Padegimas - Five-star trails Flagstaff and Sedona: your guide to the areas most beautiful hikes

Five-Star Trails: Flagstaff & Sedona

Your Guide to the Areas Most Beautiful Hikes

Copyright 2011 by Tony Padegimas

All rights reserved

Published by Menasha Ridge Press

Distributed by Publishers Group West

Printed in the United States of America

First edition, first printing

Cover design by Scott McGrew

Frontispiece: Aspens at AbineauBear Jaw Loop

Text design by Annie Long

Cover photograph of Brins MesaSoldier Pass Loop and back cover photograph of Bell Trail by Tony Padegimas

Author photograph by Penny Padegimas

Photograph of by Roxann Adamsen

All other interior photographs by Tony Padegimas

Cartography and elevation profiles by Tony Padegimas and Scott McGrew

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Padegimas, Tony.

Five-star trails Flagstaff and Sedona : your guide to the areas most beautiful trails/Tony Padegimas.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-89732-927-9

ISBN-10: 0-89732-927-9

1. HikingArizonaFlagstaff RegionGuidebooks. 2. HikingArizonaSedona RegionGuidebooks. 3. TrailsArizonaFlagstaff RegionGuidebooks. 4. TrailsArizonaSedona RegionGuidebooks. 5. Flagstaff Region (Ariz.)Guidebooks. 6. Sedona Region (Ariz.)Guidebooks. I. Title.

GV199.42.A72F537 2012

917.9133--dc23

2011019146

Menasha Ridge Press

P.O. Box 43673

Birmingham, AL 35243

menasharidgepress.com

DISCLAIMER

This book is meant only as a guide to select trails in Flagstaff and Sedona, Arizona. This book does not guarantee hiker safety in any wayyou hike at your own risk. Neither Menasha Ridge Press nor Tony Padegimas is liable for property loss or damage, personal injury, or death that result in any way from accessing or hiking the trails described in the following pages. Please be especially cautious when walking in potentially hazardous terrains with, for example, steep inclines or drop-offs. Do not attempt to explore terrain that may be beyond your abilities. Please read carefully the introduction to this book as well as further safety information from other sources. Familiarize yourself with current weather reports and maps of the area you plan to visit (in addition to the maps provided in this guidebook). Be cognizant of park regulations and always follow them. Do not take chances.

Dedication

For my family, who let me do this again, even though they certainly knew better, and especially my son, Ben, who never quit on a trail.

Acknowledgments

I would like to gratefully thank all the various companions on the various hikes, even those whose names I did not know:

The fine folks working for the Coconino and Kaibab national forests, who were always as helpful as regulations allowed, especially the two watchtower attendants I met.

The waitstaff at the Snowbowl Ski Lift Lodge for their unexpected generosity.

The gang at HikeAZ.com, the online source community for hiking information in this state.

Adam Schneider, the creator of GPS Visualizer ( gpsvisualizer.com ), a great, free resource for turning the piles of data in your GPS into a usable map.

And, most of all, the people in and around Sedona and Flagstaff who have generously allowed the rest of us to wander around what would otherwise be their backyards.

Preface

I am not some wilderness expert who drops into the remote badlands from a helicopter to fight his way out to civilization with only a knife, three sticks of gum, and a camera crew. I have had 30 different jobs over my life, but none of them was forester or guide or any other outdoor profession (unless you count camp counselorand I do not). I am a writer, mostly of magazine articles, who likes to hike.

For whatever reason, I have always been able to march off into the boonies with no fear of getting lost. Consequently, I get losta lot. This book provides you with the opportunity to learn from my mistakes.

Much of what is cool to do in hiking boots in Arizona can be found within an hours drive of either Flagstaff or Sedona. Cool has two meanings here: not just fun, but also not always in the deep desert.

In fact, Flagstaff sits on the pine-covered slopes of the San Francisco Peaks, the tallest mountains in the state. Sedona, even more famously, occupies the foot of red-rocks country, home to spiritual vortexes or, more tangibly, swimming holes, deep canyons, and stunning geology.

A hundred years ago, these lands were settled, to a point, by a loose collection of cowboys and lumberjacks. Seven hundred years ago, the Sinaguan people saw their civilization rise and fall across this region. A million years ago, the volcanoes that would become the San Francisco Peaks and Sunset Crater were violently landscaping the tops of the plateaus. More than 200 million years ago, this area was the shore of a shallow sea. All of this history and more can be seen from the trails described within.

The scenery is world-famous for a reason, and postcards are just not the same. Live in Phoenix long enough, and you will stop noticing the surrounding mountains. Yet every time you look up in either Flagstaff or Sedona, the light or the clouds are doing something startling across the surrounding slopes. You will never stop being amazed by what you see when you look up. At least, I havent stopped.

CAIRNS AT BELL ROCK

Hundreds of trails wander across this region, and almost all of them are enjoyable to some extent. Narrowing that down to 36 for this guidebook took some hard thinking. I could have gone to at least 50 before the quality started to fade.

The publisher designed this book to be as helpful to as many hikers as possible. I then chose hikes for this guide with an eye to variety and quality, both in terrain type and difficulty. What all of the routes have in common is that they are day hikes. They are more than walks: Even the easiest will take at least an hour. They are less than expeditions: Even the most strenuous can be done in a day (assuming you get an early start). Hardened adventurers might find the hike descriptions remedial, though they may appreciate the maps and the GPS coordinates. Novice hikers might be overwhelmed by the more aggressive hikes, so Ive identified easy turnaround points wherever reasonable.

These hikes will take you all over the place. They climb frigid mountain peaks and drop down to desert-canyon swimming holes. They traverse stark desert and alpine tundra, and every strata of mixed conifers in between. They visit the remnants of cowboys and Native Americans alike. They wander around pillars of sculpted sandstone and piles of blasted lava. They stretch along open prairies and tunnel through deep forests. They lead to archways and sinkholes, springs and caves, spires and vortices, and thousand-foot cliffs where the history of a geologic era is displayed in brightly colored sandstone.

In some places you share these trails with deer, javelina (sometimes called peccary [but not in Arizona]), or even black bears and rattlesnakes. If you do every hike in this book, I guarantee that youll encounter at least one rattlesnake. I did. Mostly, though, you will share the trails with other people. Sedona and Flagstaff see nearly 4 million visitors a year, many of whom merge with the large and active local hiking community on the trails. There was only one hike where I did not encounter at least one other person. That was where I met the rattlesnake.