this is the one i couldn't wait for. modified the Bruce/Joe loop by tagging on some excellent additional trail miles and circling around behind cathedral. there was a big storm front moving in that evening so i knew i was on the clock a little bit for this one.

started off messing around up on the beautiful bell rock. went up the lower chute and decided in the interest of time (ie storm) to call it there, for this trip. i will be back for the top one day. scrambled down and around on courthouse butte. took a minute to figure out the unmarked loop out to the rabbit ears. the way out is a bit of a rocky slog, but once you hit the high point, loop around to magnificent view of the rabbit ears and bring it home on the much more entertaining northern leg, this becomes a much more worthwhile excursion!

scenic traverse on llama and little horse over to chicken point for the next high yield part of the hike. views from chicken point are always wonderful. broken arrow is great, then the absolutely fantastic high on the hog and hog heaven trails. man i love these two trails. completed the loop around the mountains on hog wash, mystic and chapel trails. headed back to 179 then crossed under it on little horse and the surprisingly nice HT trails.

next up was probably my most anticipated part of the day looping over to, up/down, then around cathedral. the templeton trail is underrated in my opinion and the segment from HT to cathedral junction, i found to be lovely. this is when the weather really moved in. i contemplated bailing on going up/down cathedral since i've done it numerous times. instead i decided to just put on my bobby rockets and blast up and down. more templeton awesomeness to the creek, then short but sweet crossover on baldwin to the Hiline trail. Folks, we have another sedona winner with the Hiline Trail. completely awesome trail, with sections remniscent of the hogs/hangover. the weather was pretty crazy at this point so i had to keep it moving, but this was really outstanding. i had earlier notions of adding a few extra miles at the end with looping made in the shade and slim shady, but it was pretty clear it was time to call it a day. and i was getting sick of the wind at this point too. ha

outstanding big day out there, without that many people all things considered. my gps screwed up on me for a while on the little horse and broken arrow trails, so the numbers associated with my gps route are not right (a little too low, especially the elevation). for those interested, the route is good though.

Joe had us hunting for holes in the ground in Sedona. He mapped out 3 hikes to hit 3 of the 6 or so Sinkholes up there.

First up was my favorite hike in Sedona. The Munds Wagon Trail/Hangover Trail Loop. I've done this one numerous times, as I like to show off Sedona to out of town guests with this one. A CW direction for the first time yielded different views. The "Sinkhole" on this one we'd passed withing 100' of every time before, not knowing it was there. Without knowing what you were looking for, this one is easily missed. Tight to get to it, but it appears to open into a 4' tall x 10' wide x 30' deep cave. I crawled down to the mouth of it, but did not go in.

Next up was the Broken Arrow Trail to Submarine Rock Trail. This was a first time on this one for me. This sinkhole was much more impressive, easy to find/hard to miss, but also fenced to keep us riff raff safe. This one was about 40' x 40' and not sure how deep. Submarine Rock was actually pretty cool. When we got there we shared the rock with the contents of 4 pink jeeps. After lunch, when we left, we had it to ourselves.

The final destination on the day was another new Sedona destination. The Turkey Creek Trail was never on my radar. Sinkhole #3 put it there. The sinkhole, a hundred or so feet off the trail, was also fenced off. This one's opening was about 25' x 15'. It skinnyed down to a 4' x 8' opening to the darkness below.

The rest of this trail was pleasant, with the highlight being the saddle after the climb. Great views from a different angle of Sedona.

Munds Wagon Trail #78
Best when the creek is running. Some will bicker it parallels a road popular with jeep tours. Snazzy views regardless.

Hangover Trail
Clockwise for a change offered new views. Either direction is outstanding.

Broken Arrow Trail #125
Old school tourist attraction until you discover High on the Hog & Hog Heaven put it to shame.

Submarine Rock
Nice to swing by after a good twenty years. Jeep tours eat it up. Lots of people exploring upon arrival. We lunched. Shockingly just one guy on vessel as we departed the voyage.

Turkey Creek Trail #92
Easily ten times better than my extremely low expectations. Glad I did it, might hit it again someday. Tough to suggest with a slew of world class hikes nearby.

