The Maricopa Trail--Granite Reef Dam to Usery Mountain

 At long last comes an attempt to finish off one leg of the Maricopa Trail, this time from Granite Reef Dam to Usery Mountain Park. I had hesitated to do this section for a variety of reasons: first, much of it is mountain biking, and though I am a road biker, and use my mountain bike for the canal paths, this would have been the first time in several years that I'd been on single-track, and a decade since my last serious mountain biking. Here is the county map of this leg:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11pM_YsR5eF68XoOSP5vr_tw84vFqUEvf/view?usp=share_link.

Below is my actual route, from a Google Earth map with a GPS track (in blue):

As you can see if you compare the recorded track to the map, I have skipped about a 2-mile section of the Wild Horse Trail. The small tail on the northeast edge of the first loop, before my return to the Bush Highway represents my start on the trail. At the point I turned back, there was a one-way (downhill) sign on the trail that I was attempting to go up. Believing I had made a mistake, I went the other way on the Wild Horse Trail and ended up on the Bush Highway. I took the road up the Usery Pass hill, to the egress of the trail, and followed it west a little over a mile, then turned around, having already done 11 miles to that point. Getting back to the road, I still had about 13 miles to go to get home. I consider that I've now bicycled the route, to the Bulldog Trailhead (the green dot at the bottom right corner of the Google Earth route).

From the Bush Highway, the route turns off onto the Saguaro trail, which climbs to the Granite Ridge Trail. The Saguaro sections are moderately difficult to difficult, as is the section marked in the wilderness as "Twisted Sister." The Granite Ridge section is nice, moderate cycling. There are great views of Red Mountain on this route, and during my ride, the wildflowers were out.

My ride was a bit of a clown show--I biffed twice on easy sections, collected assorted bruises and one cut, and got both slightly bewildered and lost. I walked significant portions of the first single-track section.

The Wild Horse Trail going west, however, was generally easily rideable. A 10-minute video with views and commentary can be found here: https://youtu.be/VQ27vXvz5g4.

As of January 9, I've completed the Usery Spur of the Maricopa trail from the Bulldog trailhead through Usery Park. Some of it has been mountain-biked, but most has been walked.

Going from the Bulldog Trailhead, the trail (for mountain bikes) is easy to moderate until the trail meets the Pass Mountain Trail and the Talon Trail. Until the Wind Cave Trailhead, the mountain biking would be mostly moderate (to me) with some more advanced and difficult sections. We did meet a number of mountain bikers on this stretch, most traveling from Bulldog to the Wind Cave Trailhead.

On November 26, 2024, and again on Thursday, January 26, 2025, we hiked the short section between the Wind Cave Trailhead and the point where the Maricopa Trail intersects the Pass Mountain Trailhead to go west to the west edge of the park.

The map is not clear how the Maricopa Trail gets to the west edge of the park, but on November 13, 2024, I did mountain bike the western leg of the trail beyond the Pass Mountain Trailhead. All of these trails: the Lost Sheep, Moon Rock, Blevins, and Chainfruit (?) are easy rides. What is clear is that the Maricopa Trail follows the Lost Sheep Trail to the park visitor center.

Maricopa Trail: Gilbert-Queen Creek-San Tan

Here's the Maricopa Trail online map for this section.  The first part of this ride is documented in the Mesa Canals 14 post (a ride to Bergie's Coffee Shop in downtown Gilbert).  The map above goes from the turnoff point to Bergies on the Consolidated Canal, to where the Trail crosses the Loop 202 South.

Most of this part of the trail winds with the canal through new subdivisions.  The road crossings are generally safe, though there is at least one complicated crossing, I believe at Chandler/Williams Field Road, where it is necessary to wait for two stoplights.

Gilbert has landscaped and graded these canal paths well, and it is possible to ride on either side most of the way.  North of Elliot Road to the Bergies turnoff, however, riders will want to be on the West Bank of the canal; the east bank is blocked by some SRP structures.

At one time, much of this section must have looked like the section on the Pima-Maricopa Indian Community:  mostly farm fields and wide vistas.  Now, however, it is far more closed-in with surrounding subdivisions.  It is well-used, but not to the overly-trafficked point.

Click here for a short video on You Tube that gives a quick sense of this section of the trail (my action cam videos are still in test/learning mode).

Maricopa Trail: Scottsdale-Granite Reef-Mesa and Filling Blanks

Finally, the second installment:  this one covers most of the Scottsdale-Granite Reef-Mesa map (for which I'm now embedding links in the appropriate posts), though the Prelude post has more of it, and I still need to do the bit from Granite Reef at Bush Highway-Power Road to Usery Mountain Park (that will be added when the weather cools).

