About AZ Nomad Adventures
Over the years, I have taken several mountain bike vacations with my mountain bike buddies. It is normally one of the highlights of the year to finally unplug for one week from the corporate world, the city life and even from the daily family activity. This is the time to finally enjoy nature for more than just a couple of hours, hit some fun singletracks and explore new locales. For instance, I took a hut-to-hut trip in Colorado, a mountain bike vacation to Oregon and a vacation in Ecuador where I mountain biked the Cotopaxi Volcano.
Here is a brief summary on these trips:
- Hut-to-hut trip was an amazing minimalist experience. Although there were no guides and you needed to carry your gear for 7 days, the experience was once in a lifetime. This can be compared to a "Survivors" trip on a bike. Training for months in advance prior for this trip is crucial. Huts are normally well-stocked with food. We loved their open-pantry policy. Once you get to the hut, you could eat everything you wanted! There were lots of snacks to take to on the trail to the next hut. The communal cooking was very rewarding and made the trip quite fun. We chose our ingredients and improvised our own menus. However, we were limited to their canned and non-perishable foods due to not having electrical power. So, forget about meat/chicken, juices, fresh salad or veggies for that whole week. You carry approximately 35 lbs of gear on your bike for 7 days averaging 35 miles/day on fire roads. You only take 1 shower the entire week. Oh, did I mention the uncivilized bathrooms? Singletracks (although available) were virtually impossible when your main goal is to get to the next hut before sunset. Plus, you needed to minimize the chances of having an accident that would harm you or your bicycle. You and your team were completely on your own... if your bicycle or you break down, your trip was over! Medical assistance was hours away. In our trip, a lady in the group ahead of us could no longer continue after the 3rd day (not physically ready). She had to pay a rancher about $400 to get bailed out from the middle of nowhere to the nearest town. Obviously, this is not for everyone! For many, this may not be their idea of fun for a week vacation.
- Guided camping trips, in general, are a lot of fun. Guides are knowledgeable, friendly and some even funny. Service is overall very good from most companies out there. However, they lack convenience and comfort. For example, you may have to skip a shower because the solar bag would not work (cloudy day). A tiny portable toilette is very cumbersome and even embarrassing. You are restricted to eat at specific hours and eat that day's menu. Rain and cold weather make things a lot more difficult at night and you may have a hard time sleeping. If the company runs larger groups of 8 or more, you may run into the possibility of finding a jerk in the group.
- Hotel/motel guided trips are normally "high-end" or luxurious trips. They do a good job choosing the hotels/motels for the comfort of their guests. When it comes to food they may do a combination of camping cuisine with some occasional visits to restaurants. However, motel/hotels and restaurants may ruin the experience of being close to nature, on a trip that is aimed to do exactly that. The experience may not be as rewarding. Be ready to fork out the $$$! Whenever hotels and restaurants are involved, the cost of the trip rapidly increases.
- Mountain bike touring companies are region-specific. Why the heck you want to come to Arizona for 1 week and be limited to ride the trails around Tucson, for example? Arizona is one of the top mountain bike states in the country. There is so much to see and so many good places to ride. I had a similar experience not long ago. In a mountain bike trip to Oregon last year, we searched and searched for a company that could run a multi-day, multiple-place tour. We wanted to start in Portland to ride trails there and around Mt. Hood. From there head to the coast to ride and see some of the beautiful Oregonian coast. Then head south to Eugene and Bend to ride the awesome trails such as the famous McKenzie River Trail. Guess what? We could not find anyone to run such trip for us. We needed to book our tours on different companies and they could not adjust to our schedules. So, we had to plan the trip ourselves staying in cheap motels, renting a truck for the entire week, eating in unknown restaurants, driving all over the place and finding our own trails. Planning was a very time-consuming process. I'm well-traveled so execution overall went well but there were unavoidable consequences. For instance, finding the Bridle trailhead (parking area) on Mt. Hood was not that easy. Once on the trail, we missed a turn so we ended up riding the entire singletrack uphill to the top. It was highly recommended to take the fire road up the hill and then ride down on the Bridle trail. From eating at an unknown restaurant (although a reputable nice place), one of us got sick from food poisoning at the end of the trip. Although we had lots of fun, we concluded that we had easily forked out the $$$ had we found a company to do this for us.
We look forward to having you as our guest in your Arizona mountain bike trip!
