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This past week we took our little A-frame camping trailer to Red Canyon campground which is just outside of Bryce Canyon National Park. We hiked in Bryce Canyon and Losee Canyon, Mountain Bike Casto, Lossee, Cassidy, and Thunder trails, and hung around camp collecting rocks from the wash. Every day was a bluebird day -- the weather was perfect and the stars numerous and close in the night sky. Rachel was able to see the milky way -- something every kid should get to see on just any night, and not just on vacation.
Being camped in Red Canyon, we found very little reason to go to Bryce Canyon more than once. The various side canyons of Red Canyon offer ample opportunity for hiking. If you don't want the physical challenge of hiking or mountain biking, there are guided ATV rides in Casto Canyon, and horseback rides in Losee canyon. (We saw a group of 44 riders!). The best part of Bryce Canyon is free -- the Mossy Cave / Tripod Ditch waterfall is a wonderful way to take a shower!
We decided to drive up to Date Creek Ranch to pick up some peaches.
To get to Date Creek Creek Ranch, drive about 20 miles northwest of Wickenburg on highway 93 until you see the sign for date creek ranch. Even though the terrain may seem a bit bleak, drive on:
At first the place seemed a bit deserted:
We saw the fruit boxes, peach pickers and wheel barrows and realized that the orchard must be nearby
and picked some of the best peaches ever grown on the planet.
Our work here was done, so we weighed and paid.
And said goodbye, until next year.
Download DateCreekRanch.gpx to get GPS Coordinates.
Once a month South Mountain Park in Phoenix is having Silent Sunday which means that the main roads within the park are closed to traffic. I went to the dark side this yesterday and took a nice road ride to the Gila River overlook. The next Silent Sunday's are June 24, July 22, Aug. 26, Sept. 23, Oct. 28, Nov. 18, and Dec. 23. I've extended the South Mountain map to include the east loops as well as a sandy segment of trail along Desert Willow drive that cuts between the Helicopter Pad and Ray road.
Today I drove out to the Tres Rios Nature Festival where my family picked up lots of neat schwag like reusable shopping bags and kid's building material made from cornstarch and frisbees made from recycled plastic. While they picked up the schwag, I rode the Estrella Mountain Regional Park Competitive Mountain Bike Track and nearly fried my brains in the unseasonable hot 98 degree weather.
Besides the mountain biking and the schwag and looking at all of the raptors at the nature show, including burrowing owl, screech owl, great horned owl, and a raven (my favorite) the highlight of the trip was paddling a canoe, provided by the nature festival, in the Baseline and Meridian Wildlife area. We saw greater egrets, kingfisher, cormorants, a crawdad, and lots of fish on our hour-long improbable desert paddle trip.
Last week we hiked the Siphon Draw trail at Lost Dutchman State Park, about 25 miles east of Phoenix, Arizona. The trail shown on the map is the first two miles, up to the bare rock in the box canyon just before the going gets really tough. The last half mile before the canyon is a scramble with lots of scree on the trail, so be careful out there.
Thanksgiving is over, and my four nephews and their parents have returned to Idaho. My brother the Psycho Rider enjoyed a short mountain bike ride on part of the Desert Classic very much -- for him the Palo Verde, Ocatillos, Cholla, and Saquaro were so different that he got the feeling that he was on another planet.
Today was cool enough for body armor, so I went out and rode up Mormon / National and then mostly walked down the Holbert trail. Supposedly people ride Holbert, but I think that they are nuts. Anyways, the trail is very beautiful because of its exposure and rocks, and I highly recommend this route as a hike. I've added the Holbert trail to the South Mountain trail map.
I'm way behind on publishing trails, but I think there's a better way to publish trails. Check out WikiLoc for a web site that lets you publish your trails free of charge. I've published trails in Flagstaff and Prescott, Arizona that I haven't bothered to publish here yet. It's easy and it's free. The site won the Google Spain prize for Google Map Mashups.
If you want to watch a train wreck in progress, visit the internet news group alt.mountain-bike. But once and a while someone posts something useful, such as this, Ride Report, McDowell Mountains, West Side. Early this morning I followed the Eastern portion of the ride depicted, the Sunrise Trail, and was treated to a magnificent view of the Salt River Valley and Phoenix (the brown cloud was thinner than usual). The trail reminds me a lot of the trails back in Boise -- a long, non-technical climb with good scenery.
The ride was also a shakedown cruise for my new gear -- elbow and knee pads and full face helmet. Even though I was on the trail before 6:00 A.M., this gear was hot. Still, the protective gear is less of a nuisance than I thought, and after a while I hardly noticed it.
