Outdoor Recreation

WHEN YOU GO

Mountain biking may be the fastest-growing sport in the West. Mountain-bike clubs have proliferated, and trails developed for mountain biking are everywhere.

For beginners, information about equipment and places to ride is as close as your neighborhood bike shop. I went to Jay Underwood, sales manager at Full Cycle in Tucson and president of the Southern Arizona Mountain Biking Association. Distilled, here's his advice:

My all-time favorite mountain-bike ride happened when I started riding eight years ago.

Inspired by a sense of being in the vanguard of a new sport, I figured out places to ride by studying topo maps.

One evening I planted my finger on a Coronado National Forest map that showed a ribbon of road running along the west flank of the Dragoon Mountains. "Right here," I announced to my riding partner, Kate McCarthy, "this spot looks likely."

So early one Friday morning we gathered our camping gear, loaded our bikes, and drove south on State Route 80. About a mile north of Tombstone, we turned east onto Middlemarch Road and proceeded approximately 10 miles to Forest Service Route 687. Here we unloaded our bikes and rode north.

"Did I say 'likely?' I shouted to Kate. We had traveled a half mile, perhaps, and I could already see we were pedaling across some very special terrain. My glee bubbled over. "This is mountainbikers' paradise!" I yelled.And it was. A primitive track sandy where it crossed washes, rocky where it bumped over ridge lines the road wound its way north across the contours of the gently rolling oak-dotted foothills of the Dragoon Mountains. As mountain biking goes it wasn't tough. But for beginners challenging enough.

The terrain, classic Arizona grassland, was, in late October, a study in amber: grasses, yucca, century plants, and cudweed, accented by splashes of yellow rabbitbrush. What a splendid panorama laid out for us.

MOUNTAIN BIKING - IT'S THE FASTESTGROWING SPORT IN THE SOUTHWEST

A series of secondary roads lured us into some adventurous sidetracking. On one of them, Forest Service Road 687K, we found Council Rocks, the site of an Apache encampment and some outstanding Indian rock art.

We camped that night on the lee side of an enormous boulder up one of the side roads near the looming escarpment of the Dragoons. Natural shelter, beauty, isolation it was the perfect campsite.

We spent the next couple of days exploring side roads and playing on our mountain bikes. Some roads climbed to hilly heights with fantastic views back across the San Pedro River Valley; others tracked alongside narrow canyons until we ran out of road.

We saw no other bikers; the world was ours.

On our last day, we rode into Stronghold Canyon to the foot trail that crosses the mountain to the Forest Service campground on the east side. We stashed our bikes and hiked up a little way not far, we were running out of time.

But we've been back many times since.