrimcountry.com/Mou...PaysonAreaTrailsSystem/tabid/165/Default.aspx

We will be doing 3/4ths of everything in green on that map, plus riding paved roads in-between the trail systems to access the trails.

I want to use this ride to show people how good our terrain is, how awesome the riding could be here, and then all the destruction quads and side-by-sides are causing to our trails. Like I said before, this is an advocacy ride, a soul ride, and a welcome to Payson ride all rolled up into one. You will not be disappointed in this ride. The terrain is tough here. There will be tough descents, tough climbs, and fast technical sections. While we are out riding these trails, all you've got to do is look around and imagine how much singletrack we could build here in the surrounding mountains, mesas, deserts, and forests.

I've designed this ride so that it can be 10-miles, 20-miles, 30-miles, and maybe even up to 40-miles. What I mean by that is if someone only wanted to ride the Round Valley Loop, then by the time they leave and return to the Stage parking lot, it's likely a 10-mile ride. The 24-hour race loop should add about 15 miles, so if someone just rode the Round Valley Loop and the 24-hour race course, it'd be a 20-25 mile ride. When we head down to the Granite Dells and ride that trail system to Star Valley, that could add up to another 7-10 miles. It'd be another 10 miles or so to head back into Payson proper on the Houston Mesa trail section.

I rode this entire loop two weekends ago in the middle of the day, and it was a great ride. I am in mediocre fitness, and I ride a rigid 29-er with a limited drivetrain.

I do not know an actual distance if we do the entire loop that I am planning, but it should be between 30-40 miles.

At the very end of the ride, when we go through Rumsey Park, there will be an option to stop off for a quick dip at our local public pool, given it is open swim at the time and you want to pay the entry fee. That could be a good way to finish the ride up. We can then head over and have some group at one of our local eateries. I might even offer to buy beer and drinks for all of us.

The Town of Payson is sitting on the fence when it comes to our trails system. While they want to turn Payson into this awesome little mountain town, they haven't quite gotten the picture of what good trail systems catering to non-motorized users means. Most of our existing trail systems cater perfectly to quads and horses, but not mountain bikers, trail runners, and hikers. The other problem here is that the Forest Service doesn't seem to want to step up to the plate to control motorized use.

We can only change this if we advocate hard and show this town that mountain biking could bring so many people here. You all want to see trails built, we want good trails out our back door, we just have to make it happen.

If any of you have anymore questions, just let me know.

Mick Wolf
www.hikebikeandrun.com