An event I was planning to do this weekend just got canceled. Still looking to get away from home for some riding and thinking Tucson. I can get decent flights to PHX then drive down to Tuscon.
Looking at flights on the 16th and 21st. Riding the 17th-20th. Anyone have some great bucket list routes? Mt. Lemmon for sure.
Sign up for El Tour de Tucson?
Gate’s Pass and Saguaro East are pretty, if you’re looking to stay closer to town. Sabino Canyon is fun.
Kitt Peak is off limits from last year’s forest fire from what I can research 
I’d be down for a trip to Mt. Graham though!
I’d try to do El Tour if you can. There are multiple distances available. It’s typically a great ride, very well organized, no need to stop at intersections because they have traffic control at every single intersection. Plus, if you’re in town that weekend, might as well go for it! You’ll get to experience a lot of great parts of riding around Tucson, although they’ve changed the routes since I last rode it.
Definitely Mt Lemmon. Do the Saguaro National Park East loop. Ride Gates Pass over to the west side and ride through SNP West.
Actually, this list is pretty good:
Marsh Station Rd, Colossal Cave, and the Shootout route (don’t have to do the Shootout - just do the route) are also really good rides. Actually, I just looked at the routes for El Tour and they’ve moved a lot of it south - you miss out on a bunch of the northern routes. We used to ride out Oracle to the Biosphere 2 - I was going to suggest that you skip that because El Tour would cover a good chunk of it, but it turns out that’s no longer the case. In this case, I’d put Saddlebrooke on the list as well.
Hope this helps!
Thanks for that, That is awesome! I’m gonna string a couple of them together to get to about 4 back to back centuries! Thanks for the link!
Ooh, I just remembered that the Silverbell Century was a really great route, if you’re looking for centuries:
Did you end up going?
I did! Here are links to the rides I did while out there! I had a great trip!
Fantastic! Looks like you had some great weather and lots of terrific rides!!! Also, looks like you found a good alternative to El Tour. Glad you enjoyed!!!
Ended up using this thread for some Tuscon riding last week. I had a week to burn and our washing machine broke so I found an airbnb in Oro Valley. Had perfect weather the whole time and ate my cookie on the top of Lemmon. For some reason I thought the $5 Cokes were 12 oz cans and ordered 2. They were 20oz fast food cups. I was wired going down Lemmon.
Few highlights:
Lemmon (duh)
Cartel Coffee (the road it’s on wasn’t great but damn good coffee)
Patagonia 50 (bring your widest tires for comfort)
Saguaro East
37.0 km Ride Activity on December 3, 2023 by Kevin K on Strava / 70.4 km Ride Activity on December 3, 2023 by Kevin K on Strava
143.6 km Ride Activity on December 4, 2023 by Kevin K on Strava
https://www.strava.com/activities/10335279431
94.4 km Ride Activity on December 7, 2023 by Kevin K on Strava
80.7 km Ride Activity on December 8, 2023 by Kevin K on Strava