Anyways, on this day none of about 20 hikers I passed on the East side gave me the stink-eye. (As usual I dismounted for each and every hiker I passed on the trail -- which reminds me that last week a hiker on the Desert Classic told me that I need not get out of his way if I saw him again, because even though he did not mountain bike, he has noticed that mountain bikers need to use momentum to ride well through the rocky uphill sections of the trail.)
The GPS Data for the Sunrise Trail is here: Scottsdale Sunrise Trail
Last Sunday, after attending Easter services with my family at their church I went worshipping at the Church of the Blue Dome. Just a short ride, up the Mormon Loop trail, and then back down the National Trail, all at South Mountain Park Phoenix. I managed to ride halfway up Cardiac hill, stopped by lack of wind and a small rock step, took a breather and rode the rest of the way. I was also able to ride much more of the National trail than I previously thought possible. What's changed? I've been reading a book Mastering Mountain Bike Skills by Brian Lopes and Lee McCormack. I've changed the setup on the bike. I've switched to wide riser handlebars and a short stem, and lowered the saddle to get off the seat more often. I have developed a more dynamic riding style. The Bontrager Race Lite wheels are history. Instead, I'm using 1 1/4 inch wide rims with heavy duty hubs.
Mid-week, I rode part of the the Desert Classic trail on my cyclocross bike. Evening rides just before the sun goes down are the best. Very few people are out on the trail, the Coyotes are starting to sing, and the rabbits and quail are hopping about. A cool breeze blows out of the hills.
The result of my new hard riding style is a lot of soreness in my arthritic knees. So I took a break and did an easy road ride up to Papago Park on the cyclocross bike and then ripped up some of the beginner mountain bike trails in the park before coming home, for a grand total of 30 miles on canal banks, bike paths, bike lanes, and easy mountain bike trails. On the way I mapped the loop around the golf course at Papago Park for beginning mountain bikers. See PapagoPark.html for downloadable GPS data and printable map of these easy trails.
Yesterday the family and I drove up to Sedona and hiked around Courthouse Butte. I've added a new web page, CourthouseButte.html with the usual printable topographic map, photos, and downloadable GPS data in GPS Exchange (.gpx) format. Did you know that you can download a .gpx file to your GPS receiver, or view a .gpx file in the Google Earth?
After hiking around Courthouse Butte and Bell Rock, we drove to Sedona and split up. The girls went shopping at their favorite new-age crystal rock jewelry place, and I rode back to Oak Creek by way of the Broken Arrow trail, Submarine Rock, Chicken Point, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, the Llama Trail, the Bell Rock path.
The Phoenix South Mountain Map has been expanded to include a few minor trails off of War Paint Drive in Ahwatukee, and to clarify that the San Juan Road is closed to vehicles but open to other uses. Imagine four miles of brand-new pavement closed to automobiles. This is a bicycle rider's dream!.
My new Cyclocross bike, a Specialized Freeroad Tricross Comp, is working out well. I've got two sets of wheels. The fancy wheels that came with the bike now sport a pair of Ritchey ZED Pro 700C x 42 tires for light-duty trail use. The Specialized 'cross frame has a 52mm space between the chainstays at the bottom bracket, so the 42mm tires fit with plenty (5mm on each side) of clearance. I purchased a 13-30 cassette from Harris Cyclery that works with the standard short-cage Ultegra Cassette (after reversing the B-Tension Screw). The other set of wheels, for long road rides, uses Mavic OpenPro narrow rims on Ultegra Hubs with cheap Supergo-closeout 700x23 tires.
I tried out the fat Ritchey tires by riding the Desert Classic trail, carrying the bike up the Telegraph Pass trail (even Hateful Old Hikers smile at the sight of a guy carrying a bike) and then out San Juan Road, along the Highline Canal and 48th Street back to Tempe. Sort of an endurance Cyclocross ride, I guess. The single-track cycling worked out really well. A few rocky sections of the Desert Classic had to be walked, but everything else on the Desert Classic is very rideable.
Over the holidays I purchased Expert GPS 2.0 from Topografix. Expert GPS 2.0 supports font size, line styles, and allows drawing area features, So I'll use this program to improve the style of the maps on this web site. I've used Expert GPS to update the South Mountain map to include a the easy trails in the area of the Kyrene de las Lomas school. These trails are especially good for beginner mountain bikes. I took my 7 1/2 year old dauther bicycling there yesterday, among the Saguaro and Palo Verde trees. (This was her first independent mountain bike ride -- usually she rides on the trailer bike behind me.)
