Coleman-Gaddes Loop Hike

Eleven hikers from the Skyliners group hiked on the Coleman and Gaddes Canyon Trails on Mingus on Saturday, October 30, 2010

We drove through Jerome to the top of Mingus Mountain on Hwy 89A and turned left on Forest Road 104. We then turned on Forest Road 413 (marked as the road to Cherry at the turn off), drove around the to south of Mingus and parked at the Black Canyon Trailhead in the mouth of Gaddis Canyon. After parking, we hiked 0.6 miles further north on FR 413 (Allen Spring Road) to the Coleman Trailhead. The below photograph was taken at that point.

Left to right (standing): Kwi Johnson, Dolly Yapp, Betty Wolters, Daisy 

Williams, Miriam Sterling, Virginia Driscoll, Donna Goodman, David Nelson,

 Lila Wright, Ellis Price, Linda Tovar and John McInerney; 

Sitting: George Everman

We followed Coleman rail as it snaked up the south slope of Mingus, pausing frequently to catch out breath.

To our left as we ascended was a high ridge, with a sheer cliff facing us. Beyond this ridge lay Gaddes Canyon, our intended return route. After we had climbed about 950 feet (of a total climb of around 1370 feet) and just after the trail turned sharply to the west, we left it and traveled for about 50 yards north to come out atop a sheer cliff overlooking Verde Valley. Kwi is shown (below) eating her snack at the rim.

Kwi perched at the rim eating her snack

The wind was quite strong and a bit chilly on the cliff top; however we were able to find adequate shelter and the view was excellent.

From atop the south end of Mingus, looking across Verde Valley and the

Mogollon Rim to the San Francisco Peaks beyond.

After our snack we continued on, climbing about around another 350 feet to arrive at Forest Service Road 104 near the south set of communications towers on Mingus.

At this point we went wrong. Instead of turning right on the road and following it to the Gaddes Canyon Trailhead, we turned left, intending to intersect with the trail further along. We then came to a fork and took the left branch which led us in a circle back the way we had come. Upon discovering our error we retraced our steps to the fork and took the other branch. This however led us just about directly south while we should have gone directly west to intersect with the trail into Gaddes Canyon. John pointed this out to us several times along the way; however, I felt sure that we could intersect with the trail by traveling southwest and others wanted to find a viewpoint on the rim of Gaddes Canyon for our lunch stop.

I turned out that we did find a good viewpoint on the canyon rim. Unfortunately, because of the steep drop into the canyon, we then had to turn back north along the canyon rim searching for a way down. We eventually came to a very faint trail, marked by cairns, which seemed to lead into the canyon. We decided to try that instead of traveling further in hopes of striking the main trail. That turned out to be a pretty good decision. Although the trail, at least as marked by cairns, ended part way down the slope, we were able to continue our descent to the bottom of the canyon without too much effort and connect with Trail 9037 leading back to where we had parked.

One interesting site we found shortly after starting our cross-country odyssey was a round concrete foundation about 40 feet in circumference. My first thought was that it must have been a fairly elaborate foundation for an above ground tank of some sort. Then David pointed out that there were tie-downs installed in the concrete. That along with the discovery of a nearby metal pole, set in concrete, that would have served admirably to hold a windsock, led us to think that the pad must have been constructed as a helicopter-landing pad.

See the mothership yet? Or perhaps it's just a helicopter-landing pad?

– photo by George

Although we did have trouble finding a way down into the canyon and we never did intersect with the trail we were looking for, we were never in danger of getting lost. We had Gaddes Canyon to our left, we knew the direction to the Mingus Campground and we could actually see the communication towers much of the time. The route we followed was on relative open terrain; however, there were some portions that were fairly rough hiking in that we were walking on loose rocks. This caused a couple of minor falls, but no injuries that couldn’t be taken care of by the application of a few band-aids.

First aid station

The lack of a clearly defined trail did at times cause some confusion among our hikers. I think we were all missing the late Lynne Tingley a bit. She would have known exactly where we were.

OK…there must be a trail here somewhere.

After we at last found our way on Trail 9037 in the floor of the canyon, the going was easy and we made good time for the rest of the hike.

There were several interesting sightings along the way. Several tarantulas were sighted and the trail down Gaddes canyon was virtually littered with bear scat.

Tarantula 

Black bear scat

John and I actually saw a large black bear ahead on the trail at one point. John thought it might weigh 300 to 400 pounds. Neither of us had a camera ready at the time and the bear had hightailed it on down the rail before we could snap a picture. John went ahead by himself in an attempt to get close enough for a good photograph. Although he did get another glimpse of the bear, it was never visible long enough for him to focus and snap a picture.

This hike left us still unsure of the best way to hike the Coleman-Gaddes Canyon Loop and I think that we shall soon be scheduling an exploratory hike to find out. This would involve hiking the entire length of both Gaddes Canyon Trail 110 and Trail 9037.

