Wilson Canyon and Steamboat Rock

Most of the Skyliners, including the author, had never hiked Steamboat Rock, a very familiar Sedona landmark. Having decided to remedy this shortcoming, we scheduled an outing that would include a climb to Steamboat Rock along with a hike on Wilson Canyon Trail. After downloading what looked to be a good GPS track and the report of a previous hike from HikeArizona.com, we set out on 2 April 2016 with a great deal of confidence.

From Cottonwood, we drove north on SR 89A through Sedona and parked at the trailhead at Midgley Bridge. There were few cars when we arrived at 0740; however, later in the day this parking area is always packed tight with vehicles, so an early start is advised.

The 200-foot Midgley Bridge, constructed in 1938, served as the final link of the newly constructed State Highway 79 (now SR 89A) that connected Phoenix and Prescott to Sedona, Oak Creek Canyon, and Flagstaff.¹ The bridge carried (and still carries) traffic across the mouth of Wilson Canyon.

Midgley Bridge at Wilson Canyon in Oak Creek Canyon

According to Professor Amundson of Northern Arizona University, the road was designated as SR 79 in 1927 and became US 89A, an alternate route between Prescott and Flagstaff, in 1940. It lost its US designation in 1992 and became SR 89A. Before the bridge was constructed SR 79 ran north up Wilson Canyon from the present site of the bridge for about 0.3 miles before crossing the stream, by way of a much smaller bridge at the bottom of the canyon, and returning down the other side to the present roadbed. The old roadbed in the canyon still exists and can be hiked for its entire length. The old bridge is long gone but the abutments are still standing.

Old SR 79 Bridge in Wilson Canyon, used before Midgley Bridge was constructed

I have vague memories of traveling down Oak Creek Canyon some 56 years ago as a freshly-minted Navy Ensign on my way from Officers Candidate School in Rhode Island to report aboard the USS General W.A Mann (TAP-112) homeported at Fort Mason in San Francisco, now a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. I once thought that I had remembered crossing this old bridge on that long-ago journey. However, that would have been in 1962, long after Midgely Bridge was completed, so I must have been remembering some other sharp turn with a bridge crossing. I do vividly remember that the descent down Oak Creek Canyon seemed endless and I wondered if it might eventually descend into hell itself.

But back to today's hike. After parking at the trailhead we walked past a toilet (Yes. Facilities are provided and a Red Rock Pass is required to park here.). Just beyond the toilet and before a picnic pavilion are two trailhead signs on a single post (right), one pointing to the right for Wilson Mountain Trail #10 and one pointing straight ahead for Wilson Canyon Trail #47.

We continued straight ahead, following the bed of the old highway as it made its way toward the old bridge crossing in Wilson Canyon. After about 0.1 miles we came to a fork. Our trail angled to the right while the old SR 79 road continued straight ahead. A signpost (left) showed the way and provided the additional information that the same path would lead to Jim Thompson Trail.

About 0.4 miles from the point where Wilson Canyon Trail diverged from the old SR 79 roadbed we arrived at the intersection with Jim Thompson Trail. This 2.9-mile trail runs from Mormon Canyon, along the slope of the mountain below Steamboat Rock, to Wilson Canyon, connecting Brins Mesa Trail to Wilson Canyon Trail.

The Jim Thompson/Wilson Canyon Trail intersection marks the edge of the wilderness area. The rest of our hike in Wilson Canyon would be in the Red Rock Secret Mountain Wilderness. The vegetation in the canyon consisted primarily of Arizona cypress, scrub oak and manzanita. The well-worn trail follows closely along the wash, rising gently, as it makes its way up the canyon; we had tantalizing glimpses along the way of the steep cliff walls ahead. The rather dense tree cover meant that we were in the shade most of the time, not necessarily a good thing on this rather chilly, early-April morning.

