By HUNTER O. LYLE
SEDONA, AZ – As I took my last steps off of rock and onto the dusty, dirt path that led back to the parking lot, the muffled sound of rushing water beckoned from somewhere behind the bleached bushes. After a few more minutes of one foot in front of another, the sound grew louder and louder until I was finally standing at the shoreline of Oak Creek.
I was the only person taking in the breeze along the river’s rocky beach, but I wouldn’t have cared if everyone in Sedona was standing alongside me. Through four hours of scrambling up and down Cathedral Rock, the sun had cooked me and while I had kept up with my hydration, staving off headaches and dizziness, my skin was turning to bacon as I began the last mile towards my van.
Without taking another look up or down the trail, I heaved myself over a fallen tree and down into a shady and secluded cove. First, the backpack came off. Then the hat, bandana and shirt. The boots and socks and finally, off came the shorts. Wading into the surprisingly ice cold water, I plopped down in my underwear, feeling the strong current rush over my sunbeaten body. Plunging my head under the water, my system was shocked back to life, a second wind suddenly overtaking me.
But as I took one glimpse back to the trail, a path that led past the shade of overhanging rocks and trees and back out into the full bore of the desert sun sooner rather than later, any illusion of leaving the water dispersed. The trail could wait.
SUNDAY WAS MY LAST day in New Mexico, and as a special send off, Jer, who I was staying with in Los Lunas, and I took the evening tram up to the top of the Sandia Mountains. Lounging at 10,300 feet, we enjoyed a farewell dinner at the lavish “TEN | 3” restaurant before taking in the even more lavish sunset through our respective viewfinders. As the sun dipped below a far-away mesa, the city of Albuquerque began to glow.
Against a horizon of deepening nothingness, the city was a pool of shimmering lights, a distant quilt of budding nightlife that was an impossible map of new formed memories. As we waited in a queue for the returning tram, I stared out into the wind, trying to recall all of the places I’d seen and people I’d met over the last five days. And while I thought about learning to two-step at the Dirty Bourbon and swapping stories and laughs with Jess in the parlor of Bert and Jess Clothiers, I noticed a single stream of lights leaking from the city and heading off into the empty night.
Soon I realized how actually familiar I was with that column of fleeting lights. I had rode it’s current most of the way to New Mexico, and in just a handful of hours, I would be packed up and ready to embed myself once again, back onto the hustling lanes of Interstate-40.
FIVE HOURS WEST OF Albuquerque rests Flagstaff, Arizona, a dispersed, high-altitude city of roughly 77,000 residents that resembles more of a pocket of Colorado than the stereotypical Arizona iconography. Feeling exceptionally worn from the road, I decided to forgo Sedona another day and spend the night editing photos from the comfort of a Walmart parking lot and trekking through the pitch black caverns of the Lava River Cave, whose terminus finished a mile and a half away from the reaches of daylight.
Driving South and dipping beneath the rims of the Oak Creek Canyon early the next morning, I watched Flagstaff’s pine-covered mountains gradually swap their brooding green for blazing scarlet, the rolling ranges morphing into high spires and buttes that screamed from the lowlands to flat-topped peaks. I watched in awe as I descended down the switchbacks into a small city set inside a maze of towering cliffs and ridges, the strata ranging from blood red bases to bone white caprock.
Immediately, my compass pointed towards a trailhead.
Having suffered severe forest fires just the week before, multiple of my top choices – Devil’s Bridge, Robbers Roost and Subway Cave – were closed. However, Cathedral Rock, one of Sedona’s most popular routes, was still open via the Baldwin Loop. Without hesitation, I weaved through the quaint, upscale Sedona neighborhoods, out onto a dirt road and off into the brush. Backpack, boots, plenty of water, and I was out on the trail once again.
THE OPENING MILE AND a half of the hike serves as orientation. Cruising down a sandy path, passing patches of prickly pear cactuses along the way, you are immediately greeted with a view of the task ahead. Standing over top of you looms Cathedral Rock, a fortress of orange spires on top of a bell shaped base which stares down as you duck around corners towards the ascent. Finally, after passing the Oak Creek, the first switchback appears and off you go, above the lowlands and onto the mesa.
Walking alone from the Baldwin Loop to the Templeton Trail, my solitude was broken at the true base of Cathedral, a large rounded stage where several others were starting to plan their route. From here, the path disappeared other than white blazes and the occasional cairn. It was on you to get up, somehow or another.
Eager for a scramble, I began jamming my feet into crevasses, pinching handholds and lugging myself up one ledge at a time. Stopping at the occasional log jam of hikers, all scanning for their preferred way up, I studied my predecessor’s footsteps, copying their movements as I pulled my way up the mountain.
By the time I saw the summit, I was fully immersed with the terrain. My hands naturally found the perfect cracks, supporting my weight as my legs prepared to spring and carry me to the next outcropping. Before I knew it, and before I was ready to stop, a wooden sign stood in front of me:
“End of Trail.”
Catching my breath, I looked beyond, where a bowl opened past the monolithic, amber walls and looked down on the greater Verde Valley. Towards the horizon, waves of rolling canyons criss crossed and collided, mashing together in a mesh of broken and jagged valleys that erupted in a palette of sunburnt hues.
JOINED BY A HANDFUL of other summiters, I walked the U-shaped terrace, scrambling to as many viewpoints as I could while filling my camera roll with countless angles that always seemed to fail to capture the true beauty before me. For the next hour, I explored every nook and cranny, mapping the crests, the cliffs and the caves, bouncing from one shady spot to the next as I scanned for my next perch. As the late morning burned into early afternoon, the herd thinned and I eventually found myself alone atop the rock, hearing only my footsteps and the sound of wind whooshing over the summit and down through the canyon.
Finally, it was time to return back to base and after a few more shots, I reluctantly turned back down the trail. The descent passed quickly. Whereas I meticulously looked for grip and leverage on the way up, for large portions of the way down, I simply sat and slid, using my hands to slow my speed as I glided down the rockface and in half the time it took to go up, I was once again back at the Cathedral Rock trailhead. Turning left towards the Baldwin Loop, I left the crowds and was again alone, left to deal with the sun by my lonesome.
As I marched on, sweat trickling down behind my ears and along the bridge of my nose, my mind revolved around one thought:
“The river is closer than the car.”
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All Rights Reserved Star News LLC. Eric M. Firkel.
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