Words by Jim Monahan
Photos by Brandon Watts of local rider Chewy
Sedona is blessed with over 350 miles of scenic and challenging singletrack. Here, we’re fortunate to have a seemingly infinite number of loops that start from any trailhead in town. So when we learned that the Freehub crew was interested in do a trail review in the area, we invited them down to explore one of our favorites—which begins, literally, from our driveway.
This loop laces together the trails Made In The Shade, Slim Shady, Highline, Baldwin, Templeton, Easy Breezy; then ties back into Made In The Shade, and heads back to the Bike & Bean. It’s the perfect mixture of flow, tech and views and we knew it’d give the guys the ideal Sedona experience.
In late afternoon, we headed out. Made In The Shade begins as singltrack winding through beautiful scenery and along red dirt over rock outcroppings. Then, as you reach the top of its follow-up trail, Slim Shady, the views of the panorama offered by an open slickrock bench are reason for pause and reflection.
From there, we headed up to Highline—the keynote of this ride. Highline starts with a climb up a watershed zone, then turns into a narrow bench that rolls along sheer exposure for about 3 miles. With views around every corner, you struggle not to stop every five minutes to take a photo. But even with that intimidating exposure off to one side, the trail flows smoothly. We rolled along the edge, pumping our bikes in and out of the trail features as if one side didn’t blatantly drop off into absolute nothingness.