Steep cliff walls ahead visible through the Arizona cypress, scrub oak and manzanita

Lila had suggested that we divert from the trail and climb Steamboat Rock on the way up the canyon rather than on the way back. However, as it turned out, the GPS track I was using was incorrect and we missed the turnoff. It showed the turnoff as being a short distance above the Jim Thompson Trailhead when, in practice, one actually turns on that trail and follows it for about 0.2 miles before starting the climb up the rock. The person who made the erroneous GPS track must have been part mountain goat; it went straight up a steep untracked, densely overgrown mountain slope.

As it were, we continued on up Wilson Canyon Trail for another 0.8 miles and came to a cairn (right) marking the official end of the trail. We did not turn back at this point because the report we were relying on said that a social trail led up the side of the canyon from this point. We found it just a few yards ahead and followed it, climbing out of the belt of Arizona cypress growing along the bottom of the canyon and continuing up the manzanita- and sumac-covered mountainside.

I paused along the way to photograph a pair of red-orange Indian paint brush blossoms (left) positioned in a bed of green tucked under a low-hanging manzanita branch. The social trail ended hard against the steep canyon wall after just 0.2 miles.

At the very end of the trail, the author and Jim McGinnis are shown  posed hard against the unscalable canyon wall (right). We had climbed about 150 feet to reach this point, so we rested there for a few minutes before starting our descent.

We paused at an open spot on the way back down the slope for a group photograph with the colorful red and yellow canyon walls in the background.

Left to right: Betty Wolters, Jim Gibson, Collene Maktenieks, Floyd Gardner, Loren Pritzel, Bob Rauen, Daisy Williams, Jim McGinnis, Lila Wright, Ellen McGinnis and George Everman

After descending back to the wash at the bottom of the canyon, we decided to push on upstream for a short distance. But before doing that we stopped for a photograph of two hikers who had missed the group photograph. Shown here (left) are Karl Sink (left) and Jerry Helfrich.

Just to the left of the two hikers shown above, a faint trail leaves the wash. We followed it for a short distance until it rejoined the streambed. After that, we just continued up the bed of the wash, noting an occasional cairn as we went. I am not sure what purpose the cairns served; they certainly were not needed to keep hikers on the trail as there was no trail. One just follows the wash, occasionally leaving it to climb around an obstruction.

I remembered seeing a number of western wallflowers on a May 2010 hike up the canyon and I was hoping to find more this time. But perhaps it was still too early for them because we found very few and then usually only a single flower at a time. The photograph (right) displays the best grouping of the flowers I found during today's hike.

Most of the hikers went only a short distance up the wash and stopped to wait at a sunny spot while Karl and I continued up the wash for 0.2 miles beyond the official end of the trail, ourselves turning back at the point shown here (left). 

Rejoining the group we all started back down the trail, looking closely for signs of the turnoff to Steamboat Rock. At this point, still not sure where to leave Wilson Canyon Trail, we were hoping to follow the GPS track. Eventually, however, we arrived back at the junction with Jim Thompson Trail without having found it. There we met a hiker who assured us that the trail to Steamboat Rock was accessed by way of Jim Thompson Trail. A little farther along we met two additional hikers who reinforced that message.

As we left Wilson Canyon, I was reminded of the words of Joe Bartels in a HikeArizona.com report dated 12 April 2012. Bartels wrote that Richard Wilson, for whom the canyon is named, while carrying an uncharged muzzle-loading rifle, chased a bear into the canyon in 1885. The bear turned on him and he took refuge in a juniper tree. However the bear pulled him out and killed him. He notes that there have since been reports that the canyon is haunted by Wilson's ghost.

Ghost or no, we were now safely out of Wilson Canyon and heading west on Jim Thompson Trail. We followed that trail for 0.2 miles before coming to the very obvious turn-off (right) to Steamboat Rock. The dead branches placed across the entrance to the path separate it from the main trail.

We now began to see more flowers, first an indigo (below left) closely followed by an indigo-blackfoot daisy bouquet (below right).

                               Indigo                                          Indigo-blackfoot daisy 

                                                                                    bouquet

Te climb to the top of Steamboat Rock is rated as a Yosemite Decimal System² Class 3, meaning that a fall could easily be fatal.

