Media: Cosmic Ray's Guide to Arizona Trails

WHAT: Cosmic Ray’s Guide to Arizona Mountain Biking WHERE: Almost every friggin’ bike shop and outdoor store in the Sedona, Flagstaff and Phoenix area HOW MUCH: $11.95

I’ve spent the past week and a half riding the trails around Flagstaff and Sedona. Right now, I’m lugging around a backpack full of guide books on Arizona trails, but the one I reach most often for is Cosmic Ray’s guide.

Cosmic Ray (a Flagstaff local) is a hero in the world of self-publishing (no offence to Mountain Biker Mel). The guy has a mini-empire of Arizona hiking and riding books and his distribution out here borders on unreal. I think I even spotted this book at Safeway, here in Sedona.

This particular book covers the choice trails in the Phoenix, Tucson, Sedona and Flagstaff. This is not, however, a comprehensive listing of all the trails in the area—it’s more of a select listing of Ray’s favorites. Some of the best trails include the Mount Elden trails in Flagstaff, Submarine Rock, Airport Mesa and Cathedral Rock in Sedona and the South Mountain stuff out of Phoenix.

Each 1-page trail description contains a rating, description and mileage log (where to turn at mile five, what you’ll encounter at mile six, etc.). Each trail is also paired with a hand-drawn map and elevation chart.

So, here’s the deal: the trail selection is excellent. No shitty fireroad trips at all. Ray does a fine job of casting off the chaff and including only the truly ride-worthy trails. The maps are fairly accurate and the elevation guides are a nice touch. In short, I recommend the book and I admire Ray for his ability to self-publish a book like this.

However, all is not picture perfect. In limiting most of his trail descriptions to a single page, Ray occasionally omits important details (you’ll run into a lot of “Shit, he didn’t mention that singletrack in the book—am I supposed to turn left there or should I keep going straight” scenarios).

Ray’s trail descriptions can also be a bit off. He describes Sedona’s Llama trail, for example, as “twisty, fast, then suddenly technical singletrack”. While that description isn’t entirely inaccurate, it’d probably be worthwhile to mention that Llama is basically a consistently rolling trail—not the kind of downhill thrill that you envision after reading his review. Likewise, he could have probably described Flagstaff’s Little Bear as “A rolling contour trail with plenty of exposure, large. loose rocks and the occasional downed tree.” Instead of just mentioning that the trail goes “Down and fast.”

It’s not that Ray’s advice will lead you astray, it’s just that a little more detail will give first-time trail users a better idea of how to best approach riding certain sections of trail. I imagine the reason his guide is short on details is that he was aiming to keep each description down to a single page in length, but I would pay another five bucks for a book that describes these excellent rides in greater detail. All in all, though, I’ve got to hand it to Ray for putting out the best book on Arizona trails—all by his own bad self. For twelve bucks, it’s worthy of adding to your collection.