Rainbow Rim: Mountain Biking The North Rim of The Grand Canyon

Another spectacular trip with escape adventures! This one exploring the north rim of the Grand Canyon.

Theme song: Hoops by The Reubens.

Bikes loaded!

Arizona is...special

Great to be on a very familiar bike: stumpy with dropper post

Beautiful singletrack through high meadows on the Arizona Trail, north rim

First view of the canyon. The other side is a very long way away.

Day 1 campsite!

Break at the top of a climb the next day

Mix of singletrack and doubletrack. Navigation was complicated, there's a ton of fire roads and trails going all over the place.

Lookout right near our campsite for day 2. Stupidly spectacular view.

Here we are! The Rainbow Rim is a bucket list MTB trail. Great singletrack right next to the rim of the Grand Canyon.

Really. Right next to it for a lot of the time.

Set up the tents then went for a bonus excursion on fantastic rainbow rim single track before dinner.

Looks like rain is coming. It sure did, there was some emergency tent pitching by some of our people who were just sleeping outside and got pretty soaked.

Day 3: Full length (50km) of the Rainbow Rim!

Those clouds may not look that bad, but a serious storm arrived. Tons of thunder and lightning, heavy rain, and even hail for a while. I almost gave up and turned back at one point. The lightning was particularly frightening given we were often exposed on rocky ledges with solitary tall trees....

Made it to the end! Bizarrely up this end didn't seem to have gotten wet at all.

Storm continues all around us

Making for what is probably the most spectacular sunset I've seen in my life

Final day featured a lot more jeep roads than single track. The main event was trying to soak each other by jumping bikes into the puddles created by the storm :)