Arizona’s Verde Valley is stunningly beautiful, with ample public lands in the Prescott National Forest, but for years, that beauty was largely inaccessible by trail. While nearby Sedona has long been a mountain biking mecca, the Verde Valley itself has surprisingly little to offer riders looking to explore its rugged terrain.
Local riders and community members had plenty to say about it. The US Forest Service (USFS) held several meetings to gather feedback on priorities for the Prescott National Forest, and the response was clear. “In the end, after all that information was synthesized from those meetings, there was an overwhelming response from communities about wanting non-motorized trail opportunities and access to National Forest System lands,” said Thomas Palmer, East Zone Recreation Program Manager for the Verde Ranger District of the Prescott National Forest.
Inspiration for the Verde Valley Circle Trail
According to Palmer, the solution that emerged from this process was the brainchild of Jason Williams, Trails and Wilderness Manager for the Prescott National Forest. Williams took inspiration from the Prescott Circle Trail, which encircles the city of Prescott with about 54 miles of singletrack — and then thought even bigger. The result: the “Verde Valley Circle Trail” (VVCT), a 180-200+ mile loop envisioned to ring the expansive Verde Valley while connecting neighboring communities like Cottonwood and Camp Verde.
And the trail won’t be located solely on USFS land. “There’s lots of different entities we have,” said Palmer. “We have Red Rock [Ranger District] to the north. We have Dead Horse State Park. We have the Blowout Wash system [in Cottonwood], the Prescott side, tying all the way over to the Sports Park in Camp Verde, that was newly built with their trail system. We got Stan Mish up in the Beaver Creek area, working on trails in the Beaver Creek area.
“All these folks are like, ‘Yeah, we’re all doing work in various places in the Verde Valley.’ And the concept was very plausible because it meant just connecting the dots between those individual efforts.”
The Copper Chief trail is one of the most newly completed sections of the VVCT
During Thanksgiving week 2025, I inadvertently put Palmer’s vision to the test, pedaling my mountain bike 184 miles from Sedona to the Phoenix Metro Area over five days. Along the way, I passed through Dead Horse State Park, Cottonwood’s Blowout Wash trail system, and the Black Canyon Trail (BCT). And along that route, I stumbled onto one of the newest builds in the region, which will form part of the VVCT: the Copper Chief Trail.
For this portion of the ride, I was riding in the opposite direction (south to north) thanks to shuttle support, so I could spend more time descending singletrack into the town of Cottonwood instead of losing elevation on roads. When I reached the Copper Chief trail, I was stunned to find a brand-new machine-built trail hugging the remote mountainside. I still had 15 miles of downhill to go to reach the closest signs of civilization.
It’s rare to see newly-built trails of this caliber so far out in the backcountry. It seems like most mountain bike trails these days are built close to population centers, but the Copper Chief is an exception. Williams acknowledged that they’re trying to connect communities, but they’re also “providing that primitive experience in some cases as well, which is great.”
Copper Chief was designed as a multi-use trail, and it features a mellow trail character that’s perfect for long-distance cross-country riding. Currently, the trail is fresh and largely non-technical, but more rocks are likely to erode from the surface over time.
Since the trail is so far out in the backcountry, Matthew Roberts, Owner and Founder of Flagline Trails, built Copper Chief specifically to be low-maintenance. “The local volunteer groups are not going to hike nine miles up to do one hour of maintenance and come out,” said Roberts. “When we built it, we were very cognizant of the fact that nobody’s probably gonna do any maintenance on this for the next five to 10 years. So it had to be built like that. And I know it’s going to grow in vegetation-wise, and the rocks are going to grow, and it’s going to get looser, and it’s going to develop its own character. But to start with, it was meant to be a smooth, fast, flowy descent on that section that we built with machines.”
While building such a remote trail might be a challenge for some builders, “that’s what our company does,” said Roberts. “We seem to be put into pretty remote spots in Arizona and asked to build trail.” Roberts and his crew would camp out near the job site for up to eight days at a time, and sometimes, when the weather was bad, they’d get stuck at camp for even longer. “There’s a couple of times I got stuck up there at my camp, and you just got to wait until either the sun comes out and melts the snow, or the road is in a good enough condition I could get my side-by-side back down to civilization.”
While the build wasn’t easy, the results reflect both the USFS’s vision and Flagline’s dedication to the project.
Up next: the Grief Hill Trail System
The Grief Hill Trail System is the newest addition to the VVCT plan, and it will mirror the multi-use stacked-loop trail design employed at the Blowout Wash trail system (which is located at the bottom of Copper Chief). This all-new trail system will eventually boast 15 miles of non-motorized trails, with an expected completion in roughly 3-5 years.
An extension of the BCT will form the backbone of the Grief Hill Trail System and will eventually connect to existing trails in the town of Camp Verde. Currently, two contractors are building out at Grief Hill: Bob Cothern with the Black Canyon Trail Coalition and Bauer Built Trails, which was funded by the Verde Valley Trail Fund.
Grief Hill isn’t purpose-built for mountain bikers, but riders will definitely enjoy the trails. “From the mountain bike perspective, […] the Prescott National Forest terrain is primarily conducive to this cross-country riding, like you saw on Copper Chief,” Williams told me. “And occasionally, when we’re connecting some older trails that are super steep, you’re going to get some technical rock garden type stuff. And so when you get difficultness on the Prescott National Forest, it’s probably because it’s a really old trail that has lost a lot of soil, whereas most of the new stuff we’re building is in that moderate, sustainable grade blue.”
“We’re really trying to limit user conflict, so we can keep as many trails open to as many users as possible,” Williams continued. “That’s why we won’t be building a ton of berms and stuff like that — we want to slow mountain bikers down in some places so that we reduce conflict.”
They were both quick to add that in other locations on the Prescott National Forest, they’re working hard to build bike-specific trails. Bean Peaks is the obvious example, but Palmer also teased a massive downhill MTB trail experience dropping off of Mingus Mountain and ending in Prescott, which had been approved in their trail plan and NEPA analysis. A group of Prescott mountain bikers had pushed for that trail, but unfortunately, “We haven’t heard from them since we signed the NEPA.”
Bikepacking the Verde Valley is already epic, and it’s only going to keep getting better
With roughly 35 miles of trail currently complete, the final vision of a connected Verde Valley Loop Trail is still a long way off. Palmer and Williams estimated that it would take 10 to 15 years for this full vision to become a reality. “I think 10 years would be optimistic,” Williams quipped, referencing how long it took to build the 54-mile Prescott Circle Trail. This is one of many reasons why it’s rare to see such long-distance trails built: it takes decades of work and tireless public servants and local volunteers to shepherd these trails through to completion.
As my five-day tour connecting Sedona to Phoenix, with the BCT as the crown jewel, showed, bikepacking in the Verde Valley is already spectacular. But with the completion of this 200-mile loop on the horizon, it will truly be world-class.
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