![]() Do keep your eye out for the Chevy Nova in the canyon bottom. Nice views of Davidson Canyon are to your left as you approach the I-10 tunnel. Gabe Z Trailhead at 4.9 miles is the first aid station. Here’s what you’ll see as you approach the Bridges: (Note: Except for the Arizona Trail pass-through where no permit is required, the Cienega Creek Natural Preserve is accessible by free permit only from Pima County). Follow the markers under the lower railroad bridge, start up Davidson Canyon, then climb out to the Gabe Z Trailhead. There you’ll cross Marsh Station Road just north of the vehicle bridge, proceed east and north, then turn south and drop into the bottom of Cienega Creek, the course low point at 3300 feet. You’ll cross under the upper railroad bridge, the first of the Three Bridges. Near Cienega Creek, you’ll start to get some great views of this beautiful riparian area. The route flattens out for a bit before you will encounter another canyon crossing at the first gas pipeline. Look for the castle up on the hill to your left (east). You’ll cross some small canyons through some interesting limestone formations. Right turn (south) takes you up out of Posta Quemada Canyon, toward Cienega Creek. All events feature an out-and-back course.įrom the Start/Finish near the ranch entrance, both 55K and 50-Mile runners will go uphill 0.23 miles to intersect the actual Arizona Trail. It offers three distances, a 50-Mile, 55K (34 miles), a long Half-Marathon (13.6 miles), and a nighttime half-marathon (13.1 miles). The CV 50/50 starts and finishes at La Posta Quemada (LPQ) Ranch in Colossal Cave Mountain Park (CCMP). There are few straight, completely flat sections on this course, which is overall excellent running. While the course is relatively flat compared to our trails in the nearby mountains, the 55K still has a total of almost 3,000 feet of climb and the 50-mile has an additional 1,000. You’ll see massive mountain ranges all around you, some vistas quite spectacular. Below the Gabe Zimmerman Davidson Canyon Trailhead, the saguaros disappear and more often you’ll run past yuccas, with the occasional juniper at unusually low elevations for those trees. At the north end, you’ll be running through saguaro cacti forest near the boundary of Saguaro National Park. These transitions mean the plant communities change depending on where you are on the course. You can find a great illustration of this here. Parts of the trail skirt the east edge of the Sonoran Desert, where it is bordered by the Mexican Highlands, a transition zone to the Chihuahuan Desert, as well as some of the Sky Islands mountain ranges of southeast Arizona. ![]() Unlike some sections of the Arizona Trail that utilized existing trails, this was new trail built within the past 15 years. The CV 50/50 uses most of Passages 7 & 8, which link the Santa Rita Mountains south of the Tucson Basin to the Rincon Mountains on the east side of the Basin on the ancestral lands of the Tohono O’odham and Pascua Yaqui. The Arizona Trail is divided into Passages. Colossal Vail Half Marathon – approximately 1,300 ft.Colossal Vail 55K – approximately 2,300 ft.Colossal Vail 50 Miler – approximately 4,000 ft.You can see a Google Maps view of the event here. ![]() Keep in mind that all runners traverse the south portion of the course, while only the 50 Mile runners continue on to the north portion of the course. ![]()
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