Windmill Mountain Hike

Windmill Mountain, rising to 4849 feet at its highest point, is not a very impressive sight from a distance. Cockscomb and Doe Mountain to the northeast are both slightly higher and sport attractive red cliffs as opposed to Windmill Mountain's drab juniper-covered slopes. It does rise slightly higher than nearby Rosies Volcano, 1.7 miles to the east and Windmill Mountain has one very attractive feature that makes a climb to its summit worthwhile: standing apart from other formations in the area, it has spectacular 360 degree views.

We had considered a hike on the mountain for some time and George Everman and I did an initial scouting hike last November, climbing up the southwest slope from Forest Road 525. That, however, turned out to be a very short hike, only 1.3 miles round trip, and all of it was bushwhacking through scattered junipers and thick stands of cactus. From near the top we could see that a series of old roads, apparently used by ranchers to service tanks in the area, led in from the area of the Sedona Wastewater Plant located on SR 89A.

A few days later while returning home from a hike in the Sedona area, we stopped at the entrance to the wastewater treatment plant and hiked about half a mile along an old road just to make sure we could access the mountain from that point. We decided that we could do so and scheduled the hike without further ado.

When we gathered on 12 March 2016 at the Cottonwood Safeway parking lot, the sky was cloudy and a chill wind was blowing. But the weather forecast promised clearing skies starting about noon and we pressed on undeterred. Leaving Cottonwood, we drove north on SR 89A and turned right onto Forest Road 9845A, directly across the highway from the entrance to the wastewater plant. A spacious parking area is located alongside the forest road at the junction with SR 89A, so we parked there and crossed the road to start our hike.

The actual entry to the wastewater facility is set back several yards from the highway and a parking area is provided to the right of the entry gate. We didn't park there because one of our hikers told us that a friend had recently been ticketed for parking in that area.

In the below photograph, the entry gate to the facility is shown at left, the graveled parking area is shown to the right of the driveway, behind the white street address sign, and the dirt road that we would follow to start our hike is shown in the foreground at right.

Start of Windmill Mountain hike at 7500 W SR 89A (Sedona Wastewater Treatment Plant). The dirt road at right is the start of the hike.

I had laid out a track that would allow us to follow an old road up the mountain as far as possible. That turned out to be a distance of 1.3 miles from where we parked. We then followed a track I had drawn along the spine of a ridge, running in the northwest-southeast direction, that ascends at a moderate slope to reach the relatively flat area on top of the mountain at the northeast corner. I had chosen the spine of the ridge because the cactus that grows profusely all over the mountain would likely be less dense there and because it a less steep ascent. As it turned out we were able to follow the track almost exactly, deviating only to avoid thick stands of cactus and a few large rock ledges.

As we approached the point where we would leave the old road and hike up the ridge spine, we paused to look at some familiar nearby landmarks. Lined up from the left (right) are Doe Mountain, the Cockscomb and Rosies Volcano.

We saw a couple of deer moving horizontally along the slope as we approached the mountain and found deer tracks just about everywhere we looked. Near the top of the mountain we flushed a cottontail rabbit from his hiding place in a tangle of brush and cactus.

There was a lot of desert hyacinth in bloom, usually only a single stalk at a time, although I did note one spot where several bunched stalks had pushed up together from behind a rock. Unfortunately, the blooms were not yet well-developed enough for a good photograph. There were also a few banana yucca plants (left) scattered among the cacti.

The wind was blowing steadily during the first part of the hike and, looking for shelter, we chose a spot just below the rim for a snack break. That seemed to work well enough; however, when we climbed on up to the rim after our break, we found that the wind had died down and the sun was struggling to break through the cloud cover.

The essentially flat top of the mountain is a roughly oval-shaped area, orientated almost north-south but with the top bulging to the northeast as though pulled by some unseen force. The area, varying in elevation by no more than about 50 feet, measures about 440 yards long and 120 yards wide at its greatest dimensions. It was covered with grass, isolated patches of scrub oak and scattered junipers. Prickly pear cactus was also present, though growing in smaller, more widely-scattered patches than we had contended with on the climb to the summit.

