CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Flagstaff it runs 269 km to Flagstaff; allow about 3 h 45 of riding. The stops in between: Grand Canyon National Park and back through Grand Canyon National Park. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,350 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For 1 km this is Kaibab Plateau North Rim Parkway, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Flagstaff stands at about two thousand one hundred metres, in a ponderosa forest at the foot of the San Francisco Peaks, and the air has the thin, clean taste of altitude. Humphreys Peak, the tallest mountain in Arizona at over 3,800 metres, is the old volcano that looms over the town, and in winter its slopes are white while the desert below is warm. That contrast is what makes Flagstaff a favourite for riders heading to the Grand Canyon: they start in cool pines and end in a gorge a mile deep.
Read the complete Flagstaff write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Flagstaff is where the day begins. Next is Grand Canyon National Park.
The first thing the Grand Canyon does is refuse to make sense. You walk to the South Rim, a flat forest of pine and juniper at about two thousand one hundred metres, and the ground simply ends. Below is a gorge up to sixteen kilometres wide and a mile deep, a stack of red, buff and violet rock layers that record nearly two billion years, with the Colorado River a thin brown thread at the bottom. Photos flatten it, and nothing prepares you for the scale.
Read the complete Grand Canyon National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Grand Canyon National Park comes up 73 km in.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Grand Canyon National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
146 km in you reach Grand Canyon National Park. Next is back through Grand Canyon National Park.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Grand Canyon National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Grand Canyon National Park, late in the day. Next is Flagstaff.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Flagstaff write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Flagstaff. That is the ride.
Flagstaff → Grand Canyon National Park is 146 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Grand Canyon National Park → Flagstaff is 146 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.