The difficulty of the climb is illustrated in the photograph (below) showing hikers making their way carefully up the steep slope.

Hikers making their way up the steep slope of Steamboat Rock

The photograph (below), taken from the upper slope of Steamboat Rock, shows Oak Creek Canyon framed by Wilson Mountain on the left and Indian Point on the right.

Oak Creek Canyon framed by Wilson Mountain (left) and Indian Point (right)

Moving carefully all the while, I inched my way up the slope, pausing and positioning myself securely before pulling my camera out to photograph flowers found along the way. Among those I saw on the climb were a mountain sunflower with one of those ubiquitous blackfoot daisies lurking in the background (below left) and a gorgeous, aromatic cliffrose in full bloom (below right).

                              Mountain sunflower and         Cliffrose

                              blackfoot daisy 

The deck of Steamboat consists of a large flat area with the boat's superstructure looming up ahead as shown in the photograph (below).

Superstructure as seen from the deck of Steamboat Rock

From the deck of Steamboat Rock we had a great view looking out over Sedona (below left) and down on Midgley Bridge (below right).

                               Sedona from Steamboat        Midgley Bridge from

                                                                                   Steamboat

Some of the hikers had stopped on the lower slope to eat lunch and wait for us to return, so we didn't linger long on the top. On the way back down I found a really good bladderpod specimen (below left) and then, alongside SR 89A on the way home, a quite attractive clump of globemallow (below right).

                               Bladderpod                                Globemallow

According to my GPS, this hike, shown in red on the included map (following), was 4.9 miles out and back. The highest elevation was 5228 feet and the total ascent was 1537 feet.

1 By Michael Amundson, Professor of History, NAU. Published in the Arizona Sun Times on 7 October 2014. Available at: http://azdailysun.com/news/local/midgley-bridge-cause-for-celebration/article_68b859b6-a45b-5fe0-b5a0-ec7c5f41fe21.html

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite_Decimal_System

Long Canyon Trail to Long Canyon Tank

The author and thirteen other hikers left Cottonwood at 0800 on 26 March 2016 to hike on Long Canyon Trail. We planned to hike to Long Canyon Tank, about three miles from the trailhead at Forest Road 618H, and return. To reach the trailhead, we drove east on SR 260 to I-17 and turned north. We exited I-17 at the SR 179 exit and turned right to follow FR 618 across Wet Beaver Creek to the junction with FR 618H. The road is paved all the way to the FR 618H turnoff which is, itself, a well-maintained dirt road. About 0.7 miles after turning onto FR 618H, we came to the Long Canyon Trailhead. Parking is on the left side of the road and a chain is stretched across the road limiting access beyond this point to those with business at Southwest Academy. A gate (right), providing access to the trail, is located on the right.

The trail runs up to the mesa, now looming high above us, that lies between Deadwood Draw and the Canyon that carries Wet Beaver Creek and we knew that we had a steep climb ahead. A trailhead sign (left) posted a few yards from the gate warned us that the trail would be difficult to follow after the first two miles. Lettering on the sign that said “Bell Trail #13 – 10 miles” was confusing and I never determined the meaning. If intended to provide the length of Bell Trail, it is incorrect. Bell Trail, according to the Forest Service description¹, is 11 miles long, ending at Forest Road 214 about a mile east of Cedar Flat Tank. However, all other sources I found, including the Coconino National Forest Motor Vehicle Usage Map² and Garmin's Topo U.S. 24K Southwest map³ show it ending at Roundup Basin Tank which would make it around 7.6 miles long. It also couldn't mean that it was 10 miles by way of Long Canyon Trail to Bell Trail because, although both trails, on most maps, do end at Roundup Basin Tank, that is only about 7.8 miles.

