Are You Ready for the Adventure?

To bring things together for our bikepacking ride series, we’re headed down to do Sarah Swallow’s Sky Islands Odyssey East Loop. We’ve come up with our own slightly modified version of the route.

The plan is to park at the juncture of Highway 62 and Greaterville Road. We’ll begin by riding the section through Box Canyon and around Mt Wrightson. We’ll ride around 45 miles to camping at the Adobe Ruins for what we should plan to be dry camping. The next day we’ll do another 45 mile ridge, going through Patagonia and out to the Appleton-Whittle Research Ranch. For the last day, we’ll be doing a 35 mile ride, through Sonoita and up past Kentucky Camp to get back to our vehicles. Please note: this is remote, unattended parking.

This ride is advanced bikepacking Challenging terrain, climbing, remoteness and dry camping the first night highlight the challenges. The terrain is mostly gravel roads with some rough and sandy sections. We recommend a minimum of 50mm tires.

Additionally cold temperatures during both nights camping at around 4500 feet necessitate colder weather gear. Average lows in Patagonia during February are reported at 30 degrees. So being a little higher up, anticipate a low of 20 to 25 degrees. A 20 degree bag and insulated pad, as well as down jacket, long underwear and wool socks is the general recommendation though this of course varies depending on how hot or cold you sleep.

We will be contacting everyone who signs up for the ride to make sure they are prepared for the challenge. Please sign up if you plan on joining us.

The weather can be prohibitive in February, so if it is overly challenging we may have to cancel.

See the route details: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/31966883