Bigbuck Super whack decision to come on here and put down the guy who puts in hundreds of hours of work for no financial gains, and he's been beat by woman in every event he's been in pretty sure he's used to it.

If the professional bikepacker has to have content to generate revenue, the professional film crew had two years to figure out a way to create content within the rules of the race. The non event race the only exist on one persons blog.

The comments from the current as well as past women's record holders seem to side with the no media crew ruling.

If the rules regarding pro's vs amateur bikepacker's still need to be fleshed out then I am sure we have the right man for the job to figure it out. 

Yeah I missed it at first too, the new "New Colo" New from NM and Colo from CO..... ColoMexi maybe, looks like it might hit 3 different ranger districts the new "San Juan Carson Rio Grande 1000 that's a mouth full. This looks pretty good on paper, ?I?ve always dreamed of making my own route,? said the event?s organizer. If he does a good job and doesn't just cut and paste a bunch of random tracks together, best of luck to him. It sounds like the guy is putting in the work not just hand drawing a track and saying have at it, on roads that don't exist ala the one off Apache 200.

No doubt lots of people dream of making their own route and then making an event out of it. It's maybe even possible to use tracks from online sources and just let google or gaia trace out the major roads. But as ScottM informed the Apache 200 guy if your using random FS back roads you can't just trust a map and hand drawn tracks and then send other people out. It's a lot of work as Aaron knows, if it's a good route that people like it might take off.

my .02 Tim

Cheers, it's a FCFS sign up like Aaron said opens one month before, pay attention and you shouldn't have any trouble getting in.

As to the rider limit, the only way to make it work under Fed rules for forest lands is to keep the group small, they say 75. However that includes any shuttle drivers, that and for several other reasons a self imposed limit of 50 riders has been considered. The opportunity is always there, you can ITT at anytime. It's always the Race Directors call, some riders want two start days and don't see a problem with 150 riders out on the trail at the same time. Out of respect for the trail and other users groups I am against that. The trail is only getting busier and it's important to maintain a good relationship with the Association and others on the trail. The event has flown under the radar for 15 years now, the last thing we need is to get on the bad side of the ATA or others.

Tim

Way to keep the stoke alive John, the new rider limit may not go over well with everyone but it's the right thing to do.

Alex has tracked at Mormon lake so just batteries perhaps great to see.

And thanks to Dale for including mountain bikes in his vision.

Garrett's dot shows that taking the trail on the North Rim, compared to the road, is only about 4 to 5 hours longer
I'm surprised. I thought the trail would be much slower
Must be in great condition.

Once you get out of the Park the trail up there is pretty sweet and mostly faster rolling in general. Inside the Park there's a bunch of steeper utility cut stuff but even that is mostly riding with minimal HAB. It will be interesting to see how the grand depart leaders do with it.

That was actually me wearing sandals. Alex might've too, but he camped right next to us and I believe he was shoed.
Congrats to the finishers and good luck to everyone still out there.

Thanks for the update, I wasn't sure who we saw in sandals but it got our attention. Considering the trail conditions and that so many had gaiters or full pants on the sandals took us aback.

Glad to hear things worked out and you had a good ride, you had us wondering when you took off out of Ptown on the original route. It's happened before that someone loaded all the tracks available and got off course on the wrong track.

Older cars rock, you can actually work on them.

Tim

SPDs or flats?

Too shocked to look closer but the sandals look thin and basic nothing fancy with clips must have been flats.

Did Alex Stephan really ride the Canelos in sandals?

Saw it with mine own eye's as he left Parker.

An interesting turn of events for those two, good for them respecting the closure time. John or Scott, wouldn't the riding more AZT clause have allowed them to continue north from Ptown and rejoined at Hog canyon. It can't be faster and if it makes it possible for someone to continue in active mode it would possibly ensure that riders aren't tempted to push the closure time.

Interesting...

Indeed.

TL and TW look to be riding the course from 2010?

John feel free to share my pics from fb.

Looking closer I found that people are cutting left by the gazebo and bypassing the 2ash out. Not having much luck posting pics from the phone.

Wow gates that won't open because of vegetation, hopefully that will change after the 28th.

Happy Jack has some sweet new trail but it's not Sedona by a long shot, Highline has seen a lot of work but it still got HAB for sure, What your replacing it with on the BCT is much newer sweeter trail. Coming into Flag one of the sweetest section is Aspen corners it will be a climb for you just before the Coco comes in, dropping straight into town is the party way to go for sure.

I wonder how early winter will hit the North Rim?  Will anyone be able to finish the AZTR800 without using the snow detour?

Seems like it would take a lot of snow to keep people off of the trail. Not likely that much would fall in 1 or 2 winter storms.
Plus it seems that John is willing to give the win to the person who rides the trail over the person who takes the road. With that extra motivator I would think people will stick to the trail if at all passable for fear someone behind them will pull it off for the win.

Simple answer server space, while this site allows users to upload photo's it's preferred that people share a link if those pics are already living on someone else's servers space. Thanks for transferring the text, he obviously didn't think it was needed.

Mike is a professional wheel builder who already created an add for this set, no reason for him to recreate it here. Also in his nearly 300 post to this site you'll find well written accounts including awesome pics of some pretty impressive rides. Almost any wheel question on this site will have a well thought out reply from one of bikepacking's OG's.

Mike keep up the good work, thanks for being a helpful guy here on bikepacking.net.

Tim