Queen's Ransom 2026

 

Low effort AI tweak of the normal logo. Sue me. 

The end of 2025 was pretty rough for me personally. After I DNF'd the AZTR800 I took a much needed full month off of the bike and pretty much went deeper into the depression hole that started right after I quit. I started ramping up a bit of activity in December and it felt like I was starting from scratch. It didn't help that I had rapidly put on 10 pounds (that I am still struggling to fully get rid of) - ugh. I leaned heavy into playing music to keep me sane in the absence of a goal or event to look forward to. 

In January, I needed to get something on the calendar so I could get myself back on track, and a partaking of this iconic group ride was calling. I started putting hours in on the bike and figured I could get some semblance of ability to ride the full route and not suffer too much. I was feeling decent enough to pull the trigger on sign up day and ended up making it in after the event once again filled up in minutes. 

This would be my third time riding the route. I had done the "4 day" (in 2022) version once and the 5 day version (in 2024) as well. I managed to pull the full route off each time, and had no plans of changing anything this year. Cue the heat...

You just never know what the weather is gonna do in the shoulder seasons, but nobody could have expected the massive heat wave that had temperatures in the low 90s for each of the days we were out there. It was just oppressive temps even for us locals - I gotta say I was so impressed with how everyone stayed safe out there - everyone showing their grit and self care discipline. 

I ended up taking way fewer pictures than normal - it just really wasn't top of mind. 

Day 1

The whole gathering and organization the morning of is fun to watch. You have veteran bikepackers, newbies and everything in between. I just observed and smiled - I guess I kinda know what I am doing at this point, so it's just nice to chill and enjoy the mix of energy coming from the group. 

Selfie with the resilient Kara W. 2025 AZTR 800 finisher and Queen's Ransom veteran. 

Group shot by John's wife Kara

Just like that, we are on the road and cruising through a mix of neighborhood roads and bike paths. 

Group ahead of me...

And folks behind me. 

I spent a good bit of time pedaling with Schilling as we worked our way towards Desert Trails bike park. Chatted about stuff and things. The morning was pleasant, but the heat was looming. 

We all stop and gather at the bike park and take advantage of water/restrooms. John takes the opportunity to get pics of each rider, so here I am:

Pretty much the same setup I had on the AZT800, except no downtube tool bag. I was rocking a brand new Coros Dura, and it is hands down superior to the Edge 530 it replaced.

The easy part of the day was done, time to get into the meat of today's route - it is always tough but the heat was just kicking in and things were rough! I almost ran over a rattlesnake but didn't even stop to take a photo which is pretty odd for me. 

Singletrack cruisin'

There was plenty of leapfrogging of riders in here. Everyone was dealing with the heat in their own way - shade was valuable and everyone was seeking it out.

The desert was full of green and life, but it didn't compute because the temps were so toasty. 

This guy is massive and provided nice shade for a second. 

Begin riding on the flanks of Pass mountain - cold water is not far ahead. 

After grabbing some cold water and shade, the group ride allows us an amazing SAG stop at some friends of John. They open their garage to us and have all the goods - cold drinks, food, etc. Just gotta get through some easy but scenic singletrack first. 

I didn't get any pics of the SAG stop goods. But this is the view leaving! I really struggled in the afternoon heat. Pictures pretty much stop.

Trying to keep up with Kara, but she pulled away. She rode strong the whole event. She's got some big goals this year and I'm excited to watch that dot!

All the tough stuff is done. Just some rolling stuff to get to camp. I tried to keep up with Kara and Blake, but they pulled away. I was freaking cooked!

My view from my slice of dirt to sleep on

Ready for bed haha.

This was probably the quietest camp night I have ever experienced doing this event. Everyone was just cooked and doing their best to recover. It stayed surprisingly well into the night. I didn't even crawl into my bag fully until like 2AM. That's pretty crazy for the desert in late February. 

I say it every time, but this day is sneaky tough. The majority of the 4k or so elevation gain come in the final 30 miles. 

Everyone had discussed through the day the plans for handling the heat. In past editions, I had gotten in the habit of leaving after day break, sometimes waiting for the sun to warm me up before leaving. This year was going to need a different approach for sure...

Day 2

Kara was camped close to me. I was already kinda awake when I heard her walk by. Was hoping to maybe catch her so I got motivated to hop up and get ready. 

Chasing a rider up ahead. 

The supes are gorgeous no matter how you look at them. 

Getting ready to hit Jacob's Crosscut. Looks tame from here, but it's work doing the traverse. 

In the ruggedness for now. Looking behind me to the north is four peaks. Had some sadness as I reflected on my adventure from last fall. 

