Just before summer sank its teeth into the Southwest, I spent some time bikepacking 200 miles of the Sky Islands Odyssey route across southern Arizona’s borderlands.
Four nights wild camping with only two wrong turns and one flat tire. Grazing pronghorn from afar, the comic burble of Masked Bobwhite Quail, hummingbird sanctuaries and a howling pack of sunrise coyotes. Entire hillsides lit up with flowering ocotillo like extraterrestrial candelabra, plus a classic desert alpenglow found nowhere else but in the heart of Sonora.
Some sandier washes still swallowed up my 2” tires. One particularly harrowing 20% grade descent had me riding both brakes with a foot down just to stay upright atop the red rocky shale. Any faster and you’re over a cliff or inside a cactus.
When I’d initially moved to Arizona years ago, I remember expecting it to be some infinite beige void, like an endless grip of flat, tanned sand. Instead even the hottest afternoons eventually kneel to a parade of color that leaves you wheezing “wow” out loud.
by donivanberube