Steve's Mountain Bike Page
Turlock, California

Rainbow Rim Trail
Grand Canyon, Arizona
June 6, 2008

Today UncleMTB and I did the Rainbow Rim Trail on the north rim of the Grand Canyon. MTBBill has a nice write-up on this trail with photos and a video. It takes quite a bit of driving on forest service roads to get to it, but the drive is definitely worth it. The trail is 18 miles long and it winds though beautiful high altitude (7,500 ft.) pine forests, with five overlooks above the Canyon. This is my kind of XC trail, with nothing technical, but with plenty of steady pedaling at high altitude to get your heart going for a really long time. It can be done as an out and back from either end, or there are options to camp several places in between. We started at Parissawampitts Point, the western end, and because we got there fairly late in the day after driving straight from Flagstaff, we did an out and back of about 20 miles. 

This was my first ride at altitude in nearly two years and it hit me like a ton of bricks for the first half hour. But I then settled down to a great ride. As I noted on my Sedona write-up I only took my P&S camera, which was a big mistake for this ride, and UncleMTB was still figuring out his new Canon Digital Rebel. I don't know why but after reviewing our photos it didn't seem like we took very many. Below are a few.

UncleMTB

UncleMTB

UncleMTB

A few other riders were on the trail

Me & UncleMTB

Me

Me

Me

Still me

[ Home ]