Red Mtn. Mtn. Bike - Nate and Cody

Red Mtn. Mtn. Bike - Nate and Cody, originally uploaded by Towickgnar.

Towickgnar indeed!

Some ups, some downs, and some fairly serious "no fall zones." The skull and crossbones on the map (serious rough stuff) was pretty serious and rough, to say the least. I wish I had the cohonees to shred that gnar, but there was a bit of pussy-footing going on for the very worst parts. Yeah I was wearing a helmet, but mashing down a 50 degree slope to a boulder-jump across five feet of un-ridable, bigger boulders with a hairpin turn and a cholla cactus on the other side... that just looked painful. Not to say that we didn't each end up with cholla sticking out of us by the end anyway. And Cody's leg got in a fight with his gear sprockets - the sprockets won.

But as an alternative to the typical city rides around Phoenix, this was well worth the trek. A must-do ride for Phoenix bikers.

Mountain Dew Christmas Tree - Reft

This post has been removed for non-towickgnar content.

Giraffes - Reft

This has also been removed for non-towickngar content. You can do better, man! Go do something awesome. If you'd punched the giraffe in the face, that would be towickgnar.

Post removals are voted on by the founding fathers.

The Gates of Hell - Nate S.

Yeah, seriously. Trail 37, southwest of Payson, AZ. The "Hell's Gate" trail. And while this lizard certainly met his master on his way to Hell's Gate, we were more fortunate.

After recouperating from the Friday night massive campfire and Wild Turkey at the car camping spot, Cody and I packed up our bags and hit the trail around 11:00. A bit of rain was a welcome change to the AZ heat, and we worked our way up and down the foothills of the Arizona Transition Zone until we hit Hell's Gate. This is a nice canyon, deep enough in the wilderness that we didn't see anyone while we were there, and Trout and Bass in scores.

We met up with Nick down in the canyon, flied up our rods and hit the creek. Each pulling in a plethora of mini-fish, we decided to stick to the freeze-dried meals and let our finned-friends live another day. We'll be back when they're all grown up to feast.

Sunday, hiked out and hit up Alice's Restaurant. No, not the one from the song, and in my opinion not a particularly good one either. The heartburn and food poisening hit while I was driving home. Not a good combination, and it made for one of the most hideous / towickgnar drives in recent memory. It was all I could manage to do to write Adam the "I'm alive" text. That's probably my last trip to Alices Restaurant, at least the one in Young, AZ.

Taking a sick day now, so not all is bad.

More pics from the hike here.