Soul Cleansing via Bikepacking

Simply put, the last 18 months or so are some months I would really rather forget. I'm still healing from a huge amount of personal turmoil in my life that I can only hope will result in me being a stronger and more authentic person. There has to be a purpose for this pain - so I will march onward.

I have lost many things in this time, but the one I really care to write about here is my love for adventure and in particular bikepacking. That said, since the AZTR 300 in 2017, I haven't done a single mountain bike ride that involved any kind of adventure. It was more just checking the boxes and trying to keep some kind of physical fitness than anything else.

Back during the 2018 running of the AZTR I found myself down south not as a participant, but as a person willing to assist with shuttling vehicles/riders to Parker Canyon Lake and Picketpost. I did this with John Schilling and it was good hang time with a person I highly admired. Sometime at PCL, John brought up a scouting ride that would make for a good bikepack in November. I said I was willing to give it a shot and promptly went home and started to get my fitness together do about 11 mountain bike rides in the next seven months and not one over four hours. About seven of those rides were in October alone as I started to panic that I was nowhere close to ready to do this.

All that said, the date was approaching and I hesitantly sent John an email and said something like "I'm so out of shape, but I'm in if you are". He replied that he was just barely starting to turn the corner in his fitness so we would just see what happened. So begins a beautiful journey of suffering... of soul cleansing.

Day 1
Friday was a bit of a mess due to scheduling and other issues, but I drove up to Deer Creek Trailhead with my bike and awaited John to get there with his bike. We loaded his bike in the back of my truck and headed back south to Lost Dutchman state park - leaving his car there so we had a way to get back to the start when we finished.

We parked in the lot and made final preparations with the last rays of the sun hitting the Superstition Mountains.

My bike ready to roll, rogue panda bags were rock solid again.

John making final preparations - his bike wasn't quite right though :)

Almost ready...except for that fork which was backwards and didn't notice until the first few revs of the pedals! Oops!

View from the parking lot. Can't really capture it in a photo.

We put our lights on, and started riding - just wanting to get a few miles away from roads before settling in for the night.

Just a brief spin in the night to get to camp...

About two or three revs on the pedals and John figured out his rigid front fork was on backwards! Easy enough fix, he would handle it when we got to camp. I thought for a moment that things were gonna get a bit more interesting when we heard a barking dog after we crossed Apache Trail Rd... It was definitely moving around but I'm guessing it was behind a fence thank goodness. We got to our spot really quickly and set up our kits - John was a bit more luxury than me as he was was working out the logistics of his full kit since he has big fish to fry next year... I was gonna cowboy camp like I usually do. Ground cover, sleeping bag, done. We talked about all kinds of stuff - riding, 2018 shenanigans in general, etc. while we ate. Before we knew it it was 9PM and time to crash. I laid on my back and just marveled at the stars and even the milky way as it was visible out there. Saw a couple great shooting stars flash across the sky and then I was out. I thought I heard someone walk by in the middle of the night listening to a podcast or something - I thought I heard John say something asking what it was, but he didn't remember anything and I didn't see any tracks over our bike tracks so... it's a mystery I guess.

Day 2

Woke up with first light and laid in the bag for a bit. Eventually, the clouds to the east were on fire. What a beautiful sight.

Poked my head of of the sleeping bag and saw this. Yeah, that's better than an alarm clock.

Packed up and ready to ride. My sleep kit was simple - ground cover and sleeping bag. Easy.

We were in scouting mode, and some was pretty nice - just needed to be brushed a bit maybe. John trimmed some catclaw like a champ. We ran into some pretty stupid hike a bike stuff, but honestly, HAB never has really bothered me too much. Truthfully if you are doing HAB, chances are you are in a pretty spectacular place with decent scenery. That held true this morning. Still, it was wasted energy which I was going to regret later.

Hmm. Rubble and a little bit of a bunchy climb = let's hike for a second...

Really sweet views. 

