Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Sedona Travelog #19
Back home! Tue, 31 May 2022, 8pm

Yesterday we called an audible on our travel plans for today. I'd originally booked us on a 9pm flight home from Phoenix. It'd land close to 11pm, and we'd be home-home sometime between 11:30 and midnight. Ugh. Not a great way to get ready for working the rest of the week!

The audible call was to switch to a 4:15pm departure out of PHX. The flight would land just after 6pm, and we'd be home-home by 7. In exchange that meant we'd have to wrap up our time in Sedona around 12, to drive to Phoenix with a stop for lunch and arrive around 2:30, to make that 4:15 flight without rushing.

Well, being done in Sedona around noon is part of why we got up at 6am again today and started our Cathedral Rock hike just after 7. (The other reasons were avoiding the crowds and midday heat.) Plus, starting the hike just after 7 meant we finished the hike— the amazing hike— at 10:15... which meant we could return to the hotel to clean up & pack our bags. Going back to the hotel after the hike felt so... civilized!

At the hotel we showered, dressed in casual clothes instead of hiking duds, and packed our bags in our spacious hotel suite instead of in the trunk of the car in a trailhead parking lot. By the time we rolled from Oak Creek Village we were nicely relaxed. ...Okay, we were also kind of tired and sore from the hike, but it was a good balance.

We stopped for lunch in the next town after Oak Creek. (We were already bored/frustrated with Oak Creek eats.) It was about 30 minutes away. We weren't too worried about travel time, having allocated plenty of it. That allocation was tested right after lunch when highway construction left us crawling at 5mph for 45 minutes. I lead-footed it a bit after that so that we arrived at the airport without a need to rush through security, etc.

Our flights were mostly on time. Baggage claim took a while though. Southwest Airlines giveth with one hand and taketh with the other. "Hey, your flight's landed early! But oops, the gate's not available yet, so we'll sit here on the tarmac for 15 minutes. And, oh, there's only one baggage crew serving 5 flights that just landed. So it'll be an extra 20 minute wait if you foolishly checked a bag. Come fly with us again soon!"

Well, the timings all worked out well enough. We were home-home just after 7pm. Hawk made dinner for herself from food in the 'fridge. I picked up a carryout pizza for myself. At 8:00 now the plates are cleared and I've already unpacked my bag. Hawk will start on hers in a few minutes, and then maybe we'll watch some TV tonight before going to bed at a reasonable hour. Travel success!

Sedona Travelog #17
Cathedral Rock - Tue, 31 May 2022, 9am

At the end of my previous blog about hiking Cathedral Rock in Sedona, AZ I warned that the trail would get tougher. There are three stretches of the trail where you've got to scramble with hands and feet up narrow chutes over bare rock. Here's one of them:



After a few of these it was smoother sailing to the top. Not easy sailing, as it was still up, and there was still climbing over rock ledges; just easier than climbing the chutes.



The trail tops out at a saddle point between two of the large spires of Cathedral Rock. The saddle is 10-15' across and runs about 200' between the peaks. The mountain drops steeply down on either side.



As we caught our breath up here we marveled at how fast we'd completed the climb. By the numbers it's similar to our epic ascent of the Koko Head Tramline Trail in Hawaii: about 800' of ascent in under 1 mile. But unlike that hike we're not feeling wrecked. The cross-tie walking is what really did us in on that trek.

Anyway, back to this trek.



On the north peak there's a small ledge you can walk out onto. People were taking turns posing out there for photographs. Hawk didn't want to go (it was too close to the edge for her) so I handed her my camera.

Most people who make it up here to the saddle stay for a while, take pictures, and head back down. What they're missing is that there's a side trail that climbs even higher. Stay tuned for more!

UPDATE: To the top and back down!

Sedona Travelog #15
Oak Creek Village - Mon, 30 May 2022, 7pm

Climbing Bell Rock today was fun. The hordes of hikers down near the trailhead thinned out quickly as the trail got progressively harder. While there were dozens down near the parking lot, I saw maybe 6 or 7 total in the mountain's upper reaches.



The main reason for this isn't that the mountain is high. It's actually far from the highest mountain in the area. It's that the trail is tough. The trail all but disappears after the first third of the trek, and you're left following cairns on the bare rock. In the top third there aren't even cairns anymore.



The hike becomes like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" game. You read the terrain and figure out the best way over it. In some places parts of the trail are obvious, like above, where previous hikers have stacked rocks in a small gulch.