The week before last we visited Sedona, Arizona and had a look at the fall colors. I've created a GPS Trail Map for the Sterling Pass Trail near Slide Rock in Oak Creek Canyon, with a few photos of the area. See the Sterling Pass page.
Right-> I'm not so sure what a Vortex is, but if I see one I'll know what it is.
Here in Phoenix we are finally getting some days below 90 degrees, so there's no need to wake up at 4:30 A.M. just for a local ride. I'm even returning from my rides with unused water in the Camelback. Last Sunday I took a Garmin Edge 305 out for some real-world testing. The Edge 305 is a combination of logging heart rate moniter, GPS, Bike Computer, and Training Aid all rolled into one.
I logged the Corona Loma trail on South Mountain using the Edge. In places this wickedly steep, loose, rocky, and exposed trail has a grade of 23 percent. I walked about a fifth of the trail, but was passed by one local crazy on a hardtail who was riding most or all of the way down.
Yesterday morning I borrowed a Forerunner 301, which is a GPS Pedometer / Cycle Computer / Heart Rate Moniter, from the office. I rode from my house to the local mountain bike trail, Phoenix's South Mountain park from the Pima Canyon entrance up the Mormon trail, National trail, then down the Buena Vista road to Telegraph pass, walked down telegraph pass, and rode back to the Pima Canyon entrance. I used Garmin Map Source to read the track log from the Forerunner and then exported to GPX file format to edit created the updated South Mountain Trails map which now includes the Desert Classic and Telegraph Pass trails from the Forerunner.
While climbing the Mormon and National Trails I had a maximum heart rate of 183 but was generally in the range of 160 to 170, which is probably too high for an old guy like me! I'll be taking the Garmin Edge 305 out for a test ride soon.
I and my family are now settled into our new home in Tempe, Arizona -- we live less than 5 road miles from the Pima Canyon Entrance to South Mountain Park, the largest municipal park in the world with some very challenging desert hiking and mountain biking trails.
The mountain bike trails here are rocky and very challenging, and I've seen some very good riders bouncing up and down the rocks, like bighorn sheep with wheels. See South Mountain Trails for downloadable GPS data and trail information.
Because I'm in the middle of moving to Phoenix, there won't be any more updates of Idaho trails here. Once the summer heat is over, I'll begin mapping some of the trails in Arizona. Check out the very good Arizona trails website at Mountain Bike Arizona
Yesterday Psycho Rider and I rode the Julie Creek trail. The trail starts with a climb from the mouth of the Deadwood River just west of Garden Valley, climbs to 7000 feet along the Deadwood Ridge, and then drops back to the Deadwood River along Julie Creek in a steep 5 mile descent. From there, a 7 mile cruise on a blown-out logging road brings you back to the Deadwood Campground.
We got an early start on a cool day to beat the heat, but not quite as early as planned because Psycho Rider insisted on my watching videos of his latest spectacular crashes while he wolfed his breakfast. Once past the very first steep section of trail at the campground, the trail was almost entirely rideable, except for some short rocky, rooty sections on the Julie Creek descent, which I walked but Psycho Rider managed to bounce down without causing any additional damage to his body.
See JulieCreek.html for trail description and photographs, printable topographic map, and downloadable GPS data.
Added a mountain bike ride and hike from Swan Falls to the top of Sinker Butte. See Sinker Butte for photos, printable map, and downloadable GPS data. This trail has also been documented by Sheldon Bluestein on his Birds of Prey Area Hikes web page.
Updated the Hard Guy Dry Creek Loop trail with the addition of photographs, new trail data, printable trail maps, and photographs from a recent ride with friends.
There's a new version of Wissenbach Map3D GPS Mapping Software at WM3D which autodownloads elevation data from the internet, so that 3D terrain viewing is much easier to use. I borrowed this idea from TopoFusion which is very good shareware and also compatible with the GPX data on this site.
Yesterday we drove down to the Mud Flat Road near Grandview to photograph wildflowers along the Mud Flat Road. MudFlatRoad.html contains many high-resolution pictures taken by Cheri, Dave, and Rachel Wissenbach of Purple Sage, Rock Rose, Cactus, Lupine, Peony, and many other species and will take forever to download and view. Cheri counted 40 flowering species in all, in the elevation range from 3000 to 6000 feet.
