Week 21

Date
May 24, 2016

Distance
100 miles

Strava Links
Week 21, Week 21 Part 2

Route Map/Profile

My Garmin shut down on me, so there are 2 files this week.

Weather

There's some missing data, but the wind stayed high for the end of my ride.

Ride Report 
The road trip continues. Kingman, AZ wasn't on my radar when I started this trip, but I was looking for a warm spot somewhat close to St. George and I found this climb when I was doing a segment explore on Strava. The segment is Hualapai Mountain Road, which is 11 miles at 5%. That doesn't sound all that difficult, but the last 3 miles average 8% and the last 1 mile averages 12%. I was hoping to do a little hiking, too, so it seemed like a good place to go. I ended up staying for 2 days.

Day 4: Kingman, AZ

This was mostly a rest day. I did a hike in the morning, then rode the climb in the afternoon.

Hualapai Mountain Road in the distance

Hualapai Mountain Road

I won't bore you with the hiking, but riding the climb was a ton of fun. It was a windy day, but nice and warm with plenty of sunshine. Hualapai Mountain Road reminded me of a longer version of 6 Mile Canyon with how it starts off easy and then gets steep at the end. The scenery was fantastic and there was hardly any traffic out there.

It's funny how some climbs get a big reputation and some don't. I looked at a few lists of the top climbs in the USA and I didn't see this one mentioned. I've ridden a lot of the more well-known climbs that do show up on those lists, and I would definitely say that this one belongs. For whatever reason, less than 50 people have ridden it on Strava. I would never have heard of it if not for Strava's segment explore tool.

Day 5: Kingman, AZ

This was the last riding day of my road trip. The route was a pretty simple out-and-back from Kingman to Topock via Oatman. I didn't expect much from the day. I chose the route mostly because it was windy and I wanted to have a headwind for the first half of the ride and a tailwind on the way back. The route ended up exceeding my expectations big time. My photos are never great, but hopefully you'll see that the scenery was awesome out there. Once again, there was hardly any traffic.

That's it for the road trip. Maybe I could have gone to a more exotic or well-known location (like Tenerife earlier this year), but there's so much good riding within driving distance of here. As I learned in Kingman, much of it might not even be all that well known.