Other times it really is a case of, "Hmm, there are at least 3 ways I could get up there...."



And what leaves most people behind isn't the guesswork, it's that all the options are hard. There were several places I had to stretch my arms and legs over the bare rock to scramble for purchase. Things that I, as an adult man with somewhat long limbs, could manage were not manageable for others. Hawk stayed below while I continued up.



I've mentioned before the irony of climbing a mountain. At the top, you don't see the mountain. You see everything else. Here's a view of Courthouse Rock and the Munds Mountain Wilderness off to the east.

Sedona Travelog #13
Oak Creek Village, AZ - Mon, 30 May 2022, 3pm

After enjoying solitude atop Mescal Mountain for a while this morning— a welcome respite from the clattering cocktail party in the Birthing Cave— it was time to head home. As impressed as we were with our ability to hike this morning after a monster hike yesterday, it wasn't without limits. 3-4 miles roundtrip and about 500' of gain seemed to be close to our limits. Fortunately the hike back to the trailhead was pretty much all downhill with a smooth trail underfoot.



We got back to the trailhead a bit after 11. What had been no more than a half dozen cars when we arrived around 7:30 were now several dozen cars, up and down both sides of the road. It definitely paid to be early birds!

Once again we were hungry after hiking. On the drive back through town we were surprised how... not crowded... Sedona was. It's a Monday but it's a holiday Monday. Not ones to look a gift horse in the mouth, we took advantage of the town's not-crowdedness by eating at a popular taqueria we noped out of yesterday because the line was out the door. Today it was only half full when we arrived... though it was almost full-full by the time we left. And its popularity is well deserved. The food was delicious.

We've been back at the hotel now for almost 2 hours. Like yesterday we're too tired to use the pool or hot tub. We're just relaxing in our spacious room and on the balcony.

Unlike yesterday, though, this is not us calling it quits for the day. The advantage of us "knowing when to say when" this morning is that we're recharging our energy now to go back out later today. Bell Rock is near the hotel; so near we can see it from our balcony (see previous link). We aim to go back there later this afternoon to enjoy the golden hour while climbing it.

Stay tuned!

Sedona Travelog #11
Mescal Mountain, Sedona, AZ - Mon, 30 May 2022, 9:15am

Once again today we got an early start. Alarm was set for 6am, we left the hotel at 7, and we were at the trailhead on the far side of Sedona at 8. Morning traffic wasn't that bad (it's a miles-long traffic jam midday) so we even had time for a stop at a local bakery for cinnamon rolls and danish to supplement our otherwise sensible breakfast of meat, cheese, and fruit.

Today we're not sure how much hiking we're up for. Yesterday's epic 9 mile, 1600'+ ascent hike really wore us out. I'm only walking straight this morning because I gobbled Ibuprofen. But at least a dose of pills works. It's not like when we hiked the Koko Head Tramline in Hawaii. After that I was wrecked for several days. Today I'm out hiking again, not hanging around the resort, wincing and limping. But we've selected an easier trail to start with, the Birthing Cave.

The Birthing Cave is another Instagram famous hike in Sedona. It's good for today because it's easy— a roundtrip of about 2 miles with an ascent of only a few hundred feet. Plus, as our experience with the Subway Cave yesterday showed us, the Instagram hiking noobs are not out first thing in the morning.



The Birthing Cave is on a flank of Mescal Mountain. We started by hiking the Long Canyon trail to an unmarked trail junction 0.6 miles. The funny thing was that though the junction was unmarked, the side trail to the cave was obviously way more heavily used than the continuation of the main trail. That's Instagram-famous for you.

The spur trail took us in toward Mescal Mountain. Then another spur led up to the cave halfway up the side of the mountain.



The last few hundred feet to Birthing Cave was a bit of a scramble. It was no trouble for us, with good hiking boots and skill navigating rough terrain, but all the Instagram-following hiking noobs cautioned us about how slippery it was.

And yes, there were a bunch of noobs there. The trail was peaceful but once we got within 100' of the cave we could hear the clatter. It sounded like a cocktail party up in there.



The idea of the Birthing Cave is that it looks like a womb from the inside, I've read. My memory doesn't go back as far as the one time my head was inside a womb looking out so I have to use my imagination here, but yeah, I can see that.



