Pine Canyon Trail 26 Ride Report

So this last weekend I ended up camping near Knoll lake with my wife, baby and in-laws. It was a great weekend filled with fresh trout, sleeping in a tent with a one year old, head bandaids for said one year old, toasted marshmallows, and a little shredding. On the way home from the campsite I talked my lovely wife into dropping me at the top of Pine Canyon Trail 26. I’ve hiked a bit of it before, but wanted to ride the whole thing down and see if it was a good DH trail or not. So I dropped in with my hardtail Norco, half helmet, and a half camelback of water. I planned on dropping trail 26 to the bottom and then traversing east to the Highline trailhead near Hwy 87.

The top half of the trail was nice and gnarly with big, dropping, exposed switchbacks just screaming for a DH bike, not this HT… Lots of techy rock garden mixed in with some buffed bench cut trail down the rim. As i dropped into the canyon I was greeted by some fern overgrown trail and a few downed trees.


There were some great flowy sections and some rocky creek crossings, but most of the trail was ridable.

I ventured further down the trail past a bunch of trail off shoots to different sections of the creek, “Deep Pools” “Tiny Cave” and many other trail signs leading to offshoots.


As I passed the largest tree/creek crossing I found some super buff single track heading down to the bottom of Pine Canyon. It was fast and almost rock free, looks like lots of hikers enjoy this section of trail versus the middle and upper section as shown by the maintenance on the trail.

I ripped down what seemed a total of 3.5 miles to the junction that would take me to the bottom of pine canyon(which my gut told me I shoulda taken) and the traverse section of Trail 26 (that I took). The sign only said 3 miles to Dripping springs and 5 to the Highline TrailHead.

So I headed up the rocky climb and hiked and hiked and hiked for what seemed 30 minutes and only .5 miles. Ouch. Finally got to a crest and rode down for 1.5 minutes to another 20 minute uphill trek.

This process repeated itself for the next 7 miles only interrupted by a 1000 or so downed trees and more hike a bike. If you like to ride techy uphill alot, take this trail. So I trucked on to complete my task to find the “Good enough” trail sign leading back to pine canyon.

What!!! I wasn’t even close to my trailhead destination. Never saw any dripping springs(which I coulda used with little water left) Continued more grueling uphill, more downed trees, to finally a groomed section of trail that looked like a fire crew came through and cleared for a fire prevention. I finally got on a nice piece of downhill that took me to the top of a housing development right outside of pine. There was a sign at the bottom of the trail that said “Highline Trailhead 3 miles” I wasn’t even close…

So here’s my final thoughts, the Pine Canyon DH trail is sick, some downed trees, very little hike a bike, could be a great shuttle with a short road drive to the top. The traverse section of trail 26…A REAL BITCH!!!! I felt accomplished by braving out a new section of trail that I’ve never heard about and deserved that cold gatorade at the Pine convenience store/uhaul rental shop. What I figured an hour and a half turned to 3+ hours of mostly hike a bike, made my wife glad that I was still alive. Good thing there’s good cell phone reception on the side of the rim to give her constant text updates. All in all, a great fathers day on the hill taking my bike for a hike.

Check out MtBikeAZ.com for a google map. I don’t have a GPS yet…