A review of the Garmin file after downloading it to my computer shows that we hiked 6.6 miles (not counting taking the wrong trail and having to double back or the wandering around some of us did during the lunch stop), that the highest elevation was 7631 feet and the total ascent was 1672 feet. Our GPS track is shown on the included map (below)

Rio de Flag and Old Caves Crater

A group of nine Skyliners hiked in the Flagstaff area on October 16, 2010.

Standing: Lila Wright, Donna Goodman, Daisy Williams, Virginia Driscoll, Anita Jackson and David Nelson; Kneeling: Betty Wolters, Dolly Yapp and Miriam Sterling - Photograph by Ester Diebel.

I was unable to hike that day and Lila Wright provided the information for this report. The hikers drove to Flagstaff, where they were joined by Betty’s friend Ester Diebel, and parked in the Elden Pueblo parking lot (see map at [below] for the location of the parking lot) and hiked 1.7 miles to Rio de Flag.

Elden Pueblo and Parking Lot

Lila provided a narrative and several photographs; which I used for this report. The two photos below show petroglyphs next to Rio de Flag.

Petroglyphs near Rio de Flag

Petroglyphs near Rio de Flag

In one area a stream had recently been restored to its original course. Our footprints were the first in this area since restoration.

Stream recently restored to original path

 – Skyliners leaving the first human footsteps in the restored area

We hiked south along the stream to the small Indian room shown below with Dolly inside.

Dolly crouched inside an Indian room

A little further south we viewed several small waterfalls and one larger one shown in the below photo.

Waterfall at Rio de Flag

We completed our visit to Rio de Flag by 11300 and Esther suggested another short hike only a couple of miles away. So we drove the short distance to the trailhead to Old Caves Crater. The distance to the top of the crater was 1.2 miles. The next photo, looking out of a cave, is followed by one looking into a cave.

View looking out of a cave at Old Caves Crater

View looking into a cave at Old Caves Crater

From this crater we looked west to the summer forest fire burn area on the side of the Peaks and to where flooding recently occurred.

Looking to the area of the summer forest fire

Showing the area where flooding recently occurred

There were Indian ruins in this area similar to Tuzigoot and pottery shards similar to that shown (below) are scattered everywhere.

Pottery shard

In the below photograph Ester Diebel is pointing out something east with her home in the background. Meanwhile, the small hill in the far background is the location of the Rio de Flag hike we completed before driving to our present location at Old Caves Crater.

The small hill, center right background, is the location of the Rio de Flag hike

No GPS track was made of this hike and no map produced. Nor are any statistics available. It was, however, reported to be an easy hike.

Indian Ruins off Loy Canyon Trail

We hiked to Indian ruins in Loy Canyon on 13 January 2010 and again on 2 October 2010. To avoid duplication, I have combined the two hikes into one report. From Cottonwood, we traveled north on Hwy 89A, turned left onto Forest Road 525 at the Sedona Water Treatment facility (just past mile marker 364). We drove for about 10.1 miles (according to my GPS) on FR 525 before turning left into the trailhead parking area for the Loy Canyon Trail (34°55'56.29"N; 111°55'30.15"W). The parking area is at the edge of Hancock Ranch and the trailhead is located directly across the road. Following FR 525 from Hwy 89A is pretty straightforward; just stay on 525 and don’t be fooled into turning onto 525C or 525D.

At first, the trail follows along the edge of Hancock Ranch on the way up Loy Canyon. About 0.70 miles from the trailhead, a faint trail leads off to the right (at 34°56'23.20"N; 111°55'28.53"W), just before the main trail crosses a streambed. This is the trail to one of the three Indian ruins we visited on this hike … the third one. However, we decided to defer a visit to these ruins until after we had visited the more impressive sites on the opposite canyon wall, so we continued on until we came to the trail turnoff. The turnoff, located about 0.45 miles on up Loy Canyon Trail (at 34°56'44.75"N; 111°55'28.08"W), is not very visible; however, it is well marked by a large dead tree with cropped limbs.  The photograph shown here (right) is a view of the dead tree as seen from just down the trail from the turnoff.

We decided to stop at the turnoff for a group photograph, nine of us posed in the tree.  The tenth hiker used George's camera to take the photograph (below).

Left to right (top to bottom):“ Ellis Price, Dolly Yapp, Lila Wright, Gordon Bice, George Everman, Miriam Sterling, Anita Jackson, Daisy Williams and Betty Wolters – photograph by tenth hiker using George's camera

The above group photograph, taken on 2 October 2010, includes all of the hikers, except Jim Manning, who visited the ruins on 13 January.

To orient ourselves, we wanted to locate the area where the first ruins were located. Luckily, we discovered that by walking a few yards on up the trail beyond the dead tree, and looking to the northwest, we had a clear view of the ruins (below) that were our goal. They appeared to be about two-thirds of the way up the canyon wall and above at least two major ledges that would have to be conquered on the way up.