Synopsis
Near prime weather hiking in the Sedona vicinity, nuff said.

Ah..first trail run in a wind tunnel.

We were supposed to get snow Christmas day so I wasn't sure I could get a run in that day. So even though it was overcast and the the winds were supposed to be in the high 20s, I decided to go for a trailrun.

The forecast called for rain at around 11am (halfway through my run) but didn't actually get some precipitation until after 12nn. Saw a few groups of hikers already going down on my way up Chicken Point and only saw 2 other groups at Broken Arrow.

Winds were supposed to be in the high 20s, I thought no big deal.
By the time I made it up to Chicken Point things got real. I had to run after my cap about 20 yards after the wind blew it off my head (time to wear it under the hood?). Reminded me of the summit of Wheeler Peak those gusts.
instagram.com/p/BOc ... nenk (warning if you are wearing headphones you might want to turn it down a little bit). No debris though for the duration of the run. Winds eventually calmed down at the juncture of Chapel Trail. I saw only 1 other group of hikers going up as I was going down. The guy had a tripod..wonder how that photo shoot turned out.

The trail was not muddy at all, just nice and cushy beneath my feet. Surprisingly there were a few Pink Jeep tours out on the trail that day. I did not see any at Chicken Point by the time I was heading back.
Clouds were big and gray, sun peeking just slightly, it snowed later that afternoon.

first time on this trail. we went out to chicken point (stunning), then did an out and back on High On the Hog (spectacular) and on the way back hit Submarine Rock. great network of trails in this area. loved it

as is typical in sedona everything is well signed and easy to follow. all kinds of possibilities to make loops out here

Bell Rock
Hands down the highlight. Using 9L's posted route it was easy to decipher. Based on the tunnel through the scrub at the bottom and the register up top this place gets a lot of visitors.

Rabbit Ears
Heard of this 11 years ago and have been mildly curious. I prefer the north part of the loop over the south. Once is probably enough. It's cool you can see the ears driving south on I-17!

The Hogs
16 years ago I mountain biked Broken Arrow. Memories of so so kept it off my return list. The Hog trails are near perfect. A low key manicured version of Hangover Trail ( favorite ). Edgy trail through lots of cypress, need I say more. Thx to tibber/gecko for bringing these great trails to light.

Templeton Trail
Bruce put this hike together. I suggested the missing spice Cathedral Rock utilizing HT & Templeton to connect. Unexpectedly found out the connectors are decent hiking. When you aren't in the cypress you are surrounded by the distant red rock formations. This trail goes to Red Rock Crossing, I may have under estimated it's potential. Tough to give it a higher rating going under a hwy and with such other great choices nearby. Let's call it a high 3.9 of 5!

Synopsis
I enjoyed the entire hike. Sedona, the forest service or whoever has done a great job with most of the trails and signage. I'm not a fan of over networked trail systems like the cough north McDowells. It works very well in this spectacular land of red rock. Wonderful weather and friendly yoga enthusiast may have made this hike better than normal.

For all the times I've hiked in Sedona, I've never really hiked much in this area. I put together a loop, Joe tweaked it a bit, and we were off.

First up, getting to the top of Bell Rock. Joe picked a decent ascent route to the top. There are only a couple spots that make you think a bit. We had the top to ourselves. Great morning views of the area.

Video from the top youtu.be/51Jch9Byq18

Next up, an area that's off the main drag. I've wanted to get a better view of the "Rabbit Ears" and found this unmarked loop on Satellite View that get's you close. We saw one mountain biker, walking her bike on the trail and that was it. A nice little change from the perfectly groomed Sedona main corridor trails.

Just before making it to Chicken Point, I lost Joe to a Yoga Class for a bit.

The High on the Hog and Hog Heaven Trails need to be put on your list if you are in this area. We were calling this the Hangover junior Trail. Great trail with great views.

After taking Joe to church, it was off to Cathedral Rock. The HT Trail and Templeton Trails are a worthy alternatives to reaching Cathedral Rock. Being one of the most popular areas in Sedona, it was jumping with all types. Including Infants, puppies, yoga pants and Grandmas.