Making good progress. The sun is now illuminating the area where we camped last night. 

I caught up to Kara and we chatted and she led out and then down the challenging descent to get down to the road. Littered with babyheads, picking a good line is nearly impossible and it is an exercise in trying not to break anything on the bike. 

We were both happy to be done with that. 

We continued down the road and then connected to some urban-ish singletrack and dirt roads. We were both looking forward to breakfast at the diner in Gold Canyon. Kara did her best to get a citation near silly mountain (for a silly reason - park ranger must have been bored - but that is her story to tell).

Due to the early start, the diner was the move. Mexican place next door wasn't even open yet. 

Kara and I enjoyed breakfast and in the middle of that, an older couple came out and the gentleman told me quietly that "pedaling bikes was against the law" - which he said with a wink. I thought it was hilarious and relayed the message to Kara. Shortly after we wanted to pay and the waitress let us know that the couple had paid for your breakfast. Trail magic!!

I ended up grabbing a sandwich at the subway and topped off my bottles there as well. Time to get the show on the road. It was getting toasty. Kara and I rode and chatted - it is a fair amount of climbing on neighborhood roads to get back to the trails. The heat started to hit me pretty hard by time we hit the gate. I told Kara to go ahead and I would try to catch up which in my mind I knew probably wasn't going to happen. 

I boarded the struggle bus of one and just focused on making steady progress and grabbing shade when I could. 

Good views as always but I was melting pretty good. 

Weaving through the trails here was agonizingly slow 

Looking for shade but harder to find then you would think.

I finally made it to keep roads where I was hoping that the slightly faster pace would help keep me cooler. Didn't work as well as I hoped. 

I did watch a plane as it made interesting sky writing shapes in the sky. I think it roughly translates to "It's hot as balls"

I was looking forward to the oasis that is the Queen Valley convenience store. Got there and it was a party. People enjoying cold drinks, seats and shade. 

Queen Valley takeover. Photo by Kara. 

Amazing views while making progress toward camp two. 

Thanks to all the amazing folks who brought food, set up shelter, and even brought enough chairs for everyone. 

As the final bit of riders trickled in, the desert started showing off. 

This is what the group ride is all about. It just keeps getting better...

Thanks to Ben Dugdale for making the adventurous drive out and snapping pictures of each rider as we approached camp. Here is my tired self completing the final rise. 

It was definitely a more festive vibe than the previous night. Cold drinks, food and a propane fire pit was key for that. I crashed out in no time with the intention of needing lights when I started the next morning. 

Day 3

Left camp in the dark. Watching the sun rise is special out here. 

I crossed the railroad track and hit the road and pulled over for a sec when I heard riders coming up behind me. It was Patrick, Kerry, Hannah and Kyle. I joined the party and we had a good time rolling to Superior and resupply at the Circle K. Kyle had the line of the trip when he noted we were basically halfway done as we were getting ready to cross the 60 to hit the Circle K. I think myself, Patrick and Kerry told him to calm down - the route was gonna get real today! 

The group of 4 had passed me while I ate, but I quickly caught up. 

A quick stop to take pics for the 'gram

Circle K was interesting as always. Got my resupply done and was getting ready to bail out when I looked down at the trail we were about to jump on and noticed hoards of runners. Shit - there must be an event today. This should be interesting...

I rode out pretty much with Doug and we did our best to just go with the flow of runners. We didn't want to mess with their pacing or negatively impact them or their event. This was challenging on some of the singletrack but we did our best. 

Joining the hiking crew by pushing my bike in order to access Arnett Canyon. Was mostly successful in maintaining their pace. 

Hiking would be the theme for a lot of today...

Arnett is spectacular - luckily the race route split off for a bit or had runners coming toward us instead of trying to pass them. This would change once we got back on the AZT at Picketpost. 

Joining the AZT.

The wheels fell off for me pretty quickly. It was pretty damn tough to keep a steady pace and we were now sharing the trail with a ton of foot traffic for the race who were heading southbound on the AZT. The goal for me was to not impact runners and keep moving as best as I could. 

Found a good shady spot. Kyle offered all the runners some "combos" (the pizza snacks) and surprisingly they all declined lol. 

I leapfrogged with some folks on the approach to the first AZT gate and beyond but eventually I ended up in a slow slog up to the AZT rain collector. Lots of hiking. 

When I take a photo that looks like this, it generally means I am cooked fam. 

It was a party at the rain collector, but I didn't take any pics. I was really focused on taking care of myself and taking pics was the last thing on my mind. People started taking off so with sufficient water on board, I took off. 

Dropping into Martinez Canyon. Magical. Every time. 

