Telephone Trail

Nine hikers from the Skyliners group hiked on Telephone Trail #72 in Oak Creek Canyon on Saturday, 06 November 2010

We drove through Sedona on Hwy 89A and parked alongside the road about a tenth of a mile beyond mile marker 385. From there we hiked a bit less than a tenth of a mile further to reach the trailhead. Contrary to what we had been led to believe, parking was not a problem; even though it was almost 9 AM on a Saturday morning. It should be noted, however, that when we completed the hike around 3 PM, the area parking was at a premium.

The trailhead is fairly well marked (right - photograph by George), although one must know where to look and be alert to avoid missing it.

The trail runs up the canyon, parallel to the highway for just over a tenth of a mile before turning sharply up the canyon wall. This area of the forest has recently been thinned, and the workers apparently appropriated a section of the trail for use during this operation. Unfortunately, where the work trail leaves Telephone Trail, it is now much more obvious than the original trail, and we made the mistake of continuing on the work trail at this point. 

After a while, finding that we were circling back down the slope, we turned back to intersect Telephone Trail near the point where we had left it. This side trip is included in the round trip hiking distance given in this report and is shown separately, in green, on the attached Google Earth map.

Just over half a mile from the trailhead (not counting our side trip on the work trail), we came out on top of a sharp ridge with a view down the other side into another side canyon. We stopped here for a snack before continuing southeast along the trail, which ran just below the crest for a distance, then crossed over and followed the other side of the crest to a sharp narrow ridge of rock that formed the spine of the ridge crest at that point. This section of rock (left) has several windows (or peepholes, as some call them) through which one can look through back down into Oak Creek Canyon. Several pictures of these windows are shown below.

Window in rock crest of ridge

Window in rock crest of ridge – tree beyond

The trail leads between the tree and the windows

 

View of Oak Creek Canyon through the window  – by George Everman

Kissing rocks at top

The section of trail between where we had stopped for a snack and the window rocks was fairly easy, following at generally the same level along the ridge spine. Soon after passing the window rocks, however, the trail, still following along the ridge between side canyons, grew sharply steeper and was a bit difficult to follow in places. Fortunately, wrong turns soon became apparent and we never had to retrace our steps more than a few yards. A rock formation known as the “Baby Carriage”came into view as we continued our climb. To me it looked more like Albert the Alligator, from the old Pogo comic strip, with Pogo the Possum astride his neck, than a baby carriage.

The Baby Carriage 

although I still see a Possum (Pogo) riding an Alligator (Albert)

Not more than two tenths of a mile of steep climbing from window from the rocks we came to what we decided must be the end of Telephone Trail on top of the canyon rim. Although there were signs of old roads in the area, we found no discernible trail beyond this point, and stopped here for lunch. We were approximately one mile from the trailhead on Hwy 89A.

After lunch for everyone and a quick nap for me, we walked on along the rim in a generally southwest direction for about two tenths of a mile. We had some discussion about continuing along the rim and descending by way of the Thomas Point Trail. However, we were uncertain how difficult it would be to find the start of that trail and decided to return the way we came, putting off a Thomas Point-Telephone Trails Loop for another day.

Climbing the trail had been difficult due to the steep gradient; traveling back down, while much faster and easier, presented difficulties of its own. I heard several hikers say that it was much harder on the knees than the climb up had been. But we all made it in good condition and paused at the lower trailhead for a group photograph.

We also had a great view of Mount Agassiz framed by trees as we approached the top of the trail.

Magnified view of Mt. Agassiz framed by trees

Left to right: Daisy Williams, John McInerney, Linda Tovar, Betty Wolters,

George Everman, Miriam Sterling, Name Withheld, Donna Goodman 

– Photograph by the author

The total hiking distance was just about four miles. That includes a short hike from where we parked to the trailhead, the work trail hike that we inadvertently took, and the extra four tenths of a mile we hiked along the rim after lunch. The elevation change, according to my GPS file was about 1370 feet.

The GPS track for this hike is shown on the included map (below). Telephone Trail is shown in red; the yellow track shows where wandered along the rim.