Sky Islands Odyssey (East Loop) - Day 1 - Springtime Blooms Climbing to Patagonia
This is our sixth time riding the Sky Islands Odyssey. And we love it as ever. Set in southeast Arizona amid and around its iconic Sky Islands peaks, the route weaves through the lower Sonoran cacti and high desert grasslands the region is famous for. Janna and I have returned nearly every year since 2018 to ride this loop. We love it for the small towns, landscapes, and warm temperatures during the cooler months of the year up north. Usually, this trip is a November Veteran's Day escape for us; but last autumn, I ended up breaking my pelvis in two places on the Stagecoach 100 route. That effectively took out all backcountry trips for several months after diagnosis. So I looked ahead and plucked this designated snow-makeup-day in early April as a time to head out. The date rolled in, no snow days were used, so this long weekend became ours for a southern Arizona trip…