The two maps above show my routes on April 9, 2021 when I finally rode again the section of the South Canal from its intersection with the Eastern Canal at McDowell Road to the intersection point with the Consolidated Canal, and a new (to me) section from Hayden Road to the Mesa Landfill (on tribal land near SR 87).   Both of these routes were done with Chris; if I can ever get my action cam to work right, I'll have pictures and video, which I'll post. 

The top section is one that I've done before in the Mesa Canals series (posts 7 and 12), but it was good to do again.  The The South Canal is the north side of the fork intersection with the Consolidated Canal, and immediately goes down a steep slope.  Once down the slope, there is an underpass at Gilbert Road, before the canal grade goes through Lehi.  There's a surface crossing at McKellips Road, as there is again at Horne street (watch the traffic).  The trail skirts Mesa's Park of the Canals, before connecting with the Consolidated Canal just north of Brown Road.

The bottom map is a ride done May 31, 2021.  Most of this stretch is over the Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, and skirts farm fields, where we saw much wildlife, including a rattlesnake and some burrowing owls.  As with the South Canal stretch between McDowell and Granite Reef, this route feels like the country, though roads cross and there are other travelers (including riders of gravel bikes, who are apparently using the Maricopa Trail as a shortcut from Scottsdale to SR 87 (the Beeline Highway).  We stopped just before riding past the landfill, which was not aesthetically pleasing.  According to the map, the Arizona Canal skirts the northern edge of the landfill before curving back down to a surface crossing (!) of the Beeline Highway.  See the Prelude post for the Maricopa Trail section southeast of the Beeline.

So, this fills in one blank of this section (the big curve to the Consolidated Canal).  The next blank is the trail (near Hawes Loop) that leads to Usery Mountain Park.

Maricopa Trail: The Prelude (Scottsdale-Granite Reef-Mesa)

The Scottsdale-Granite Reef Map

This is starting more slowly and weirdly than I thought it would.  When the Maricopa Trail was announced several years ago, I started collecting maps, planning to do a project in the next year to cycle the whole trail.  But things change on the Maricopa County Parks website:  The Maricopa Trail connects in spots to the Sun Circle Trail, which I first became aware of around 8 or 9 years ago, and the maps have been changing and going away from their original website homes to different places.  So, now, the first part of my task is downloading the new maps and ordering them in my personal file.  Here's the current website home of the maps:  https://www.maricopacountyparks.net/park-locator/maricopa-trail/trail-maps/.

Chris and I thought we'd be able to cycle most of this together as well, but in October 2020, Chris injured her knee and has been rehabbing since.  She can ride now (with her new new bike [a long story]) but is not up to the multi-mile trails or the rougher park routes yet.

So . . . on March 28th of this year, we planned a shakedown trip of about 4 3/4 miles one-way from the Granite Reef Dam parking area on Power Road/The Bush Highway to the crossing of SR 87 (the Beeline Highway) along the Arizona Canal.  Here's a short test video (this was also a shakedown of my new action cam).  What we found:  the trail follows the southern shore of the canal all the way to SR 87.  It's also a relatively complicated and not well-signed route from the Bush Highway parking area past Granite Reef Dam, over a bridge, across the dam spillway, to the Arizona Canal.  Once on the canal path, however, the desert is open and relatively deserted (though we met several gravel bike riders, apparently cruising over from the Beeline).  Great views of the Pima-Maricopa native lands, as well as Red Mountain in the distance.  There's little noticeable elevation gain or loss.  It was also a lovely, sunny day, though a little hot (this is probably too hot for riding in full summer).

On April 11, we took another ride out the South Canal from near our home.  Starting from just past Gilbert road, the actual distance we rode on the Maricopa Trail was about 3.8 miles.  I've biked this stretch many times (see my Mesa Canals entries--7 and 12), as well as searching for the marker for the historic Lehi Crossing (Mesa Canals 1).  This stretch has more traffic, but also gets the Mesa city dweller out of town and into the scenery.

And so it begins (with a whimper) . . . my attempt to ride around the whole of the Maricopa Trail by the Spring of 2022.  The next challenge:  map reading.  It turns out the the spur from Granite Reef to Usery Mountain Park goes through a Tonto National Forest area locally known as Hawes Loop.  Should be interesting, though maybe not in the heat and snake mating season.