We found perches on the steeply slanted rock walls inside the cave— yay, hiking boots again— and waited for the noisier folks to leave. Thankfully they did. We never had the cave alone, even being out here relatively early in the morning, but at least we were able to enjoy it without people sporting fashion-accessory matched dogs nattering on about vortexes and crystals.

Soon it was time even for us to leave. Both of us were feeling pretty good despite yesterday's taxing hike. We decided to extend this one and see how far the spur trail goes.

Stay tuned to see what we found next!

Sedona Travelog #10
Sedona, AZ - Sun, 29 May 2022, 1pm

I've kind of been sneering at Subway Cave for being Instagram famous. Often such places are oversold; they're not as amazing in person as in carefully posed shots. And almost always they're over-touristed. Subway Cave is definitely over-touristed but I'm not sure it's oversold. In addition to the caves being fun to explore there are also ancient native cliff dwellings here.



In the photo above you can see remnants of two cliff dwelling rooms built into caves in the same stratum of rock. A caution about jumping to conclusions, though.... The walls you see may not be authentic. They may have instead been reconstructed by well-meaning scientists decades ago based on what they think the ancient Puebloan people would've done 800 years ago. That said, there is ample evidence elsewhere in this region that the ancients constructed such buildings. Some were built with many rooms and used as dwellings. Those with few rooms were often storage areas, possibly for when hunters or nomads moved around.



The two small caves with walls build in front of them are not the only caves here. RIght next to them are at least two larger caves, including the one in the photo above. Were these used as rooms, but the rock walls all fallen/removed in the intervening centuries? It's hard to say. When there's not physical evidence— and sadly, physical evidence has often been removed over the span of hundreds of years— we can only guess.

BTW, what did it entail crossing from the picturesque Subway Cave over to here? I had to "go around the horn":



In the photo above you can see 3 people going around the horn. Two of them are clinging to the wall because, yeah, it's a little scary there. The rock floor tilts away to a sheer fall of 50'.

Here's what this area looks like with a bit more context around it:



At the bottoms of the photo above you can see a pair of hikers deciding whether to ascend through the chute I climbed. If they make it up, they'll be at the rock stratum those other three hikers are clinging to.

How about the view to the side?



This is the view out the side canyon the Subway Caves are nestled in. I don't know if the ancient Puebloans lived here, but if they did this sure seems like a penthouse suite.

Sedona Travelog #9
Sedona, AZ - Sun, 29 May 2022, 12:30pm

We found the Subway Cave!

It turned out it wasn't hard to find.... We just had to wait until around midday when the trail was really crowded with noob hikers who saw it on Instagram (noobs don't know to get an early start like we did) then look for where the scads of people were going. At an unsigned trail junction a bit farther out from our butterfly spotting side trip there were, like, twenty people standing around in a gaggle talking about the Subway Cave.



The side trail of about half a mile, maybe three-quarters, led back to a rock formation in a side canyon. I knew from seeing an Instagram picture that the Subway Cave is not really a cave, per se, but a layer in the sandstone rock that's eroded out from the layers above and below it, forming a C shape is cross-section. And I could see from where everyone was going... or trying to go... that it would take a scramble to get up there.



There were actually two routes up to the ledge level. The safer one was a scramble up dirt and rocks with some trees to hang onto. The more fun one was this scramble up bare rock through a slot. People who've never rock-scrambled before and/or had footwear without good grip (Instagram hiking noobs were just as likely to be here in walking shoes as anything else) were slipping, sliding, and giving up. So once a bunch of them cleared out I scrambled up.



Like I said, the Subway Cave is not a cave, per se. The part with a solid roof over it doesn't go that deep into the rock. But it's called subway because it does look a bit like the curvature of a subway tunnel on the side. Well, some subway tunnels have curved sides.



With the Subway Cave being so popular it was difficult to get pictures without other people in them. I succeeded in getting a few, but I also figured if I've got to have other people in my pictures, I'll encourage them to do nice things. 😂

Stay tuned... more to come!

Update: Keep reading in Cliff Dwellings & Subway Cave

Sedona Travelog #7
Sedona, AZ - Sun, 29 May 2022, 10:30am

This morning we got up early to beat the heat and (hopefully) the crowds at popular trailheads in Sedona. By early I mean we set our alarms for 6am. The sun had already been out for at least 45 minutes. We roused, ate breakfast, packed our hiking bags, and were out the door by 7am. It's a good thing we took it easy last night!