I really enjoyed this loop with perfect weather in gods country.

I had put together a Broken Arrow hike for a day hike last year but it never came to fruition due to weather. After realizing the error in our thoughts that we could handle mid 30s and wind at Camp May south of Mormon Lake, I went back to fine tuning a route for us to take on Sunday. I spent several hours with route manager and on the MTBproject site uploading some of their routes, I put together a map and then decided we would do the southern half this time. That way we could check out some of the other sites along the way.

Two things I learned from my time on Route Manager: it's hard to join routes sometimes as it will join you back to the TH. One thing everyone should know when you fiddle with Route Manager is to save your work as you go. Second I put in way points at both trails when they would intersect so HAZel would go off incessantly when we hit an intersection. So use only one waypoint for the intersection such as at the Broken Arrow and White Line rather than one waypoint at each (as I didn't know which way for sure we would approach an intersection so I wanted to cover my bases ). Kelly found HAZel very amusing today. A couple times I was thinking a shotgun might be an appropriate end to her ranting (HAZel that is).

Now onto the hike. All I can say is WOW, WOW, WOW. What an awesome day of hiking! The trails are in wonderful shape everywhere. The Hog Trails are particularly impressive with some of the natural paving stones they did. I'm sure some of this extra fine construction would not have been done if it were just hikers but since they are biking trails, a little extra effort was obviously used which is just fine with us (especially on Hog Heaven).

We started from the Little Horse TH so that way you don't have to go into Sedona. It was a nice morning as we ambled our way toward and onto the Little Horse Trail which goes on the northeast side of Little Horse Park. Your views are of the Two Nuns to the NE and Lee Mountain to the east. While looking at one of the trail map signs a local asked if we had any questions and told us about a little side trail we could take off of from Marg's Draw (that's for next time). Soon you are walking alongside and in a drainage. Sedona has the bestest drainages; Kelly and I are always impressed by them. It started getting windier as we gained elevation and made our way to Chicken Point. We didn't beat the jeeps but that's okay. We took some obligatory pics and then continued on to Broken Arrow Trail.

I knew the White Line was near and then I recall HAZel was babbling but I wasn't listening (it was also very windy and hard to hear). So part way along the Broken Arrow I asked Kelly if we could go back and try to find the White Line and she was game. The White Line is almost immediately at the Broken Arrow/Little Horse intersection behind Chicken Point. You can see the white line in the rock too. So up we went and though we didn't follow the route because I didn't include it on my map, we just kept going vertical.

We missed part of the route that went off to the right and just went straight up. We would see bike tire marks so figured we were close enough. There really aren't any cairns up here so you're on your own. (However, if you add the route to your map, you can follow it). The views over to Munds Mountain are pretty cool up here but it was SUPER windy so we went down. Oh, I heard one of the jeep drivers call the mountain (when you're looking north at it) a camel but I thot it looked more like a snail. Apparently The White Line is notorious for this : http://www.bikemag.com...

We continued on the Broken Arrow north to the Submarine Rock but took a slight detour over to another little formation that I found out is called Mushroom Rock. Of course Kelly climbed up to the top; I just circled it. Other folks came by so we took on our way. It's kind of sad how the tires have turned the red bedrock to black. From here you can make a beeline for Submarine Rock but Kelly and I continued to follow the trail. It intersects with the Hogs but we would come back to that. The trail starts to descend and you cross thru some cypress forest and bedrock before coming to the road. You cross that and go down and up a drainage. Here you make your way around the other side (east) of the submarine. I found the birds to be very active through this forested part of the trail. You eventually end up at what I think is the stern and you climb up on it.

There weren't too many people aboard so we wandered around admiring its enormity. There were great 360 views from here. I got one really awesome photo; well several actually . The agaves had buds but were not blooming yet. They sure were pretty though. We continued north on the sub and went up to the bow. It was super windy and a bit chilly so we went off the side to have our snack and take a quick break. It was nice and cozy in the cubby hole we found. Getting up and down from the bow on the south is just a little tricky.

