The Colorful Canyon

 10-23 

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 Jane is making a ticking noise. Not a bad, needs-to-go-to-a-shop-ASAP ticking noise, but more of a “something isn’t adjusted right all the sudden” ticking noise. It’s been getting louder all week, and is now annoying enough that I feel slightly motivated to do something about it.

I started by snugging up my exhaust header bolts, which were loose per usual. The things attempt to escape the vehicle very constantly, so it’s normal for me to have an exhaust leak most of the time. This time the tick sounded like an exhaust leak, but happened at different times while driving. Nonetheless, I was feeling hopeful so I just snugged those bolts up.

Unfortunately, no dice.

It was a beautiful day, so I opted to ignore the potential problem – figuring that my paltry attempt at a solution would appease Jane, at least for the day – and instead headed off north of Sedona towards Oak Creek Canyon. Jane puttered along, ticking all the way but sounding otherwise pretty healthy and happy. She’s always been especially agreeable on these smaller winding canyon roads.

I drove up to the West Fork trailhead, where I encountered a bunch of cones and signs saying that the parking lot was FULL and that I should not try to enter. Well, I tried to enter anyways, mostly to get turned around to head back down the canyon. But lo and behold, just as I was entering the parking lot, I saw another car leaving… and the guy manning the entry booth begrudgingly let me in. Pays to keep the karma good sometimes.

I packed up my gear and started down the trail, first stopping at the remnants of the old Mayhew Lodge. A place with humble beginnings – starting at a hunting cabin in the 1870’s – the site was turned into a successful bed and breakfast in the 1920’s. It was a well-known refuge for famous figures in its heyday, but it ultimately closed down in the 60’s and was incorporated into the Coconino National Forest. A wildfire destroyed most of the buildings, and these days only a few crumbling walls and a hearth remain.

This looks like a great place to cook now, really!

Looking through a round window

The West Fork trail is one of Sedona’s most famous, and is also very different from the rest. Rather than traversing big outcrops full of junipers and cacti and soaring vistas, the West Fork trail follows Oak Creek up a narrow canyon that’s about as far removed from the “usual” Sedona landscape as you can get. Although the large white cliffs of the Coconino Sandstone still loom close, they’re mostly obscured by the lush vegetation growing along the creek banks – thick grasses, delicate ferns, large bushes, and a towering assemblage of pines, oaks, cottonwoods, and maples. Oak Creek babbles along, just a tame little thing a few scant inches deep in most places, its clear waters broken by cobbles smoothed by time. Thick pads of leaf litter crumble to earthy humus underfoot, making for a soft trail that echoed with hollow muted thumps as I walked. The sun – so strong outside the canyon – here is restrained to peeking through the foliage, lancing down in thin beams to highlight a leaf here, a rock there, a trunk elsewhere. This is a soft place, so different from the harsh, bright, arid world outside.

I had arrived right at the start of the turning of the autumn leaves, and was fortunate to see a lot of maples in their prime. The sun seemed to almost seek those ones out for extra illumination, the leaves blazing with brilliant reds and oranges and yellows.

At some point I stopped at one of the creek crossings to make a little raft out of bark, with a maple leaf sail. You see, when I was a child we had taken a family trip to Sedona – and for some reason, one of the most vivid memories we all have is my sister and I making boats to race down Oak Creek. So, I made a boat for nostalgia’s sake, and sent it on its way down the creek (although I admit that it took me a couple of tries before I made one that didn’t immediately sink).

I kept on up the trail, enjoying the nice easy walk in the cool shade. Every once in a while the trees would part, revealing the rocky walls of the canyon; these were massive but weathered, almost forming hoodoos in some places.

Eventually, I reached an odd stand of knobby plants that looked like they belonged in a marsh; they were arrayed across the canyon floor almost like grass. By this point the canyon had narrowed substantially. Trees were looking scrawnier and underbrush was almost completely absent (except for these weird reeds), so I surmised that I had reached a section that is shadowed for most of the day, limiting what can grow there.

The more I thought about it, it seemed that I had accidentally stumbled upon the exact right time of day to hike the West Fork, as the overhead midday sun illuminated the canyon wonderfully. It began to dip lower in the sky as I hiked, and by the time I reached the end of the traverse, the canyon had been cast into dramatic shadows. This made for fantastic photos at the very end of the trail in particular, where a still pool of water reflected sandstone cliffs in a truly spectacular way.

