If there’s one mountain bike destination in the USA that is ground-zero for insane POV footage shot on uber-gnarly lines, it is Sedona, Arizona. Sedona’s technical trails attract mountain bikers from around the globe to test their mettle on steep red rock rolls in one of the most gorgeous landscapes on Earth.
Think you’ve conquered everything that Sedona has to offer? Think again. Local builders have just opened a new trail, and it’s tougher than any legal line that previously existed Sedona.
Known as “Hardline,” Sedona’s newest addition turns the triple H into quadruple H. Previously, Sedona’s hardest trails were Hangover, Hiline, and Hogs.
Hardline tops them all.
Welcome to the most technical trail in Sedona
“We’ve built other blacks out there, but nothing like this,” said Lars Romig, Board Member for the Verde Valley Cyclists Coalition (VVCC) and the driving force behind the Hardline project. “If you’ve ridden Hangover — the steep, slickrock stuff towards the end of Hangover — this is like that, but take it to another level. It’s just more interesting, more beautiful.”
And beautiful it is. Hardline is accessed by first riding across Hiline, which is easily one of the most beautiful trails in Sedona. Then, before the classic Hiline descent, Hardline peels off to the right and drops down the flanks of Cathedral Rock, dumping into the Templeton Trail at the junction with Easy Breezy. Hardline measures just under a mile long, but the crux of the trail descends close to 450 vertical feet in half a mile.
Hardline is “a legit double black,” according to Romig. To keep unprepared riders off the trail, Romig and his crew of local builders built a squirrel catcher at the top consisting of “two different rollers that drop 80–90 feet of elevation in two different sections. And they’re just kind of like a filter to make sure that if you’re okay with that, you can continue, because there’s much harder stuff ahead, more exposed, a little bit more of a head game.”
Is Hardline a B-line?
There are no B-lines or bailouts on Hardline. Once you’re into the meat of the trail, you are 100% committed. However, some riders might consider Hardline itself to be a B-line. This zone has been quite popular with professional mountain bikers — such as Remy Métailler and Nate Hills — filming freeriding POV videos here over the years. The crux move on the new Hardline trail is extremely exposed, but it is, in fact, a bypass around a near-vertical rock wall that riders like Romig, Hills, and Métailler would roll.
“We rerouted [the trail] past this huge wall that we used to roll down, and it just traverses real tight to the right-hand side of this canyon wall,” said Romig. “We cut out a bunch of bedrock to let it get through there, but it’s still very exposed, and it’s still a head game.”
The massive roll is still there, but it is a “triple black roller,” according to Romig. While the roller is still accessible, most riders won’t even recognize it as a rideable line.
Even the bypass is intense. “Everybody [I’ve taken] on it […] it’s one of those things where it scares them pretty good initially. Until they ride it, and say, ‘Oh, it’s actually not that bad.’ But you’ve got that exposure on your left that you definitely don’t want to fall.”
Hardline is fully legal and was built with permission from the US Forest Service
The only reason that the gnarly descents on Hangover, Hiline, and Hogs exist is because they were originally user-built trails that were eventually adopted into the official trail system. (Learn more about Hangover’s backstory, here.)
But Hardline is different — it was built with permission and approval from the US Forest Service.
Romig first proposed building Hardline back in 2017, around the time that the triple H was adopted. But the USFS wasn’t having it. However, staff positions have changed over at the Coconino National Forest Red Rock Ranger district, and the new guard is on board.
Kevin Kuhl, the Trails and OHV Coordinator for the Red Rock Ranger District, was integral to getting the project approved. “He’s really key in terms of really wanting to go after a more progressive alignment and trying to address people — like a wide variety of users — from beginner to really advanced. So I think our vision aligned a lot more than staff in the past,” said Romig.
In his role, Kuhl has successfully addressed both ends of the difficulty spectrum, helping to build beginner-friendly green trails and now, double black diamond tech lines.
Most of Hardline was built in a two-week sprint
Once the USFS approved the trail, a group of local builders got together, and they knocked out the bulk of the trail build in a two-week sprint. “I took some time off from work, and we just were out there day after day for eight, nine-hour days doing the initial work,” said Romig.
“Tommy from Summit to Sea Trails decided [to] donate a week’s worth of time to part of the build,” Romig added. Tommy Cogger and Forrest Gale’s crew “helped [move] 15 plus big rocks, anywhere from 500 pounds to 3,000-pound rocks […] just to make that zone still hard, but make it work in a more manageable level.”
The Coconino National Forest Red Rocks Trail Crew owned a portion of the build and was responsible for constructing an almost nine-foot-tall rock retaining wall — one of the most labor-intensive parts of the build.
As noted above, taking a rock saw to the bedrock to cut the trail around the triple black roller was one of the key parts of the build, without which the trail wouldn’t have been possible.
The Verde Valley Cyclists Coalition and Sedona Red Rock Trail Fund also supported the project.
Do you have what it takes to ride Hardline?
Hardline is officially open and ready to ride — just in time for the Sedona Mountain Bike Festival this weekend. Specialized Soil Searching also supported the project and filmed the build, and a feature movie about the Hardline project will be released on Friday night at the festival.
If you’re heading to Sedona soon, you might just have to take on Sedona’s new test piece and see if you’re truly up to this red rock challenge.
Get a taste of the Hardline action in Nate Hills’ Follow Cam Friday from the new trail:
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