Oct 11, 2022
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| With: | Iris Ma |
| Tom Grundy | |
| Eric Smith |
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.
Loy Canyon TH is found near the northern end of Loy
Butte Road, near the Honanki Heritage Site and a private ranch inholding. We
used an Adam Walker GPX track from PB to find our way with little issue. The
route follows the 
Loy Butte Trail north for about a mile, passing
the private ranch on its eastern edge. We turned off the main trail at
a large tree, turning west onto a social trail that
starts climbing onto Loy Butte's eastern aspect. There are
some 
stacked rocks to help one up the first class 3 section, and
a neat sandstone groove that looks more difficult than it is. There
are some 
Native American ruins found on several levels of
cliffs on this side. It's surprising that these are in decent shape
despite the complete lack of protections they are afforded. The largest was
composed of several rooms with stacked 
rock walls, some
windows, no ceilings. Some rooms looked to be dwellings
while others appear to be for storage.
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.
Aerie Trailhead, near the entrance to The Aerie,
a 
gated community inholding in the Coconino National Forest. The route
follows 
the Cockscomb Trail for about a mile until almost due north of
the summit. An unsigned 
use trail then heads south 
towards
the feature, with a nice bit of 
class 3 scrambling to get through
the cliff band that surrounds the summit area. Some
stacked rocks help one up the last bit. After this, it's an
easy walk across 
the summit ridge to 
the summit. It
had only been a short time since we had a cloudless sky, but already they were
making a return in earnest. 
Back via the same route, we spent
about an hour and three quarters at a leisurely pace.
Bear Mountain/Doe Mountain TH is on the NW side of the summit. A
maintained trail leads to the summit plateau. Eric had done this one a
few days ago, so he sat it out while I went up and back in about 45min. The
trail actually goes to 
an overlook north of the summit, so one needs
to find one of several social trails that can take you the remaining way.
The summit is somewhat lush with trees and brush and provides little
in the way of views.
a maintained trail
to the summit, starting from 
an unmarked TH on the local high school
property. One gets the feeling that they really don't want the public using it,
but there's no signage to forbid parking. It took us half an hour to make our
way to the broad summit area where a few rocks serve as 
the highpoint.
There is a nice view of Capitol Butte to 
the north, across town.
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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