The canyon fell almost completely into shadow by 2PM as I hiked back along the creek, so I hustled my way out of there – the temperatures were dropping rapidly, and I had chosen to wear shorts for the day! Brrr. Once again I was grateful for choosing not to camp up Oak Creek Canyon for the week.

I got back to the trailhead with plenty of time for another activity for the day, so I plopped into Jane and drove back – tick, tick, tick, ticking all the way – towards town. I decided that I would try to do one last famous Sedona stop: Red Rock Crossing.

Google showed me the way to the Crescent Ranch Picnic Area, which of course required an entry fee. This whole week I’ve been completely inundated with entry fees - even though I bought an all-access trail permit, there are a lot of places that are exempt from that pass (including West Fork, where I had just been). So the prospect of paying for ANOTHER parking lot didn’t appeal to me too much. I pulled up to the entry booth and proceeded to do my best to charm the lady working it into not charging me. Well, she did charge me, but she only charged me the cost of a biker, which was a few bucks, so I guess I consider that a win.

Jane is very instrumental in reducing entry fees, sometimes.

I parked at the picnic area and consulted Google for directions to the crossing itself, and found that… there was no trail? I milled around the picnic area for a bit with nearly no luck. I knew I was looking for a spot where Cathedral Rock would be visible over the creek, but I could not for the life of me find it! The best I could find was a “mostly-right” spot, but there were quite a few trees in the way.

I got a little grumpy, especially seeing that there was a trail right on the other side of the river but apparently no way to get to it (I later found out that there used to be a bridge here, but it’s gone now). So, I yanked off my boots and socks to wade through the river. It was a couple feet deep and moving quite quickly at the narrowest spot, and I almost ended up in the water, but I made it across the way. With the light fading fast, I marched my way up that trail in search of a better view of Cathedral Rock, and eventually did find it.

Six people galloped past on horseback at one point - I stood off to the side of the meadow and they all galloped up one by one, whooping and hollering. Looked like a ton of fun! Kind of jealous.

Well, it’s not quite the Red Rock Crossing image I wanted, but it certainly was an incredible view of Cathedral Rock at its finest. So now I know – the Baldwin Trail is the one to take for this view, and theoretically you don’t have to pay for it at all if you go park on the other side of the river (and that saves you from having to wade across!).

As the sun was finally setting for real – I felt like I had seen two sunsets today, considering how dark Oak Creek Canyon had gotten earlier in the day – I hoofed it back to the river and waded back across, once again managing to not lose my footing. I have to say that that river is quite invigorating in the fall! Felt kind of nice on my poor abused feet, but I may have frozen them a bit.

Back at the house, I made myself dinner (salmon again) and considered the day. I was really glad I had gotten to scratch that nostalgic itch for Oak Creek and Red Rock Crossing, and it was fun to get to see the “other side” of Sedona compared to the more exposed desert hike I had done yesterday. Tomorrow will be my last day in Sedona, so I’ve got to decide what to do – I’m thinking maybe just a little hike followed by a fun sunset Jeep tour, which is the other classic touristy thing to do here. Jane might be mighty, but she really can’t hold a candle to a Jeep when it comes to actual offroading and bouldering!

Speaking of Jane, that ticking is really bugging me. So I think tomorrow morning I’ll put some time into investigating that. Hopefully I won’t find anything too catastrophic – but I’ve got plans to go to a friend’s house in Phoenix after I leave Sedona, and he happens to own a lot of classic cars, so I’m not worried either way!

Until then… Kelly signing out.

The Surprising Serpent

 10-22

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Well, I’ve gone and done it again. I’ve gone and done another day of heavy hiking, despite my attempts to not do exactly that.

I think that yesterday’s experience at Devil’s Bridge just itched at me a bit, and I really wanted to get out and see some of Sedona’s best spots – the ones without quite so many people. And maybe I was feeling energized after resting up yesterday and having a nice home-cooked meal. Or maybe it’s just compulsory and I’m real bad at resisting.

Whatever the reason, I got up this morning, made myself some eggs on toast with bacon (the eggs stuck horribly – cooking eggs in a stainless steel pan is a sure recipe for misery – but they were at least tasty), and then legged it out the door pretty quick. I first headed east of Sedona to the Munds Wagon trailhead, which is nigh inaccessible on the weekends due to its proximity to downtown. But hey, now it’s a weekday, so anything goes!