View of ruins from Loy Canyon Trail – they are marked by a small red arrow

To this point the trail was well marked and the going easy. But we knew that when we left the main trail it would become much more difficult and would involve a lot of climbing over and around rock ledges as we attempted to find our way up the canyon wall to the ruins above.The second of the two ledges proved to be the more difficult. After a few false starts, we finally succeed by climbing up a narrow slit to emerge on the ledge just below the ruins. Hikers are shown here (below) climbing up the slit in the following two photographs.

Climbing up the slit – photograph by George Everman

Hikers emerging from the top of the slit

After we emerged from the slit, it was a short, relatively easy, climb on to the ruins.. The approximate location is 34°56'48.35"N; 111°55'40.99.” However, my GPS was acting erratically in the canyon and I cannot be sure of the exact location.

Another hiking group arrived while we were there. They did not appear to be at all happy to find us at the site. I would even go so far as to say that they bordered on being unfriendly. Although we observed later that they were visiting two of the same sites we were, they professed not to know of any other ruins in the area. When asked about other sites, they suggested the ruins on past Loy Butte that are visited by the pink jeep tours, never mentioning the other nearby site that they, as well as we, were visiting next.

The ruins turned out to be well worth the effort of the climb.

Hikers examining the ruins – Site 1

Just around a fold in the cliff was visible a smaller ruin placed all to itself and difficult to access from the main ruins. We decided to call it the “Mother in Law” cottage.

The “Mother in Law Cottage”- Site 1

We left soon after the other group arrived and stopped nearby for a snack break. While we were stopped, they climbed on up the wall of the canyon and traveled along the top to the next site. After our break we continued along the ledge we were on to find a place to ascend to the ledge where the next site was located. Coming around a corner, we could see the location of the site; however, there were sheer cliff walls between it and our position and it was necessary to climb up to the next ledge to pass above that section of cliff. The route proved to be circuitous, but not too strenuous. One spot did require a bit of climbing up a rock face. However, I discovered that it would be possible to avoid that spot by bushwhacking a bit further along the face of the ledge. When we topped out just above the level on which the next ruins were located and again rounded the corner of the cliff, we could see our goal ahead and slightly below us.

The second Indian Ruins visited are located at the base of the cliff between the Ponderosa Pine and the large vertical black stripes on the face of the cliff

(NOTE: Although they are not visible in this photograph, we could also see the other group of hikers ahead of us moving toward the ruins. We were pleased to find that they were gone by the time we arrived.)

The going from here proved to be fairly easy, with just a hundred yards or so of rather steep climbing near the ruins. This last, more difficult, leg of the trail leads through a grove of manzanita. I took the opportunity to stop for a few photographs of this attractive shrub (see below).

Manzanita below Indian Ruins                Manzanita below Indian Ruins

These ruins, located approximately at 34°56'42.05"N; 111°55'50.54"W, were not as impressive as the first site we visited.

Not much remained of any structures. There were some drawings; however, I am not sure which, if any, of them were really made by Indians.

Drawings at Indian Ruins – site two        Structural remains – site two

We have previously referred to this as the site of the turquoise cross. That name came from the small cross, located in the lower right quadrant of the above picture of the drawings. On closer examination, we decided that the cross is a fairly recent addition to the drawings. We were not sure of the other drawings; however, we were skeptical that any were actually made by the Indians.

When we were finished with this site, on our 13 January hike, we decided to retrace our steps back to the ledge on which the first ruins were located and see whether we could find an easier route for a future hikes planned for the entire Skyliner group. We did find a way to bypass the narrow slit we climbed up on our way up, and most of us took this route for the return trip on the 2 October hike. Few of the group really wanted to climb back down the narrow slit we had used for the ascent. But it should be noted that it is still a strenuous climb and that some of the group on any future hikes might wish to stop part way up and wait for the rest to return. There are numerous places that would make for a comfortable wait.

After returning to the Loy Canyon Trail, we headed back down the canyon and upon reaching the turnoff to the site of the cliff drawings, decided to explore those also. Accordingly, we turned up the streambed which is only a few yards from the trail to the drawings and followed it most of the way there before emerging and finishing the trip on the trail. This site, located at 34°56'30.24"N; 111°55'8.53"W, appears to have been mostly used for camping. There is an overhang of the cliff wall that would provide excellent shelter and a good place for fires. The drawings were a mixture of White man’s graffiti and other drawings, some of which could possibly have been made by Indians. Here are a few samples.

Miscellaneous Drawings – site three        Miscellaneous Drawings – site three

A Turtle? – site three                                  Very faint drawing – site three

We thought the drawing shown in the bottom left photograph (above) might be a turtle.

After lingering for a bit to discuss the drawings (and graffiti) we followed the trail that runs alongside the streamed back to the Loy Canyon Trail and then continued on to the trailhead.

My GPS file says that the hike was 7.2 miles; however that cannot be accurate. I think that the GPS signals were bouncing off the canyon walls causing major errors. Based on a quick measurement using Google Earth, I think we probably hiked about 4.60 miles.

Our GPS track, although incomplete and not of very good quality because of reception in the canyon, is shown on the included map (below). Note that only the approximate turnoff is shown for site 3.