As we continued along the trail, we found ourselves climbing steeply along a rough, rocky trail. It was a much more difficult hike than we had expected and two of our hikers turned back before we reached the top of the mesa. The rest of us continued on our way, going quite slowly and resting often. Flowers were a good excuse to stop and we paused frequently to admire those found along the way. Just a short distance up the trail we noted a bunch of blackfoot daisies (below left) followed closely by a somewhat scraggly globemallow (below right).

Blackfoot daisies                     Globemallow

As implied by the trailhead sign, the trail was easy to follow as we made our way toward the rim of the mesa. Behind us we had an ever-changing view, at first of the Wet Beaver Creek and the area around the Beaver Creek Ranger Station, then, as we climbed higher, of Capitol Butte, on the other side of Sedona, as it gradually became visible above White Mesa. The photograph (below) shows this view.

Looking back from the shelf below the rim of the mesa

The above photograph was taken somewhere around the first of two steep climbs required to reach the top of the mesa. As can be seen in the map insert (below), the first climb is followed by a fairly level hike along a ridge before a second steep climb to the rim of the mesa.

Map insert showing two sharp climbs to reach the rim of the mesa

As we continued up the trail to the mesa we could at times look down on the campus of Southwest Academy, nestled alongside Wet Beaver Creek at the old Beaver Creek Ranch Headquarters. You may find either of those names, sometimes both, depending on what map you are using. I later did a little online research and found the following description:

Southwestern Academy is a nonprofit, coeducational college preparatory school for grades 6-12, with two campuses—one in San Marino, California, and the other in Rimrock, Arizona, USA. The school is accredited by WASC. The school offers boarding and day enrollment for 145 students for grades 6-12 in San Marino and 40 students for grades 9-12 at the Rimrock campus. A year of postgraduate studies is offered at both campuses. Students can transfer between the two campuses. The school was founded in 1924 by Maurice Veronda, father of the current headmaster, Kenneth Veronda.⁴

The school was founded, as noted above, in 1924 in San Marino, California. The Arizona campus, at the old Beaver Creek Ranch, was added in 1963. The ranch was homesteaded in the 1880s by the Casner family; the Broken A-4 brand was registered for the ranch in 1889. The present stone buildings were constructed after the ranch became a private hunting lodge in 1929. Southwestern Academy opened at the site in 1963⁵.

The sign at the trailhead had warned that the trail became indistinct after 2 miles and at 1.7 miles we found another sign (right) indicating that we had arrived at that spot.

I set the scale on my GPS to 120 feet to make sure we didn't inadvertently deviate too far from the downloaded track we were following. As it turned out, however, we really didn't need the GPS track which, in any case, turned out to vary as much as 0.2 miles from the actual trail. We just followed the well-traveled cattle trail. We assumed that the cows knew the most direct path to the tank we were aiming for. They did, however, tend to wander a bit, shifting the trail so that it passed under low-lying tree branches (below left) to brush off flies. But the general direction never varied; they were headed to the watering hole. Verifying our decision to follow the cattle trail instead of the GPS track, we found ancient wire-bound cairns (below right) at intervals all along the way.

Trail detours to pass under limbs              Old wire-bound cairns        

We had started the hike climbing a steep slope covered with juniper and a variety of low-growing plants such as cactus, snakeweed and cliffrose. Now we were hiking along an essentially level trail with widely-spaced junipers and pinon pines growing in high desert grassland. We knew that the area was grazed by antelope as well as cows but we saw neither. We did, however, find some fairly recent droppings from both (right) scattered along the trail.

From the top of the mesa as we neared Long Canyon Tank we had an excellent view to the north, across the canyon that carries Wet Beaver Creek and on to the San Francisco Peaks in the far distance.

Looking north from Long Canyon Trail on the mesa near Long Canyon Tank

It was almost noon when we arrived at Long Canyon Tank (below) and we stopped there for lunch.

Long Canyon Tank – a dreary-looking place but it did have water

We still had not reached Long Canyon; its rim was at least another half mile to the east, as shown in the map insert (below). As the map shows, were we to follow Long Canyon Trail to its end at Roundup Basin Tank, we would hike along the canyon's western rim for some distance and then cross it to meet with Bell Trail which also, according to most of the maps I consulted, ends at Roundup Basin Tank.