Boy, good thing I cleaned Jane up yesterday night, eh? Look at that beauty!

At the trailhead, I checked out the map and checked versus AllTrails reports, then decided to do the full loop available there. Now I’m going to say it, but whoever named these trails was clearly just not feeling very charitable when they did it, so they’re a bit ignobly named. Yes, today I hiked the tri-trail loop composed of: Munds Wagon, Hangover, and Cowpie trails.

Don’t let the names fool you, though: this loop is one of the best Sedona has to offer on this side of town. It’s got a bit of everything – very deserty cacti-laden sections, bare rock hiking, juniper forests, valleys, buttes, mesas, and vistas galore. Not to mention, being less well-traveled it’s a nice breath of fresh air from the usual crowded Sedona trails, and you’re quite likely to see wildlife.

I hiked out along the loop, first starting with a nice soft path through a grassy meadow and a copse of trees – cottonwoods, I think. I reached the turnoff for the Hangover trail – best to go clockwise around the loop and get the steep stuff out of the way in the beginning, apparently – and that quickly changed. The trail turned rocky and climbed precipitously (well, not that precipitously on the scale of trails I’ve done this trip, but still), and rusty red buttes loomed imposingly.

It was in the 70’s out, but the sun is strong here, and so I was a sweaty mess in short order. But the steep uphill portion was pretty short, so it wasn’t that long before I crested a shoulder about halfway up the mesa, and found myself routed along its side. Another turn round the bend, and I was rewarded with sweeping panoramic views of the valley to the northwest, dramatic spires and stoic mesas illuminated in the midday sun, their far sides cast into deep shadow. I had arrived at the perfect time.

The trail followed that bench around for quite a ways, albeit in a little bit of a nontraditional fashion. When you’re hiking on bare rock, there’s really no way to follow someone else’s tracks, so this trail relied on some spray painted white pickets to help show hikers the way. A bit less intrusive and possibly more permanent than rock cairns, but quite hard to follow sometimes, especially where they had been weathered to a suspicious white stain on the rock! Still, it was kind of a fun little scavenger hunt, and in some ways an interesting exercise in perspective and scale. Gaze out across sweeping vistas which span miles and miles, ranging all the way to the horizon… then look down at your feet, seeking a small painted symbol somewhere on the red rocks around you, the only thing keeping you from being terribly lost in this vast space. Neat.

Well, not like I could really be lost here when I can see town, but you know what I mean.

The last time I was here, Jane and I were just driving through quickly. We stopped at the parking lot at that bridge down there for a quick picture, then sailed on to other destinations.

Eventually I ended up on the shady side of the mesa, where the terrain transitioned from sunny bare rock to grassy and well-treed with a bit of real soil. The kinder side of the mesa, if you will.

Some Very Geometric juniper berries! Or something like that??

It wasn’t just plants that preferred this side - birds were also abundant here, darting through bushes and calling out warnings to each other as I passed. I mostly ignored them, instead being fairly glued to the rocks. Without the sun shining so forcefully upon the outcrop, I was finally able to see the bedding textures entombed within: a magnificent array of cross-bedded sandstones stacked many dozens of feet high, their features highlighted in creams and reds and dusky roses and charcoal blacks. The impressive cross-beds are a key feature of the Coconino Sandstone that is so prominent in the upper portions of Sedona’s rocks – but more interestingly, they are the fossilized remnants of a giant sand dune field deposited in a Sahara-esque environment over two hundred million years ago!  Very cool stuff.

I traipsed along, ogling abundantly – the rocks, the trees, the vistas, the works – until I stepped past a rock next to the trail and suddenly found myself in a life-or-death situation! Well, actually what happened is that I happened to step into this spot in the trail right as a large black-tipped rattlesnake, which had been concealed behind the rock, slithered into the same space. And then we scared the hell out of each other. The snake coiled up and thrashed around and rattled quite vigorously, and for my part I found that I had teleported instinctually some feet away upon hearing the thing’s initial surprised rustle. Now a safe distance away, we both paused to reassess, the snake flickering its tongue at me rudely and me swearing at it equally rudely.

Ssssssssurprise, sucker!

After I got over my initial surprise, I do have to admit that it was a really pretty snake! Great fish-scale-shaped scales, unkeeled, with a cool pattern. Kind of the same texture I’d expect if I ever saw a dragon. But, you know, on a tube-shaped animal.