We both brought loppers for the ride to do trail maintenance later. Didn't make it to that part of the route, but they came in handy a few times early on. John trimming back dreaded catclaw!

Way steeper than it looks. HAB goodness! 

Eventually, we got done with some of that BS and it was on to some fairly quick jeep road riding before hitting Bush Highway on the way to a pit stop at Saguaro Lake.

Little break after some riding. Ate a snack and reapplied sunscreen...

I spent a good portion of the ride behind John, but I did get ahead of him for a bit on this jeep road section. That allowed me to get some pictures of him. 

Some quick road miles.

Resupply at Saguaro Lake. Checking out what they had. Good resources here, and beautiful.

Waiting for my order to be ready.

We got there and checked out what they had for resupply options. Pretty good cafe and vending machines. Score. I didn't bring any "real food", so I ordered a breakfast sandwich and a soda. I didn't need to, but real food is always good, so why not.

We realized it was already pretty late - I think around 11AM - as we had burned a lot of time earlier messing around with the bulldog canyon singletrack stuff. Figured we needed to get a move on so we were out of there. A little more road riding and we made our way to the Butcher Jones recreation site. Really pretty and I had never been there before.

Butcher Jones site.

I was pretty stoked to start getting into the meat of the route, and was hit right in the face with a pretty nasty sand hike a bike. Ugh!

Footprints in the sand... Dreadful and felt way warmer here than it probably was. 

John was able to ride a bit more than me due to the wider footprint of his tires, but he still walked plenty. It just burned too much energy to try to pedal so we walked. And walked... There is a theme here.

It took quite a bit, but we finally got to the 4 peaks "staging area" - tons of trucks with trailers that had brought all kinds of off road vehicles. It was plenty busy on the road all the way up, but everyone was really pretty courteous. No BS, which is nice to experience. There is plenty of room for all land users out there.

Oh look, a hike a bike. This was one steep pitch. It sucked,

Watching the master at work.Saguaro Lake in the background. Pretty cool to see our start point way in the background!

Still a really long way to go to get up there

Terrain is changing. Reminded me a lot of Tom's Thumb area.

I don't think either of us were really entertained at this point.

I was feeling decent, but as we climbed I started to realize that this was going to be rough. We got 4-5 miles in and it was pretty slow going. Tough with loaded bike that's for sure. We sat down in the shade for a bit and John looked and said "we have eleven miles to go" - oof! He mentioned much later that he contemplated pulling the plug there - still a reasonable bail out. I don't know if I would have fought him too much on that, but I wasn't ready to suggest it myself.

Break time. We realized we had 11 miles to the top. Doubts creeping in at least for me internally.

We got up and started marching on, we had a pretty hefty HAB staring us in the face which we tackled and got done. But we were wrecked. We had made it about another mile and grabbed more shade. At this point John offered up a different option from our planned route stating that it was going to take everything we had to get to the top. We agreed it was the best plan. We would get to the top then detour on El Oso Rd and camp there. Sold. Sucks to get shut down by a route, but it happens. Then... SALVATION. I'm sure we looked a mess, when 3-4 vehicles came down. Asked if we were OK, which we were, but asked if we needed anything and we John asked if they had anything cold to drink which they gladly offered up. The first vehicle gave us two ice cold waters and a gatorade. The second gave us a couple more waters each. So good!

Still rideable

Closer, but still a way to go.

I started cramping not long after this.

John looking way fresher than me at this point. The trail magic did him good.

This revitalized us both and we pressed on. I was riding a bit when it was tamer, but then I started getting leg cramps. Quads were on the edge of full blown lock up, I hopped off the bike and then the calves started going. Great!!! I had been on top of nutrition/salt/hydration, but clearly it was just a case of my legs just not being used to the effort of a long day in the saddle. I hiked anything with any type of incline which was just demoralizing, but what can you do? I was determined to make it up to the top even if I had to hike the 5-6 miles it was to the top. I knew I could hike at between 2-3 MPH so I figured worst case I would hit the top in 2-3 hours.

