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| Hiking | 16.02 Miles |
2,036 AEG |
| | Hiking | 16.02 Miles | 7 Hrs 10 Mns | | 2.67 mph |
| 2,036 ft AEG | 1 Hour 10 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | We originally wanted to hike here over the Thanksgiving Holiday but bad weather forced us to reschedule until now. We left Phoenix on Friday afternoon and headed up. We took a short cut through Cottonwood Canyon Road and this saved us roughly an hour & a lot of road miles. From there we headed for Hole in the Rock Rd and that took us one hour and forty five minutes to drive down in the dark. We arrived a little after 10pm and slept in the jeep.
We woke fairly early on Saturday and loaded up for our day hike & hit the trail right before 7am Az time. You start by following slick rock as you do a modest climb. Once up top we found the trail and were on our way. The going is fairly easy as you follow a worn trail. We made good time as we hiked in. It was a beautiful and cool morning where we managed a steady pace as we headed for Navajo Mountain, which was covered in snow. The miles ticked by and we took a break roughly 5 miles in. We continued on and then turned to the southeast and left the trail in favor of the slickrock. For this section, we made a counter clockwise loop and heavily relied on our GPS Route. There were sporadic cairns but they didn’t help. Along the way we found several potholes of water, I imagine these will last into May.
Once at the overlook, we took an extended break and admired the view. It really is amazing, and we had the place to ourselves. We took a variety of pics and ate lunch and relaxed. After roughly an hour, we packed up and started our return. This time we followed a route that was well marked with cairns and this made for quick travel. We would connect onto the trail section and then cruised back. The last mile or so became a drag but we got it done as moody clouds moved in. We took a short break and then started the drive out. We took our time but again it took roughly one hour & forty five minutes. It was much easier driving out during the day. We hit town and grabbed some food to go and returned to Cottonwood Canyon Road. We drove about halfway and ate dinner by the creek and then loaded back up and returned to Phoenix where we got home around 11pm.
This was a hell of a trip and I’m glad we got it done. We only had to take a half day on Friday and could have done this exclusively over the weekend if we wanted to. The drive took roughly 9 hours from Phoenix and it included 100 miles of dirt in both directions. I have a jeep wrangler and didn’t need to engage my 4x4. Beside that, the hike took 7+ hours and that includes a one hour break at the overlook. |
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