I carried on, suddenly very interested in the terrain beneath my feet, probably missing some of the vistas but definitely not stepping on any rattlesnakes, no siree. I did also, as a result, see this really cool caterpillar in the trail:

Neato

Eventually I reached a junction in the mesa, where I climbed up to a saddle and resumed following the stenciled white pickets. Up here, I found a man lying right in the middle of the rock, apparently soaking up as much sun as possible. I thought he might have had a stroke, but I heard him talking to another hiker and he seemed quite comfortable in his relationship to the ground, so I decided he was probably just a lizard person or something.

The top of the mesa, with a strange man for scale to the left

I descended from the saddle and put him behind me, instead looking towards a gentle rocky slope filled mostly with different varieties of cacti. I was back on the sunny side, and things are clearly much drier over here.

Some cool mineral staining

 At one point I was paused looking for the next white picket – this one large rock shelf was full of white lichen, which significantly increased the difficulty of doing so – and I ran into a couple who was working on the same task. They informed me that the blotches of white lichen looked like cow pies, hence the reason that this portion of the hike is named the Cow Pies Trail. Hmm. Anyways, we joined forces, found the picket, and thus I found myself with a couple new hiking friends for the remaining part of the trail. We chatted about hikes we had done around the country, experiences in Sedona, best food across the United States… you know, life things. And it’s funny, I can’t remember their names, but I can remember that they met on Google+ (who ever used Google+?????), and one time they had to spray a grizzly with bear spray at very close range. But these are the most important things to know about people, anyways.

I ended up getting back to the trailhead sooner than expected, leaving me with a couple more hours of daylight to burn. I headed back across town, just puttering around aimlessly looking for something to do, and Bell Rock rose into view. Thus it was decided: I would go to Bell Rock for sunset.

Miraculously, the parking lot wasn’t full, so I had time to snap a few extra-photogenic shots with Jane:

I struck off along the criss-crossing trails of the Bell Rock region, seeking some area not completely full of tourists. Bell Rock is one of those places that feeds you extraordinary sights with very little effort involved (just a very short hike, or an option of no hike at all), so it’s usually quite inundated. Today’s visitor numbers were pretty light, but it was still louder than I preferred so I swung around the backside of the butte and looped through the less-populated trails.

I took the Rector Connector trail (which for some reason is an especially silly-sounding name to me) to the Big Park Loop, then teed into the Courthouse Butte Loop to catch the spectacular late afternoon light on the nearby hills. It did not disappoint!

One of the more unique signs I've ever seen... a giant metal pole, with the message carved fully out of it??? Why

Look! A tourist!

I would count this one as another kind of hidden gem – not that Bell Rock is hidden at all, but not many people take this trail out past Bell Rock and Courthouse Butte for some reason. It’s a nice easy walk, although by this point my knees, hips, and feet were absolutely screaming (a holdover from the Flat Iron trail and my continued persistence in abusing them, I think). I had a lovely amble through the desert as the sun descended towards the horizon. No extreme sunset tonight as there weren’t any clouds to reflect the light, but still a beautiful evening.

I headed back into town, and my tranquil mood quickly wore off, being replaced by what I call “the Big Sad”. You know, that feeling when you are completely just out of juice. All muscle power used up. No more energy to be had. Thirsty. Starving. Dusty. Sweaty and gross. A sad, wispy husk of a person. Hoo boy, maybe I should have taken it easy another day. Or at least I should have eaten lunch.

I stopped by uptown and put my name on the list for Elote, the best restaurant in Sedona, known for its creative southwestern dishes. They told me that it could be a couple of hours before I was sat. The Big Sad got Bigger and Sadder. I went to some nearby shops to look at art and try to distract myself, and got some hot chocolate to tide me over.

The hot chocolate was terrible, somehow.

I went back to Elote, and apparently must have looked so devastatingly sad that they sat me at the bar immediately.

I then enjoyed a feast of goat cheese balls, bison short rib mole, and a Mexican chocolate pie.

The Big Sad went away and I was sufficiently revitalized to make it back to home base with Jane, where I immediately collapsed into bed. Normally this kind of day wouldn’t even come close to wearing me out, but I guess I’m still recuperating from that dumb Flat Iron hike. Argh. Well, tomorrow I’ll probably keep pushing it, but maybe I’ll find a way to push it… less…? We’ll see.

Until then, Kelly signing out.