As expected we had a commanding view in all directions; however, because of the scattered junipers growing on the mountain top, not in all directions from the same point. I thought the most appealing view was to be had looking north-northwest. In this photograph (below) the view extends from Black Mountain at the left to Oak Creek Canyon at the right.

Looking north-northwest from the top of Windmill Mountain

I wondered how the mountain came to be named Windmill. We saw nothing indicating that a windmill had ever existed at the top of the mountain. That does not, of course, mean that one did not once exist there or further down on its slope. Other uses of the name in the area, according to the USGS National Topo Map, are Windmill Ranch which lies about 1.6 miles miles west by southwest of the summit and Windmill Tank about one mile away in the east-southeast direction.

It was too early to eat lunch at the summit, especially as we had just eaten our midmorning snack, so we decided to gather for a group photograph and then head back down the mountain. In the below photograph the hikers are posed with the red rock flanks of Bear Mountain, below a still-cloudy sky, showing in the background.

Left to right: Anita Jackson, Jim Manning, Daisy Williams (front), Joanne Hennings, Roger Fenske, Dolly Yapp (front), Karl Sink, Lila Wright, Collene Maktenieks (front), Jim Gibson (rear), Karalee Schmidt and Mary Beth Hopperstead

I had laid out a return path down the south slope of the mountain that, according to the map I was using, Arizona Topo, downloaded from GPSFileDepot¹, would lead us to an old road which would in turn connect us to the route we had followed at the start of the hike. At that point we would be just one mile from where we had parked and could simply retrace the path we had followed before.

As fate would have it, we came immediately to one of the most sturdy, well-constructed barbed wire fences I have ever seen. The wires running between the steel posts had regularly-spaced wooden spacers and boulders were affixed to the bottom wires to hold them tautly in place. We could, with a bit of effort, have crossed the fence and followed the track I had drawn; but the entire south slope was steep and covered with dense patches of cactus. As it really didn't seem to make much difference what route we took, we just followed the fence line down the mountain, deviating often to find a path between clumps of cactus.

We soon realized that we should simply have returned by the route we had used on the way up the mountain. But that would now mean climbing back to the top, so we forged ahead, gathering cactus spines along the way. One particularly nasty spine inserted itself into my boot through the leather upper just above the sole. It was placed so that it only bothered me when I put my foot down at a certain angle, so I just lived with it for the remainder of the hike.

When we arrived at the foot on Windmill Mountain, it appeared that we would need to cross the fence after all to connect to the old road I had identified on the Arizona Topo map. I crossed the fence by lying on my side close to it, lifting the bottom wire, pushing my back, under the wire and then simply rolling over. This is my favorite method for crossing fences. Usually I can accomplish it without even removing my pack. About half of the group followed me across at this spot.

Jim Manning, on the other hand, noting a power line that crossed the fence about 100 yards away, investigated and found a service gate. He, along with the rest of the group, simply walked through the gate. We regrouped on the other side and set a course to intersect my hand- drawn track at the closest point.

This required us to climb to the top of a small knob across which the old road shown on my map ran. On arriving at the top of the knob we found that the old road simply wasn't there and there was no indication that it had ever existed. I was disappointed and quite surprised, as I had even verified the route using another map, Desert Southwest, from the same source. I later noted that Garmin's Topo U.S. 24K Southwest map shows the road running in a different area. But we had already crossed that track and found nothing, although Lila later told me that she had noted what was likely a part of that road running along the ridge east of our course as we neared the spot where we stopped for lunch. I will just call the road I was trying to follow a “ghost road.”

The red track on the included map shows our track to the summit and my advice to anyone hiking to the summit of Windmill Mountain is to return the same way. The blue track running between the summit and the point labeled “End of ghost road” is my intended return route. The copper-colored track, running down the mountain between the blue and red tracks is our actual return route. Finally, the short magenta track running between the labels “Lunch at ghost road” and “Rejoin track” is a part of the ghost road as well as being part of our return route.

The total hike distance was 4.5 miles by the route we actually took. Had we returned by the same route we took on the way to the summit, it would have been 4.8 miles. That extra 0.3 miles is well worth doing to avoid the steep, cactus-infested south slope of the mountain. The highest elevation, as recorded by my GPS, for this hike was was 4643 feet and the total ascent was 899 feet.

1 https://www.gpsfiledepot.com/