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.