Finally the worst of the cramps were over and I was able to pedal a bit. The sun started setting and provided one of the most amazing and longest lasting sunsets I can remember. It just wouldn't stop getting better with each passing minute. Absolutely breathtaking in the midst of the suffering.

Sweat on my iPhone camera lens. Sucks. John got some great shots though!

Golden hour and approaching the final push. 

A small amount of riding presented itself, and John told me to press on and he would catch up as he was setting up his electronic gadgetry to recharge. I tried to stay in front of him as long as I could. It was dark now, so I just tried to avoid seeing his lights for a bit and not hear the sound of his freehub behind me. It was rideable for a little bit, so I took advantage. Not too much later, my riding was done for the rest of this climb. I hopped off the bike, grabbed snack, and then heard John behind me. He hopped off about the same place I did and we assumed the HAB position. I think it was about two or two and a half miles of pushing my bike the rest of the way. I told John that if he wanted to zoom away he could, I said I would catch him at the top. I don't know if he could have or not, but I appreciated the company as we hiked up.

Finally we saw the reflection of a cattle guard sign which John said was at the top. I think it took another ten minutes to reach it but we freaking did! Hopped on the bike and outside of some very minimal pedaling, we were just coasting down to El Oso Rd. We stopped there when we reached it, John was able to send a text out, and then we cruised down about a mile to our camp spot. There is a spring there but it seems to have dried up. There was some sketchy looking water in the tire, but we didn't need any, so no big deal. We ate food, had a couple swigs from John's flask and that was about it. I laid in my bag and ate some peanut M&M's for dessert. Tried to watch the sky for a bit but it didn't last long. I was out.

I didn't sleep as well this night, I was a bit chilly - nothing terrible, but I wasn't super comfortable. Slept on and off from maybe 2:30 until the sun came out. I didn't want to crawl out of the bag until the sun was able to give me some warmth.

A couple flat sections of ground is all we needed.

Good morning...

Got out of my bag right around now. Just needed that sun to bathe me in warm rays.

We packed up pretty quickly and then began the burner descent down El Oso Rd towards highway 188. We were rewarded with expansive views to our north and east and of course amazing views of Roosevelt Lake. We made it down to 188 in no time and then we cruised on the road on the way to Butcher Hook where we had a small but delicious breakfast.

Roosevelt Lake here. Sun was in a bad spot so hard to avoid glare in pictures. 

JS geeking out with the peak finder app.

Big views to the north.

We did 8 miles in no time. You can see why here...

Off we went in full roadie mode and it wasn't too bad except for one pretty wicked climb. We made a stop in Jake's Corner to grab a cold drink and rest in the shade before the final push to the car.

Not mad :)

Cool spot!

We took off and pedaled the last miles and it seemed to really warm up on the last mile right before highway 87. Weird. We got there, loaded bikes, changed into some cleaner clothes, and went right back to Jake's Corner for lunch haha!

We ended up taking the scenic route back, meaning we took Apache Trail back towards the superstitions. I had never been back here, which is a crime because I've lived here my whole life. I gotta take the kids on a day trip back there. So amazing.

Um wow. 

Thanks to John for sharing this adventure with me. Hope I didn't slow you up too much. No matter how slow it might have been, it's something I won't soon forget, and that is the real reason for doing this kind of stuff. Nobody really gives a rip how fast you can do something like this. I guess there are those that care, but that has never been me. I'd rather just embrace the experience.

In fact the most important thing - and John said something like this too while we were slogging up the big climb watching the sun disappear in majesty - was that I hadn't thought about any negative thing while I was doing it. I wasn't worried about work, I wasn't thinking about all of the events of the past 18 months, I wasn't thinking about anything than the right here and now. What I was experiencing NOW. What I was feeling NOW. The pain I felt NOW. The exhilaration when we crossed that cattle guard. We made it. NOW.

And that is the magical soul cleansing of a hard day of adventuring.

Go get some.

Relive 'I got Schilling'd (4 Peaks Bikepack)'