Wrapping up with a miracle trail - La Milagrosa

The final ride of Mancation 5.5 was a week ago, and just now getting around to having time to put this blog and video together.  A work meeting popped up along with things that haven't been around the house for over a month need my attention.  I thought that by delaying this post, I was hoping to delay having to admit that these adventures have come to an end...for now.

The final trail was a real find, and a near perfect wrap up to trip.  La Milagrosa, the miracle, trail in Tucson trail wasn't originally on my radar because it usually is ridden by DHers who shuttle up to hill.  However, after talking to Mike at ABE, a LBS in Tucson worthy of a visit, he indicated that most MTBers will ride up the mountain to the trail head via the Mt Lemmon highway; roughly 7.5M of climbing on the road to get over 10M of technical trails.

This was entirely different than the Colorado trails where you climb 13M to get 9M of primo single track.  Additionally, doing the antenna climb each week on road bikes out at South Mountain is about 7.5M up, and thought it couldn't be much worse doing something like that on a heavier MTB ride.

I had to escape early in the morning to start the ride as check out time was 10am.  Rushing out in the dark hours of the morning, broke a few of my cardinal rules.  Number 1: always check your gear.  It seems that I had spaced on checking the camera batteries the night before, and so have no pictures of this ride. Number 2: make sure you have food/carbs.  My usual Pop-Tart breakfast and the peanut-butter-and-honey snack was left behind, and did this trek hungry looking forward to the biggest burrito around when done.

Those little snags didn't hamper the ride, and really didn't even miss them from all the fun riding these trails.  The climb up took about an hour to get to the first section of the trail.  Once on the single trek, the trail doesn't pull any punches from the start, and there are a few technical sections that get your attention.  After a brief run, you cross back across the highway, and then are forced to do about a 1/2 mile HAB.  This places you at the top of La Milagrosa, and you get started on the real downhill.  Again, this section had two or three technical rock drops out of the gate that get the adrenalin pumping.

The trail is very narrow, and you be bleeding (esp. the lower legs) by the time you are done.  The locals call them shin-daggers, but we all know them as cactus, spanish daggers, mesquite bushes and other brambles.  Each leaves its own mark, and causes different amount of blood loss.   The trail goes from flowy gavel to technical rocky in spurts, and in some places the underbrush covers the trail enough that going too fast will throw some nasty surprises at you.  This all leads to the lower portion where your technical skills and the size of your balls guts will get challenged.  The rock garden and rock waterfall is two or three minutes of sweat just hoping that you can carry enough speed to make it, and not enough that if things go wrong it will be the end of your day (or worse).

Overall, this trail was incredible as mush as it was challenging, and highly recommend this trail if you are in or near Tucson.  The only downside of the whole thing is the amount of HAB that you will do at the top and then at the end.  There are folks on the internet that say this ride is as epic as Porcupine Rim, and would have to say that it comes up short due to the shin-daggers, HAB areas and the insane technical sections that only the most experience capable rider (or insane DHer) will make.

Apologize for no pictures this time, and found some if you are interested: http://singletrack.us/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=68

Enjoy the video!