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My Thanksgiving treat was to join Tim and Aaron on another great mountain bike ride in the mountains surrounding Tucson.

This time we headed up to Redington Pass, between the Santa Catalinas and the Rincons, for a day-long ride to Chiva Falls. The November weather was crisp and warm, and the temperature was perfect!

The trail starts from Redington Pass Road, and winds past several cow ponds to “the Chute”, and great rocky descent that gave us a taste of the trail ahead. Here we passed several Jeep fanatics that were scouting the Chute before shooting it.

Most of the ride was on jeep trails, with many steep climbs and harrowing descents. There were a couple spots where we were able to hit a smooth single-track, though, which was a nice change. Tucson had just gotten a bunch of rain the day before, so there were also lots of muddy areas.

After riding 3 or 4 miles southeast, mostly climbing, we finally cut back towards the falls. This next section was marked “Dangerous” on the map, and Tim gave the two of us several minutes of instruction on how to survive the gnarly downhill section that would take us to the falls.

It was very fast riding, and braking didn’t help much because you just kept on sliding downhill. The trick was to go slow, and lean way back with your stomach on the bicycle seat – thus ensuring proper balance. My two partners chugged down while I braked and slid and finally toppled over the handlebars about 3/4 of the way down. It was great fun! The falls are beautiful – one of the nicest in the area but also over-visited and somewhat trashed (which was a bummer).

We stayed as long as we could, since the shade of cliff that the falls formed over took away our nice sunshine. Tim showed us some pictures from his trip to South Korea, and we chugged water and snacks.

For the ride back we eschewed the easy loop downhill to the car and took a longer route around northeast back the road via several other jeep trails. Once we joined the main road we were able to kick it up and dust it back to the car in a few minutes.
It was a cool ride, I definitely want to go back (at least once with Erin on foot to check out the falls and other cool features around the area).

Photos you see here are courtesy of Aaron. Thanks AJ! See the rest of the pictures in full size on AJ’s web site. Notice he calls it a “leisurely” ride.

Note: Read the mountain bike ride description of this trail on Cherba.com.