Climbing Cathedral Rock... Finally!
Sedona Travelog #16
Cathedral Rock - Tue, 31 May 2022, 8am
Today is our last day in Sedona. Actually it's our last half day as we need to leave at noon. This whole trip, climbing Cathedral Rock has been my #1 priority. Now, in our last few hours in town, we're doing it. Finally!
Why wait so long? Crowds. Cathedral Rock is not just my #1 priority but high on the lists of many of the area's visitors. There's only a small parking lot down in the canyon at its foot. On the weekends the town blocks off the road to private cars and runs a mandatory shuttle service. Taking the shuttle wouldn't have worked for us; it would've aggravated Hawk's back. Plus, hiking this trail alongside multiple hundreds of people would have aggravated our spirits. So we took advantage of our longer-than-normal weekend plan to come here on Tuesday.
Once again we awoke at 6 this morning and left the hotel by 7. The trailhead was only a few miles' drive. Even so, at 7:15am on a Tuesday, we got the last parking spot.
The trail up Cathedral Rock starts out innocently enough, crossing a sandy wash then rising up the opposite side. Pretty soon the sandy ground ends, though, and the trail traverses bare rock. Stacks of rocks, called cairns, mark the recommended route. You can see some of them in the next photo.
The trail starts to get steep. That's not surprising, though, if you either 1) do the basic math: the trail rises 800' in 0.7 miles; or b) just look up. 🤣
The enormous scale in the photo above makes it hard to appreciate how steep the trail is even where those folks near the bottom of the frame are hiking. Here the trail climbs over a set of rock ledges each about 4' high. For a person with good footwear who's done this sort of thing before, it's not hard. ...Edit: for a tall person, etc., etc., it's not hard. Hawk had to go hunting for easier approaches to obstacles I just clambered over.
And then the trail gets tougher. Way tougher. Stay tuned!
UPDATE: Rock-scrambling to the top!
Cathedral Rock - Tue, 31 May 2022, 8am
Today is our last day in Sedona. Actually it's our last half day as we need to leave at noon. This whole trip, climbing Cathedral Rock has been my #1 priority. Now, in our last few hours in town, we're doing it. Finally!
Why wait so long? Crowds. Cathedral Rock is not just my #1 priority but high on the lists of many of the area's visitors. There's only a small parking lot down in the canyon at its foot. On the weekends the town blocks off the road to private cars and runs a mandatory shuttle service. Taking the shuttle wouldn't have worked for us; it would've aggravated Hawk's back. Plus, hiking this trail alongside multiple hundreds of people would have aggravated our spirits. So we took advantage of our longer-than-normal weekend plan to come here on Tuesday.
Once again we awoke at 6 this morning and left the hotel by 7. The trailhead was only a few miles' drive. Even so, at 7:15am on a Tuesday, we got the last parking spot.
The trail up Cathedral Rock starts out innocently enough, crossing a sandy wash then rising up the opposite side. Pretty soon the sandy ground ends, though, and the trail traverses bare rock. Stacks of rocks, called cairns, mark the recommended route. You can see some of them in the next photo.
The trail starts to get steep. That's not surprising, though, if you either 1) do the basic math: the trail rises 800' in 0.7 miles; or b) just look up. 🤣
The enormous scale in the photo above makes it hard to appreciate how steep the trail is even where those folks near the bottom of the frame are hiking. Here the trail climbs over a set of rock ledges each about 4' high. For a person with good footwear who's done this sort of thing before, it's not hard. ...Edit: for a tall person, etc., etc., it's not hard. Hawk had to go hunting for easier approaches to obstacles I just clambered over.
And then the trail gets tougher. Way tougher. Stay tuned!
UPDATE: Rock-scrambling to the top!