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| Hiking | 19.47 Miles |
2,900 AEG |
| | Hiking | 19.47 Miles | 7 Hrs 20 Mns | | 2.66 mph |
| 2,900 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | Second hike of the daily double. After stopping to get batteries for my garmin I headed over to Jacks Canyon TH. Whereas parking might be a problem at many of the TH in Sedona, this is not the case at this TH. Always plenty of parking! Got on the trail just after 8am. Did this loop CCW. The first mile took me along the backside of some Sedona homes up to a saddle. Looking back there is an ok view of Oak Creek Village and Courthouse, but vegetation forced me to "find" that spot. From the saddle there was a .5 mile descent to meet the Hot Loop junction. This junction is marked. Turning SW, drops you down to the Woods Canyon Trail and eventually the Ranger Station. Turning NE kept me on on the Hot/Jack loop. From the junction there was a little over 1 mile gradual ascent. This section was very rocky, but easy to follow. When I reached the top of Horse Mesa the trail flattened out nicely (hence the descriptive word "mesa ") and was like this for about the next 4 miles. As I reached the mesa, I started to hear an incessant barking sound. At first, I thought I had come across another hiker with a dog. But as it continued (and it did, non stop), I started to detect the yips that I might associate with a coyote. My curiosity piqued, the trail drew me closer to the source. Sure enough, it was a lone coyote. Unfortunately, my approach had disturbed it, and I just saw it trotting away as I approached the area. I have never heard a coyote carry on in such a fashion. Really bizarre! (Side note: At the top of the mesa there is a turn off to the west that I imagine takes you to a lookout point, but I did not confirm this as I was more curious about the yipping). As I neared the end of the mesa it started to narrow and the east side began offering some great views of Woods Canyon. (Another side: About 4 miles in, I got my first view of I-17 and it was pretty much an auditory presence my entire time on the mesa. Not annoyingly so, but detectable). About 7 miles in the trail started to descend to a lower shelf with good sized pine trees and the beautiful Sedona red rock. There were quite a few of glimpses of canyon cliff views that the trail teased me with, but never really approached. Not sure if the "cliffs" we're as dramatic as they appeared, but they looked awesome from the trail. Undoubtedly, this was the best part of the hike! Simply gorgeous in this area. Around the 9 mile mark, I started another mile long climb, to the top of Schnebly Hill. The trail got fairly rough in this area and this was the only time I needed to do any route finding. Near the top the trail is overgrown with 8 foot tall brush which I had to plow my way through. (But after Ballantine Trail, this section was a walk in the park  ). Upon reaching the top, the vegetation that I was fighting my way through falls away and I reached an open mesa with scrub pine and not much else. The trail joins an ATV road and follows it for about 3 miles. This would have been a fairly boring section to hike, except for the weather conditions. The snow flurries had returned so this had become almost surreal. I came upon Jacks Point Tank. There was water there, but it was frozen - though a decent sized rock was able to break through. It was around this point that I realized that my hand was covered in blood  Literally! It looked like I had cut a major artery or that I had been bleeding for hours. (As it turned out, I had scratched myself - a very small scratch - on the last climb to the top and the scratch had continued to bleed for a good half hour before I became aware of it. You would think with the freezing temperatures that my blood would have coagulated a little quicker. Darn old age!). Anyway, without having anything to clean it up with, I ended up hiking with bare hand exposed to the elements for the rest of the hike. Needless to say I did a lot of huffing and puffing on that hand for the duration. The trail eventually leaves the road, passes through a gate and within .5 miles connects to Jacks Canyon Trail. I would love to revisit this section on a clear day to see what it would look like. The weather was such, that even though I'm pretty sure Munds Mountain was there for the viewing the entire time that I was Schnebly Hill, I never saw it. It wasn't until I was practically on top of the Munds mountain trail sign that the slope of the mountain came into view. Neat! The hike down Jacks went very smoothly. The first quarter mile is badly eroded and there are a couple of spots where the trail begins to thread, but I had been on this trail a few months earlier and handled all this wth aplomb. It was cool seeing the upper sections dusted with snow. (My Garmin was near dead at this time so I only took a couple of pictures of this area). The last part of Jacks was pretty "blah". It is recovering from an old burn, so it is fairly exposed and the homes become more dominant as I neared the TH. Saw 4 deer and a good number of cattle at that point, so that made this area a little more interesting. |
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