Tue, Oct 11, 2022
|
With: | Eric Smith |
Tom Grundy | |
Iris Ma |
TomB had to drive home in the morning, and TomG had to drive Iris to the Flagstaff airport for an afternoon flight. That left four of us for an early morning outing, then just Eric and I for the remainder of the day. All of the day's summits are found in Purcell's Rambles & Scrambles.
From the cliff ruins, the use trail goes south around the base of
a mid-level cliff band,
traversing a long distance around a
south-facing drainage (where
more ruins are found, including some
petroglyphs) before climbing up for the final bit when east of the
summit. There is some
class 3 slab climbing on this last part, fun
without being too difficult. With our
cliff dwelling visits included,
we were almost two hours in reaching
the summit. The register we found
was a bunch of
loose pages dating back only a year - a fairly popular
summit. The
views today were outstanding, blue skies and much clearer
than it had been the previous few days. We
returned via much the same
route, spending about 4hrs on the outing and
returning by 11a. Tom and
Iris headed off to Flagstaff while Eric and I headed to some easier summits to
fill out the day.
It was already 4:30p when we started out, giving us about an hour before sunset.
Our first stop was the airport overlook, a PB-only point that has nice
views
overlooking Sedona to the north, but not really a summit. We then
went looking for a way to visit the highpoint of Table Top Mtn, no easy feat.
Our first attempt followed Shrine Rd around
the north side of the
airport, but we eventually ended up at a tall, gated and locked fence that was
going to be too much trouble to surmount. We returned back near to the start and
picked up
the Sedona View Trail that goes around the north side of
the airport and down to the Airport Mesa TH and Votex, and a network of trails.
We took the
short detour to visit the vortex with dozens of
our closest friends. One woman was sitting off to the side in a
cross-legged pose while another
filmed her from behind, no doubt to
end up on an Instagram page. It was all quite laughable, but probably no sillier
than turning another PB-only point to green on the app, something we did while
sitting on the summit rock.
Safely back down from the vortex, we continued northeast on the trail network
to the edge of a residential development, then a use trail uphill to
Cococino Point where we
arrived just before sunset. We sat on
some rocks looking to the south and shared a few bowls to help us enter the
area-appropriate consciousness that the vortex was unable to provide us. We then
returned back to the
maintained trails, starting back up the Sedona
View Trail. Just past its junction with the Airport Loop Trail, we went cross
country up the slopes to the edge of the airport and its highpoint. We stopped
at
the gate just outside the tarmac. The formidible fence was scalable,
but there was no
discernably higher point on the other side to make it worth risking a federal
offence. We then went around the perimeter of the airport fencing to return to
the Sedona View Trail, and back to the parking lot just before needing
headlamps. There was no one collecting money when we got back, suggesting one
could save the $3 if you wanted to do this as a twilight adventure.
For more information see these SummitPost pages: The Cockscomb - Doe Mountain
This page last updated: Wed Jan 11 13:53:02 2023
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