Well that was fun. So we walked back to the stern and took our trail back to Broken Arrow where we headed south from the intersection to get to the Hog Trails (I think these are new as of 2014?). There were some pretty cactus blooming along the way and a person-sized agave that distracted us. The Hog intersection is slightly up from the Broken Arrow on some bedrock. The view from this intersection is pretty nice as well. So now it was time to see what High on the Hog was all about as it took us toward Hog Heaven (FYI these are one way trails for bikers E to W). I found this interesting when researching:

High on the Hog and Hog Heaven are rated double black diamond for bikers. This is the international symbol to make sure your affairs are in order before you start.

High on the Hog trail continues back to the northwest and almost immediately reminded us of the Hangover Trail. The views of the Munds Wilderness are simply outstanding . The trail hugs the side of the butte as it contours very nicely to join you up with Hog Heaven in 1/3rd of a mile. There is also the intersection with the Twin Buttes Trail.

You now are heading west on Hog Heaven. The slick rock along a couple sections of this trail are pretty cool and as you look to the north you can see the Crimson Cliffs and Wilson Mountain. A little further along as you get closer to the pass we were enamored with the pools of water and the cliffs across the way with their geographic horizontal lines and varnished vertical lines. Soon you reach the saddle which puts you between the Twin Buttes to your south. You contour around the side as you make your way slightly down Hog Heaven. Here is where some of that fancy paver construction came into play that even included banking. Kelly and I were duly impressed by these. As you unwrapped around the other side the views to the NE mountains opened up. After getting distracted by cute lizard pics, we stared in amazement as more and more of those mountains appeared. It was the most beautiful rock outcropping (a finger of Munds Mountain where Marg's Draw is). But wait it gets better cuz as you continue along you can now see the Capitol Butte area too.

In slightly under a mile you reach the intersection with Hog Wash Trail (yes HAZel, we heard you the first two times). You can take the Hog Wash east back to Broken Arrow if you choose but our loop continues winding around the west side of the Twin Buttes. After walking thru a little more of the forest we came to Pig Tail Trail. As we were hiking on this I had found an old route from the Twin Buttes Loop hike desc GPS one could take instead of dropping onto Mystic. Well that route doesn't exist anymore as it's been blocked off so we ended up having to take Mystic. Once we were down to the floor level of course the terrain changed from the trees to the bushes and prickly pear. We took a break before turning south; across the way was Airport Butte.

We intersected up with the Mystic Trail and took it south to Chapel Road. We ran into a family just starting their hike for the day. You do have views of Cathedral Rock but the lighting was not the best at this time of day. Once at the road, you do gotta pay attention to the traffic as there isn't much space to walk. I did find where the old trail came out. On the way to the Chapel I found it easier walking on the south side and I'm sure glad I did as the house with the telescope dome had an incredible garden to spy on. The driveways were quite impressive too.

The Chapel parking area was very crowded. The picketpost gate to the trail is off to the east side of the parking lot. From here you head east below the Twin Butte on the Chapel Trail. It climbs a bit but has lots to show you along the way including views of Courthouse Butte and Bell Rock to the south. The trail is a little rockier in sections. We passed what we think was an intersection to a climbing trail. We did encounter a small hiking group during this part of the hike before reaching the intersection of Little Horse in about 3/4 mile from the Chapel area.

With a mile and 1/2 left and a beer calling my name, I pretty much tucked my camera away to finish off this hike for the day. It ended up being a little longer than I had planned but that's okay as it was a more than awesome day of hiking in Red Rock Country. The trails are great and the views outstanding.

As we made our left turn on the highway, Kelly's friends happened to be in the vehicle right in front of us. We had texted them on our last break to see if we could meet up (they had been climbing). Well they usually go to the Pizza Place across from the Blue Moon (where I normally go) so we went to Famous Pizza. It was nice to meet up with them (altho I had met Fletch at the johnr1 service).

I have to say some of my pics are beautiful. The video, unfortunately, has the dust on the lens issue; hopefully that's temporary. Panasonic sent me a survey to complete about my last service. Needless to say they got a polite earful as I used every word count they allowed.