The magenta line shows Long Canyon Trail from Long Canyon Tank to its end at Roundup Basin Trail – most of this track was downloaded from HikeArizona.com

On our way back we passed the only standard trail marker (below left) we saw on this hike. We pushed right along and were starting the descent from the mesa rim (below right) by 1340.

Trail 63 Marker                       Hikers starting the descent

On our way back down Daisy pointed out a really nice indigo plant (below left) that I had not seen on the way up and, when we were almost at the bottom of the trail, we passed through a patch of unusually aromatic cliffrose bushes. I stopped to photograph one of them (below right). It was certainly not the most impressive specimen we saw but others were too far off the trail and I was tired.

Indigo plant                             Cliffrose                   

My pack had become unbalanced when we stopped just before we began the last steep descent. I had removed a filled thermos and apparently restowed it improperly causing it to list to the right. Being too pig-headed to stop and correct the problem, thus descending with an unbalanced load, I found that I had some very sore muscles and was walking with a decided list to starboard when I got back to the trailhead.

The total hike distance was 6.6 miles, the highest elevation was 5126 feet and the total ascent was 1296 feet.

Our GPS Track is shown in red on the included map (following). The cyan track at the top is Bell Trail and the dark magenta track continuing east from Long Canyon Tank is the continuation of Long Canyon Trail as it makes its way to Roundup Basin Tank.

1http://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/coconino/recreation/hiking/recarea/?recid=55234&actid=50

2 http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprd3834451.pdf

3 http://www.amazon.com/Garmin-MapSource-Southwest-Topographic-Coverage/dp/B001RYK0JE

4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwestern_Academy

5 http://www.southwesternacademy.edu/pdfs/StudHdbk%202015-16.pdf

Hike to Thirteen-Mile Rock Butte

On 21 March 2016, Jim Manning led a hike that included the author and six others to the top of Thirteen-Mile Rock Butte. We left Cottonwood at about 0800, drove east on SR 260 through Camp Verde and parked alongside the highway just 16.2 miles from the I-17/SR 260 interchange in Camp Verde.

Thirteen-Mile Rock, a marker on the General Crook Trail, is actually located about a tenth of a mile west of the parking area and we briefly paused there, in a spacious, graveled area, to read a sign posted by the Camp Verde Historical Society in conjunction with the Coconino National Forest. The sign identifies and explains the significance of the rock. The inscription reads:

Each mile was marked on the trail from Camp Verde to Camp Apache by the soldiers under General George Crook.

First traveled in 1871, the road was improved and used by wagons in 1873. It was the principal supply route from Fort Whipple at Prescott to Camp Verde and Camp Apache.

The following information is from an Arizona State Parks online article titled General Crook Road¹:

In 1871, General George Crook came to Arizona Territory as Commander of the Department of Arizona. His orders were to subdue the Indians of the Territory and place them on reservations. General Crook realized at once that in order to accomplish this goal he must be able to move troops and supplies into the haunts of the Indians with swiftness and surprise.

In August of that year, General Crook left Fort Apache with a unit of cavalry troops to locate and mark a supply road from Fort Apache to Fort Whipple in Prescott. As they moved westerly across the Mogollon Rim, then called Black Mesa, Crook realized quickly that he must stay close to the edge of the escarpment, otherwise, when he moved north, he encountered deep and rugged canyons. It was rough going but the trekkers found water in small lakes. Crook pushed on, and in early September of 1871, he reached Fort Whipple in Prescott. Actual construction of a road started in the spring of 1872. By 1873, supplies began moving by pack train from Fort Verde to Fort Apache. One year later in September 1874, the first wagon supply train left Fort Whipple for Fort Apache. Martha Summerhayes, the first woman to travel over the road, was on that trip. She later wrote the book, Vanished Arizona, telling of her experiences on the road and describing her travels in Arizona Territory.

