Darren's Rides: Mountain Biking Sunrise Ski Resort

So Rod calls me on Friday says he’d like to head up to Sunrise Ski area to do some down hill riding on Saturday June 27, 2009. Well since it was going to be my 43 birthday on Saturday and I had nothing going on.

So started out early 6am on Saturday from Rod’s house hooked up onto SR87 drove north through Sunflower Az a two building town but also a great place to find mistletoe.

Drove through Rye Az another small town there is this great little bike shop there with thousands of bikes bicycles and motor bikes. I mean it thousand and thousands of bikes if you need a can’t find it part for your bike they might have it there it‘s called All Bikes phone number is 928-474-2526.

Made into Payson Az stopped off at this café in Payson called the Knotty Pine Café. The service was better than the food I had the biscuits and gravy which wasn’t all that great the grave seemed to be whipped and didn’t have hardly any sausage in it. Rod had an omelet and that was smaller than the plate it came on & the same size as the toast. The coffee was weak tasted like it was watered down had better coffee at circle k.

We made it through breakfast and Payson turned onto SR 260 headed through Star Valley and Kohl’s Ranch both if you blink you’ll miss it town.

On the map it shows Christopher Creek but the new highway by-passes it now. Christopher Creek is a great place to camp out it has this neat little creek running through it. Most of the town in shut down since the highway by-passes it.

Into Heber Az a great small town there are some great Bed and Breakfast’s.

The map I have show Clay Springs and Pinedale but the road by-passes them also.

We did dive through were The Rodeo-Chediski Fire happened in June of 2002.

We made it into Show Low Az. Stopped off for gas in Show Low and get this gas in Phoenix is $1.80 and gas in Show Low is $1.55. So we get gas and I don’t know how I did it but I turned off of SR 260 onto the I-60 some how got lost mist my turn back onto SR 260 (SR 260 has a little jot in it).

Back onto SR 260 heading south east to Pinetop-Lakeside. Show Low & Pinetop-Lakeside are some bigger towns along the way they call them summer homes to escape the heat of Phoenix.

Next little town is McNary a small Indian Community now. But at one time it was a big lumber milling town in 1916 the town was called “Cooley,” after prominent army scout and Arizona trailblazer, Corydon E. Cooley. But latter on the lumber mill was bought out. By W.M. Cady and James G. McNary, co-owners of a McNary, Louisiana lumber mill Shortly after their move, Cooley was renamed McNary (Story http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aaw/mcnary-arizona).

We made it to Sunrise turn off and to Sunrise Park we picked up our lift pass for $20.00 it was 1130am and we had till 4pm to ride. We managed to do a 45 min turn around and did 6 runs down the mountain.

At the top of the mountain it was 11,664 feet and the weather was the best you could ask for. At times it was cold but nice out. We didn’t get any rain but could see it was cloudy all around us and there was snow on the back peaks.

The lift lines were small may be 3 or 4 riders in front of you and only may be 30 riders riding the mountain. On the way up the lifts were moving a foot a second they would stick one bike per chair lift on the back of the seat.

At one time I had some brake issues my brakes were rubbing real bad and some times I had no rear brakes. I managed to get the rear brakes fixed after all I was only riding down hill. But there were times I was hauling ass down hill with no rear brakes my top speed of the day was 29mph.

I was amazed by how many riders had pinch flats and wondered why they were riding with low pressure.

Me and Rod managed to lose each other time to time but met up at the bottom.

All the trails were great there were marked green for easy, blue, black diamond & black double diamond and pro. I rode most of them but walked the real deadly ones.

The ones we rode most were Fungus, Bonito, Yard Sale, Pinedale, Easy Out, Technical, Collar Bone, the best one I thought was the Fungus Trail.

It’s 4pm getting ready to head home the truck kind of hesitated on start up. Stopped off at Pinetop for dinner at McDonalds truck started made it to Star Valley outside of Payson stopped for coffee and gas went to start the truck and the battery was dead wouldn’t start at all.

So after asking some locals and no one had any cables tried to call for a tow serves but couldn’t fine one. So after a hour or so a guy from the bar next door found some cables and gave us a jump.

Well made back to Rods and then home well till next time Darren………

The Rodeo-Chediski Fire