A personal note -- I'm on the home stretch of my employment with Hewlett Packard, after I and 300 others have accepted a very generous offer of Voluntary Severance Incentive which was extended to almost every employee working at the Boise site. By means of this offer HP has stayed in tune with their original values and tradition of offering employment security (subject to business conditions). I've taken advantage of this opportunity to switch to a career in GPS Mapping and Location based services and am therefore using this website for shameless self promotion. (You'll find the resume link at the top of this page.) -- Dave Wissenbach
But back to the trails. The foothills are a wonderful emerald green color this year after torrential rains. I added a long experts only mountain bike loop, parts of which are also accessible to ATV riders and motorcyclists. See OrchardGulch.html for photos, printable topographic map, downloadable GPS data, and a 3D terrain view.
Mark V. asked for a copy of previously unpublished Linux GPX/GPS application code, which I have placed on this site as QtLinux . That code must be linked with Gerald Evandon's indispensable PROJ.4 Cartographic Projections Library . While snuffling around in the Linux Box (actually the other half of my dual-boot SUSE/Windows Dell Workstation) I uncovered yet another trail, downloaded from my GPS with Qt/Linux application.
See EastForkLakeFork.html for a popular mountain biking and hiking trail just east of McCall, Idaho. When the family and I first hiked on this trail, we followed an old, overgrown road from the Lake Fork guard station, but the best access is shown here, in the Lake Fork Campground. Beware, for this is bear country! On a hike a few years ago, after finding the tracks of a mother bear and her cub, we gave our daughter the duty of yelling, blowing a whistle, and generally making lots of noise -- a task she greatly enjoyed.
Added Delicate Arch hiking trail page.
Shah has asked that I reprise his climb up Long's Peak as a 3D map. I have plotted the Keyhole route on Long's Peak by drawing over a topographic map. (I haven't actually been there myself!). See LongsPeak.html for a downloadable topographic map in PDF format, downloadable GPS data, and a 3D screen shot.
After a successful rehabilitation (of his body, not his mind) Psycho Rider recently traveled to Moab and came back with some great GPS track logs. See GPS Trail Maps - Moab,Utah for maps and GPS data taken from his trip. While looking for more information on the Moab trails, I discovered some wonderful trail photographs on the web. See Anthony Sloan's Cycling Destinations for some inspiration to get out there and ride.
Today I went riding at Hidden Springs. Because of the recent spring rains and unseasonably warm weather, the wildflowers in this area are already in bloom and just about to peak. The weather was a bit blustery, with light driving rain and wind gusts to 45 miles per hour.
Yesterday I rode a mountain bike on one of my favorite dirt roads, up the Brownlee Grade at Gardena to Cruikshank road high above the west bank of the Payette River, and then over to Dry Buck Creek and down the Banks grade, with a side trip to a spectacular view (and former hang-glider launch) overlooking the forks of the main Payette River. See PayetteWestBank.html for a map and GPS Exchange (.gpx) data.
Today we drove out to Swan Falls for a short family bike ride along the south side of the river. We parked across the river from the Priest Ranch, in the boulder patch, and biked along the closed road over to the upstream end of Celebration Park. We saw a flock of Rock Doves which included one all white doves in among the pigeons. The doves were engaged in a spectacular group flight, diving and turning against the rock wall at high speeds.
The highlight of the trip for our six-year old daughter was of course scrambling up and down and around the boulders after our bike ride.
Yesterday I explored the Oregon Trail from Lucky Peak Reservoir. Lydle Gulch is now partly open, but the connecting road from Bonneville Point down to the corral at Lydle Gulch is still closed. I also followed the old Basalt Quarry road from Foot Park to just above the diversion dam, across the river from the highway. Wild currants were blooming. The most interesting part of this hike was the descending sound of the Canyon wren and the many quail found in this excellent habitat. See LuckyPeakReservoir for maps of the biking and hiking trails in this area
We rode the Wallowa Union Railroad's Eagle Cap Excursion train yesterday in a plush railroad car build in 1937. See Wallowa Canyon Excursion Train for photos and location.
I have purchased a PDF writer program and will be adding topographical maps in Adobe PDF format for the benefit of those of you Luddites out there who don't yet own a GPS or mapping software. The first of these printable maps is BoiseFront.pdf (A very large 12 MB download)
Wissenbach Map3D - GPS Mapping Software now supports older Garmin Receivers, thanks to Mike, who loaned me his Garmin GPS 12 receiver for testing.