During the next twenty-two years, Crook Road was used by troops patrolling across the Territory and the northern boundary of the Apache Reservation. The road was in continual use for thirty-two more years, until the Rim Road was built in 1928.

But our purpose on this hike was not primarily to hike on a section of General Crook Trail; it was rather to ascend to the summit of Thirteen-Mile Butte. To do this, we would first ascend the ridge that lies behind the butte, connecting it with the Mogollon Rim escarpment, and then follow the ridge back to the butte summit which towered some 500 feet above us on the north side of SR 260. Along the way, we would follow old roads, including parts of Crook Trail, and cow paths and also do some straightforward bushwhacking along the spine of the ridge.

Leaving the 13-Mile Rock sign behind, we continued about another tenth of a mile to our parking area, arriving at about 0840. We parked for the hike at a wide shoulder between two rocks on the south side of the highway. Just across the road is an access point for Crook Trail, as well as for Strawberry Road², a later but now abandoned road, that paralleled Crook Trail up the ridge at a more gentle gradient.

Crossing the road, we scrambled up the steep, rocky slope on the other side and crossed a fence. A pedestrian gate was once provided at this spot; however it has since been removed and is lying on the ground, having been replaced by fixed strands of barbed wire. Nevertheless, the fence was easy enough to crawl through and we soon found ourselves on the other side.

From this point, the hiker can take the abandoned Strawberry Road, heading in a northeast direction, and hike up the ridge at a rather gentle slope. On the other hand, General Crook Trail can be accessed by climbing around some large rocks straight ahead. One then travels northwest for about 0.1 mile before turning to the northeast at a higher level along the ridge. If this route is chosen, one arrives at another decision point as shown in the photograph (right) after climbing a further 0.1 mile.

We chose the easier route and followed Old Strawberry Road up the slope, passing numerous old bits of broken culvert along the way. One of these (left) was composed of two-foot sections fitted together to form the desired length. None of the several culverts we saw were still in operation, having either been washed out or filled in at the uphill side. There were no signs of the road ever having been paved and I think it may have preceded an old General Crook Trail Road that was in turn replaced by SR 260.

We saw a few flowers along the way. Among them a colorful stand of Indian paintbrush (below left) and a ceanothus shrub in full bloom (below right).

                               Indian Paintbrush                     Ceanothus shrub

From the old road we could look down on 13-Mile Tank, long breached, and now certainly dry. Thirteen-Mile Spring, possibly still a water source, is located about 0.2 miles below the spring.

Thirteen-Mile Tank

After 1.6 miles on Old Strawberry Road we came to the top of the ridge, the point at which Crook Trail joins the road and is contiguous with it for the next 1.1 miles going east. But that was not our route; we left the trail and walked about a 100 yards directly to the edge of the ridge for a view into Black Mountain Canyon and the rugged mountains to the north.

Looking to the rugged mountains across Black Mountain Canyon

Returning to Crook Trail we turned southwest, soon making another detour, this time on a dead-end road, for another look to the north. About 0.2 miles, not counting the two detours, from the intersection of Old Strawberry Road and Crook Trail, we came to a fork (right) in the road we were following. The path to the left was Crook Trail; however, we chose to go right because the official trail is, as can be seen, quite rocky and wherever the other trail ended we had only to continue along the crest of the ridge to reach our goal. That turned out to be a good decision because the smooth dirt road continued for a good distance and when it did end we found ourselves hiking through open, grassy country broken only by scattered junipers.

Had we taken the rocky Crook Trail, we would have come to another fork about 0.5 miles ahead. I photographed this fork (below left), along with the remains of a sign (below right) identifying the left fork as the easier route down the slope, on a December 2014 hike. Having hiked the upper trail in 2008, I chose the lower trail for the 2014 hike, finding it much easier. Since we had chosen a route for today's hike that bypassed this section of Crook Trail altogether and were anyway continuing on to Thirteen-Mile Rock Butte Summit, we had no choice to make.