I was enjoying some solitude at the saddle when GMack on his tank bike caught me. He was debating whether to drop down to camp or head back. He eventually ended up choosing to head back towards picketpost. I was ready to get to camp so I got after it. 

View from camp. Once again a fairly quiet night as I think most of us were quite tired at the effort of the day.

Day 4

I was out before the sun again - Kara, Patrick, Kerry and maybe some others were in front. I was really worried about the heat today as the section along the Gila River can get brutally hot. 

Dale's Butte towering above and Kara getting ready on the right. 

Starry backdrop in the pre-dawn sky. 

Once again chasing earlier starters.

It was still pretty dark, but the iPhone has a pretty decent night mode these days. 

I think John took this pic of Rich and I. I had sliced my rear sidewall right at the start of the jeep road descent to the river and I walked the bike down to get a better place to evaluate and fix the issue. 

I was really worried about getting cooked along the Gila, so I ended up opting for the quickest fix possible, which involved me tubing a booting the tire and sandwiching it all with a voile strap. It ended up holding for the whole ride and required just a few adjustments along the way to reposition the strap if it moved a bit.  

Oh, hey there! Mind if I get by?

Hell yeah! First time I have seen one of these guys since 2017. I had seen two on the AZT300 that year. One near Ripsey and one in Martinez Canyon. Who knew, just need to get near the Gila River and you will see these guys - guaranteed (Narrator: They are not guaranteed)

Always cool seeing the train trestle

Off of singletrack for the moment. I was contemplating skipping the next part of AZT. I made a deal with myself, if I see people at the ADOT spigot, I would do the short (and shitty) bit of AZT. If everyone was gone I was just gonna hit the dirt road climb. 

As I was approaching the road to the spigot, John Schilling was heading back to the AZT to do the short bit of singletrack. He said others were still at the spigot so my decision was made. He took the picture of my tire repair. 

I made my stop at the spigot short and sweet and headed back to the singletrack. This isn't my favorite section by any means, but the flowers tend to be great back here. They were definitely the best of the trip. 

I knocked the singletrack out in good enough time. Then jumped on the beastly climb up the FK highway. I usually add a couple letters to that and that would be very appropriate for today. It was absolutely roasting, and shade was basically non existent. This little slice was the best I found. I took a few minutes to compose myself and recover. The famous SAG stop isn't too far now...

Victory. I crushed a few beers and crushed an embarrassing amount of salsa. Everyone was stoked to have shade, cold drinks and the best snacks. Gotta give many thanks to John's wife (also named Kara), the Hanson's and "The Bevinator" for making all of this happen. 

Pretty freaking rad! Eventually it was time to help pack up. Ended up leaving with Kara W and John. 

Mostly downhill to camp!

Mostly. 

Caught up with the powerful Hannah and we were now a crew of four. John pointed out to Hannah where we had camped last night (those canyons in the background). It's always cool to see someone's reaction to how much ground they covered. 

The good stuff is in moments like these. 

Destination is towards that hill on the left of the pic.

John says "Onwards!"

We picked up Rich and Bev who were kinda lost (not that we were much better) but we made our way to camp. I picked my bike up a couple times as there were some fallen cacti and I remembered and the last moment that I had a tube in the rear tire. 

Soft sand = no air mattress needed tonight. 

Kara was a pyro and would have probably burned the abundant amount of wood we had gathered if we let her. It was a good evening. 

Day 5

Pre-dawn view of camp

Rode the chunky bits of from camp but then it was mostly smooth sailing. 

Kara and I left together and would stick together for a good chunk of the day. Chasing the blood moon here. Needless to say, she was on a mission to get mass amounts of bacon at the diner in Florence. 

Enjoying the morning and views. 

Adjusting my tire fix after a filling breakfast. Ended up rolling out with Schilling and Kara. It was a pleasant-ish pace as Schilling was on single speed so had a regulated top speed. I didn't mind. 

A recovery spin type of day. 

The heat hit me like a ton of bricks on the final efforts of the route. 

I didn't ride much of this climb, but only Schilling knew that. Well now you all do. Haha. 

 That is the last of the pictures. We all made our ways to the brewery for a good hang out session complete with cold drinks and food. It's always fun to take over the patio and the service was great as usual. 

The final bit of crew made the way back to Schilling's where we picked up our final bits of swag and said our goodbyes. I was not really ready for 1.5 hours of rush hour traffic to get home, but it wasn't too bad. 

I say it every year, but this is a MUST DO route. Do the group ride! As with just about every bikepacking event, it attracts the best of people. We are all different, but we aren't that different. Much love to everyone who took this on this year. It was a pleasure being out there with you.