The ground is still a bit wet and the trails here around Boise aren't yet ready for mountain biking, so I visited the ghost town of Pearl, Idaho, by bicyling from my home just south of Eagle, Idaho up to highway 55 along the Willow Creek/Pearl road.
At the big open rise just above the ranch at Willow Creek and Chaparral road, the German-Tourist driver of an expensive late-model Mercedes Benz stopped and asked for directions. He was looking for McCall but missed the turn at Eagle and the road just kept getting uglier and uglier. I think that he might have thought that the rough dirt road actually was the road to McCall! I was friendly and helpful and redirected him back to Eagle and McCall -- the dirt road east of Pearl is muddy and rutted and isn't in good enough shape for such a beautiful car. I suppose that he is the first of many foreign tourists lured here by the fall of the once-almighty dollar.
The big surprise is that all of the old buildings at Pearl have been removed! No more ghost town. There are a few modern houses in Pearl now.
Yesterday Mark V., Kurt B, and I mountain biked south from Swan Falls to the mouth of Sinker Creek. To say that we mountain-biked is somewhat misleading, because we actually walked and carried our bikes most of the way to Sinker Creek.
From there we went upstream on Sinker Creek, through private land, up to the Oregon trail, where there is a historical marker to those who died on the Oregon trail. (The memorial most likely commemorates the deaths of the Utter Party, but historians now believe that the massacre actually took place on Henderson Flats near Castle Butte south of here.)
Upon leaving the private land at the county road we discovered the dreaded No Trespassing signs on our exit from the propery, which means that you cannot follow this trip without the permission of the landowner. (There were no such signs at the downstream end of the pasture, but now you know what I know -- that we the unwashed masses are not welcome.)
We continued on up the county road, past Sinker Butte, and dropped back into the canyon just to the north of Sinker Butte. I have updated the Swan Falls maps to show the parts of this trail which are on public land. More Site News.
Yesterday I went on a winter mountain bike ride from Swan Falls to Celebration Park along the Snake River trail to the Rock Hermit House and on to Halverson Lakes. The high lift pump station across from the Wees Bar Petroglyphs has been removed. All that remains is the water pipe and power line. I presume that this is because Idaho Power has been making arrangements to keep water in the river to benefit electrical generation, and because of the now high cost of the power to lift water to the canyon rim. The pump station is now a trailhead for the Snake River Trail complete with concrete vault toilet! Because I parked at the Dam and rode my bicycle on the gravel road, the total length of the trip was 18 miles. I have updated both the Celebration Park and Swan Falls trail maps.
Within the next few weeks, I'll try a mountain bike loop trip up Sinker Creek, around Sinker Butte, and back into the Canyon. This trip will pass the grave site of Oregon trail pioneers along Sinker Creek.
I have added the cross country ski page, CrossCountrySki.html. Some of the cross country gpx maps now include automatic resource links for digital elevation models so that you don't have to fish for these on the web, which makes 3D viewing as simple as opening the file and then the 3D viewer in WM3D.
Several people have suggested that the 3D terrain viewer in Wissenbach Map3D should work more like a video game. I tried this and agree. Now the flight controls for the terrain viewer seem to be much easier to use. My six year old daughter was able to use the viewer to virtually fly around the local ski resort, so I'll advertise the usability as so simple even a child can do it. (provided that the program's author is standing right behind her).
I have added a winter map of Bogus Basin Ski Resort and published updated versions of WM3D mapping software to support colored text in the 3D views.
This morning I published an invitation to others to contribute trail data to this website. The users of this website are currently consuming only about 5 percent of my web host's allowable 25 GB per month bandwidth, but the advertising here is paying for only about a quarter of my web hosting costs. So I think that by adding additional content I can break even with my GPS mapping hobby/habit/addiction, and of course fame and fortune. What you get is the opportunity to provide links to your business or club or personal web page in the gpx file. What I get is advertising money when people open the web page to download and view the data. See HowToPublish.html for more detail. Thanks to Steve Testardi for this idea!
I have spend a lot of time and effort assisting with the standardization of the GPS Exchange (.gpx) file format. The idea is to make trail data portable between various software mapping applications. Garmin, the dominant maker of Global Positioning Receivers, has just published a pre-release version of their popular MapSource software which provides support for the GPS Exchange format. You can find this new version on their support page at Garmin MapSource Software Updates My eTrex Vista Color gps receiver came with a starter version of this software, so I was able to download and verify that Garmin MapSource versions 6.5.0 and above is compatible with the gpx files on this site. My thanks to Garmin for caring enough about their customers to allow the free interchange of trail and GPS date with the .gpx format.