                               Original Trail to right;             Sign once posted at the fork

                                  easier trail at left

That detour from the trail added an extra 0.1 miles to our hike but allowed us to avoid most of the rocky upper trail. We returned to the official Crook Trail at a trail marker (left) just 0.9 miles after leaving it and just before we dipped into a saddle that rose on the other side to Thirteen-Mile Rock Butte Summit.

Continuing southwest on upper Crook Trail, we came, after another 0.1 miles, to the place where the trail turns sharply down hill, joining first with the easier lower Crook Trail and then finally with Old Strawberry Road where we started our hike. However, saving that for later we left the trail and continued on our southwest course, now following old cow paths. Luckily there were not too many trees with low growing branches of the sort that cows tend to use for brushing flies off their backs, so we had little trouble following these readymade paths all the way to the summit. The top of the butte has two separate high spots, lined up in a northeast to southwest direction. We climbed first to the north-easternmost high spot, beyond the rocks shown in the photograph (below), still about 120 feet below the summit, and stopped there for an early lunch, eating just before 1100. Somehow, the cows had found way up and around the rocks shown below to reach the grass above.

Ascent to the northeastern part of the butte.

After lunch, we continued across a small saddle to climb to the summit, which rises to an elevation of 5520 feet. We found a survey marker (right) mounted in a rock outcropping at the highest point. No elevation was engraved on the marker but my map indicated it was 5520 feet and my GPS read the elevation as 5516 feet. From this position we had a view all the way from Pine Mountain in the southwest to Black Hills in the west and on to the San Francisco Peaks in the north. Having recently hiked some new trails in the Black Hills Mountain Range, l was particularly interested in the comprehensive view of that range, anchored in the northwest by Woodchute Mountain and in the southwest by Pine Mountain. As shown in the photograph (below), Mingus Mountain, Copper Canyon and Squaw Peak all stood out prominently in between those two anchors. With a pair of binoculars one could make out the antlike progress of vehicles making their way along the interstate highway as it snakes its way up Copper Canyon.

Looking across Verde Valley to the Black Hills

I watched closely for any flowers that might be found on the way back and did note a few such as Wright's deervetch (below left) and goatsbeard (below right).

                               Wright's deervetch                  Yellow goatsbeard seed

Growing at the very top of the butte, near the survey marker, we saw a banana yucca (below left) that was in the process of opening up. On the way back to the saddle where would rejoin Crook Trail for the descent we found a verbena plant (below right) growing alongside a line of rocks that apparently formed part of the foundation of an ancient fortification.

                               Banana yucca                           Verbena

I had been a little disappointed in the number and quality of flowers we had found on the hike so far but, after we rejoined Crook Trail and started our descent back to our cars, we saw a few more. Such as the milkweed antelope horn (below left), standing all alone awaiting the first monarch butterfly of the season and one fairly decent clump of mallow (below right) growing at the lower fork between the original Crook Trail and the “Later Wagon Reroute.”

                               Antelope horn                           Mallow

The hike had gone pretty much as Jim had planned and we were back at our cars by 1245, having hiked 5.1 miles as recorded by my GPS. Our maximum elevation for the hike was 5552 feet, recorded at the point where Old Strawberry Road joins with Crook Trail atop the ridge, and the total ascent was 1195 feet.

To properly display our GPS track for this hike and place the different trails discussed in the report in perspective, I have included parts of GPS tracks from three separate hikes on the included map (following). The first track, recorded on 21 March 2016 and shown in red, follows the route we took on this most recent hike; the second track, recorded on 4 December 2014 and shown in green, follows the lower wagon road and the third track, recorded on 10 May 2008 and shown in blue, follows the part of the original Crook Trail not included in either of the other two hikes.

1 http://azstateparks.com/trails/historic/trail_08.html

2Garmin's Topo U.S. 24K Southwest map. Available at: http://www.amazon.com/Garmin-MapSource-Southwest-Topographic-Coverage/dp/B001RYK0JE