Bell Rock Pathyway, Little Horse Trail - https://youtu.be/U2 ... ME_M
Little Horse Trail Part 2 - https://youtu.be/81 ... mbOI
White Line and Broken Arrow - https://youtu.be/TX ... TNa0
Broken Arrow to the Sub - https://youtu.be/3h ... BwQo
The Submarine - https://youtu.be/RJ ... bDwE
Sub to Hog Trails - https://youtu.be/Rt ... sox4
High on the Hog - https://youtu.be/9f ... UbtE
Hog Heaven - https://youtu.be/Zh ... jM7A
Hog Heaven Part 2 - https://youtu.be/8I ... M7kI
Hog Wash to Chapel Hill - https://youtu.be/gf ... VxIo
Chapel Trail - https://youtu.be/PX ... 1moE

calling this the broken arrow loop, even though it was one of the shortest segments
the posted trail map calls this area the broken arrow trail system, so that's good enough
angela put together a nice loop for us, utilizing some of the newer mountain biking trails
she also had a few side trips off broken arrow trail planned
parked at little horse trailhead, taking bell rock pathway and little horse trail to broken arrow
from there, visited chicken point, an odd toadstool rock formation, and submarine rock
a lot of pink jeeps on these formations
also climbed up to the white line, coming close to the saddle between the two nuns rock formation
the mountain biking trails were high on the hog, hog heaven and a little piece of hog wash
we should have good tracks for the first two, and hopefully angela will make pages for them
they were great trails, too - scenic, twisty and fun - some similarities to hangover trail
(note to the eagle: you could add pigtail and hog wash and make at least a 15 mile day of it)
back on mystic, chapel road, chapel trail, little horse and bell rock pathway
this trail system is accessible via other trailheads
several trails yet for us to explore another time
nice work on route manager, tibber! it was a great hike
thanks for driving, too
got a text from fletch that she and mike were climbing in sedona
we happened to be right behind them going into oak creek so met them for dinner at famous pizza
nice finish to the day

Hike # 2 – After a mid-day break for chipotle and IPA, I was expecting this to be a casual walk to close out the day of hiking; however, the day had other plans for me. Midway through lunch my hiking partners decided that as the afternoon was waning, they’d rather shop and see downtown Sedona (as they’re from out of state) rather than hit the dirt again. (The morning’s hike was rough on em – so I could see where they were coming from.) No problem, right? Well, as the afternoon waned, so did my time to hit the trail. I wasn’t about to spend my afternoon hopping from one tourist trap to another, so with my belly more than content with an overstuffed burrito (if they don’t struggle with wrapping it you didn’t put enough on☺) and a Four Peaks IPA, I said, alright “I’ll be back in an hour”.

Don’t get me wrong, there were some times I second guessed a trail run immediately after gorging to replenish from the morning’s hike, but this is a great running trail. Now onto the trail itself.

At times this trail looks straight out of Jurassic Park – the interweaving 4x4 trail juxtaposes the random 45 degreed Jeep just outside of the trail. Not so rare in itself, but when they’re painted neon and filled with ear to ear grins and neck-strapped cameras, I definitely thought “hmm, the solace of the trail would be much better without them here”. Then when I saw a few guys in mid-80s SUVs cruise through those same trails I just thought to myself “man, I gotta get one of those!”

The trail has little elevation gain but lots of rollers perfect for a mountain bike. The occasional slick rock and trail twists that hug the surrounding evergreens filled me with envy that I wasn’t on two wheels.

I hung right at the fork past Devils Dining Room to head to Chicken Point. I wasn’t sure what to expect for a view until I entered the clearing between the field goal posts of red rock and was greeted with huge wind gusts picking up sand. I didn’t stick around for long, but enough for my imagination to fill with visions of drum circles, ritual (chicken) sacrifices, and other out of body experiences a la Sedona lifestyle that make up the origin of "Chicken Point". Whatever the meaning, I’m sticking with my version.

Looking forward to getting back here on 2 wheels, if not 4.