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| Hiking | 11.30 Miles |
932 AEG |
| | Hiking | 11.30 Miles | 4 Hrs 25 Mns | | 2.56 mph |
| 932 ft AEG | | | | |
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| partners | | Made another road trip to Sedona to hike more unhiked trails there. I've been wanting to knock out some of the easier, tourist-ridden ones in the central area for a while now. I see them all the time driving through and I wanted to check them out.
We started just about 7:30am, just before the sun hit the horizon and lit up Bell Rock and Courthouse Butte with the golden dawn lighting. We did a counter-clockwise loop starting with the Big Park loop, then connecting to the Courthouse Butte loop, and headed north to the Llama Trail. At the high point of the Courthouse Butte loop there were very nice views to the north of the rest of Sedona. Also saw some hot air balloons on the other side of Cathedral Rock, making for some nice shots.
When we finished the Llama Trail and hit the Little Horse Trail, we had already done about 5.6 miles. I was kind of planning to go to Chicken Point or the Chapel of the Cross, but each was about a mile and a half more to hike. I needed to be back in Mesa before 6pm to finish shopping errands, so I wanted to keep the mileage no more than 12 miles. I decided to head back on Little Horse and the Bell Rock path and then did a little more of the inter-loop trails between the Courthouse Butte and Big Park loops.
Once we hit the Bell Rock Path, it was tourist central. Right off the bat we were approached by 2 older ladies saying they were lost and wanted to know how to get to the vortex.  I asked which one and they said Bell Rock, which was 3 miles away. The realized they didn't want to hike that far and decided to find a closer trailhead. As we hiked past Bell Rock, it was practically covered in tourists climbing all over it.
Early on we seemed run into a lot of people from PA, many of them Steeler fans. Seemed to be a running theme throughout the day. We were probably the 3rd or 4th car in the parking lot when we arrived, and when we returned it was filled and overrun with cars waiting for open spots. |
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Route Editor
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