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Prescott is the Perfect Riding Town I am writing this to answer the countless questions that are regularly emailed to me from our site. It seems as though people from out of town are interested in the riding conditions in this area. Many people from out of town look at the national weather map and think that we have the same weather as Phoenix. Although Prescott is only 2 hours away from Phoenix it is a good 20F cooler and a bit wetter. Prescott is close to 4000 ft. higher and that makes the difference. Phoenix is all desert while Prescott has large pine forests. Phoenix gets about 6 inches of precipitation in a year while Prescott gets 15-20 inches a year. (I remember Indiana getting 40-50 inches a year) The moisture mostly comes in 2 distinct seasons in both locations. After these wetter times we can enjoy weeks of dry sunny weather. Snow can come anytime from Oct. to April but Jan. and Feb. receive the most. Late summer (July-Aug) is the Monsoon season and very violent storms regularly come in the late afternoon. If you ride in the morning you will often find sunny pleasant weather. Locals love any form of rain but if you are visiting from a wetter climate you may find this annoying. Prescott is a great place if you ride on either a road or MT. bike. The usual weather is a high of 50F in the winter and 90F in the summer. I read somewhere that Prescott has 300 sunny days a year. This seems about right. Although we do get a few snowstorms the roads always clear in a couple days and you can get out. To me, 50F and sunny is pleasant to ride in. If 90F sounds hot in the summer you can always ride in the morning. If the daytime high is 90F the morning temp. will be in the 60's. Arizona people like early morning rides in the summer. There are times when the trails get very snowy but you can usually find someplace to ride off road at lower elevations. In short you can easily ride outside year round. Road rides are in short supply but the dozen we do have are spectacular. There are scenic mountain passes and some flat-ish riding in nearby valleys. If you are a MT. biker you are in for a real treat. From downtown there are literally hundreds of options. Dirt roads, jeep trails, and endless amounts of single track are just a short ride from your hotel room. To me, this is the most impressive thing besides the weather in Prescott. Overcrowded trails are never a problem and most of the time you will not see any one at all. I really feel that Prescott is one of the great undiscovered MT. bike towns. I have lived in Moab and Telluride for extended periods of time (working) and spent some time in Durango. These places have great riding but crowds are a problem. I worked at a bike shop in Moab that rented a comparable numbers of bikes as the ski resorts, I have worked at, rented skies. If you are looking for a bicycle vacation without the jet setters of the "discovered" bike towns try Prescott. Disclaimer - All of these numbers are in the "more or less" category. |