Out at the Boynton Canyon trailhead things were already busy. Apparently lots of people visiting Sedona have the same idea to get up early and beat the heat and the crowds. We parked in the last open space near the trailhead, laced up our boots, applied sunscreen, and shrugged on our packs. We were afoot by 8am.



The trail into Boynton Canyon skirts the edge of a resort development at the bottom of the canyon. The constant signs (and smells, unfortunately) of habitation can largely be ignored by focusing on the mountains to either side.



The trail winds around past the resort, hugging the base of the mountains, for over a mile before dropping down into the bottom of the canyon. From there the trek is mostly under heavy tree cover. The canyon walls close in high above but it's hard to see them because of the leafy canopy.

Close to 3 miles in the trail starts to rise steeply. It's the back end of Boynton Canyon.



There's nowhere to go here but up.... And the Forest Service asks people not to go up. Unlike in Fay Canyon where "TRAIL ENDS" meant the fun begins, the area beyond the sign is sensitive habitat they're trying to restore.



That's just as well because, like I said, there's nowhere left to go but up. Almost straight up.



Bear Mountain (above) forms the southern edge of Boynton Canyon here. On the other side of those mountains is nestled... Fay Canyon! Yes, there's a trail up to the top. Yes, it's really intense. No, it doesn't come down this side.



We sat for a while on a sunny rock eating lunch and enjoying the views. While the front part of the trail was crowded, here at 3 miles in the crowds had thinned out substantially. While literal bus loads of people started the trail, during our lunch break here we saw a total of maybe 12.

Stay tuned... we take an amazing detour on the way out!

Update: keep reading in Seeking The Subway Cave

Sedona Travelog #5
Sedona, AZ - Sat, 28 May 2022, 2pm

I split up my blog about hiking Fay Canyon into two parts. That's partly because there are so many pictures I want to share and partly because the hike itself had two parts. In part 1, we hiked the trail to its end through a beautiful canyon. Then the trail ended. Technically.



The trail ended just shy of a dry creek crossing. A wooden "END OF TRAIL" sign was nailed to a tree. Beyond the creek was a fascinating red rock cliff. Its lower reaches were clearly climbable. ...In fact, not even climbable but scramble-able. You see, I define "climbing" as using ropes, clamps, and other technical gear to scale or descend a surface. When all you're using is hands and feet, that's scrambling. If you're not using your hands, it's walking. 😂

With that, we walked across the dry creek bed and started scrambling— but still mostly walking— up the cliff.



Climbing Walking up these slanted surfaces can seem scary to the uninitiated. It's actually easier than it looks. Although the surface is called slickrock, it's actually pretty grippy. That means if you have good tread on your boots, or even sturdy sneakers, your feet will stick to the rocks even on steep inclines. ...Unless there's sand or loose rubble on the rock; then watch out!



As we climbed up around the redrock bluff we saw a whole new dimension to Fay Canyon. This is the upper canyon beyond us.



And, of course, the view back out over where we've come from is picturesque, too.

Sedona Travelog #2
Phoenix, AZ - Sat, 28 May 2022, 7:30am

When I stop over in a city en route from Point A to Point B I like to call it "8 hours and a shower in ___." That's not accurate for last night's stop in Phoenix. One, we'll been here more like 10 hours. Two, I'm not taking a shower. I plan to get dirty & sweaty during the day. I'll take one this evening to clean up & cool down. Anyway, our 8-10 hours and not-shower in Phoenix have been... as dull as that phrase is meant to imply.

Our flight to PHX last night was uneventful. We left pretty much on time and got in pretty much on time. Edited to add: Oh, and it was 100° F (38° C) when we landed just after 8pm. The daytime high had been 105. This is only late spring weather in Phoenix. In the summer daytime highs will top 110° frequently.

Could we have driven all the way to Sedona last night, as I remarked in my previous blog? Yes, though I'm glad we didn't. Everything after the plane landed seem to take forever. Our hotel is just a mile from the airport, yet we didn't get to our room until almost 9:45pm. Driving to Sedona would have taken until almost midnight. And I was totally ready for sleep before 11. I'm glad I wasn't driving 2 more hours.

This morning we'll drag our stuff back down to the car, get some breakfast at a nearby place like Del Taco— because the free breakfast at the hotel is all sugar-and-carbs crap— and hit the road for Sedona.