Sedona ZR2 Weekend Get-Together

My group made it through the mess of traffic that is Sedona to the trail head, on the south side of town. The trail leaves from the end of a residential street, and starts right in with the obstacles. I took the lead, and Kyle took up the rear, bracketing the newbies (which is a term of endearment in my book) between us. Dale, having never been off-road before, required some coaching from the start, but he proved to be a quick study. Sub Rock is a pretty solid 3-rated trail, so it kept the newbies on their toes. The first real obstacle for them was a two foot step up onto a patch of slickrock. I climbed up and parked so that I could spot the others up.

Seapahn was first after me, and he made it up without much difficulty. After Seapahn was Yoli, who was certain that her Jeep wouldn't make it up. It has been a while since I've gone wheeling with someone who isn't locked in the rear, so I put her on a bad line her first try. Her jeep wouldn't twist well, and the off-camber climb left her without traction. When Kyle and I got her lined up perpendicular to the ledge she was able to power up it with a little wheel spin. Dale didn't think he would be able to make it up the ledge either, but with the rear gov-lock, he made easy work of it. Both Yoli and Dale were ecstatic that they'd made it. When Kyle made it up, we continued on.

On the early part of the trail, we encountered a number of the very prolific Pink Jeeps (of Pink Jeep Tours) and a group of about seven, mainly VERY high dollar Toyotas. Because the first part of the trail is very narrow and handles two way traffic, our progress was sporadic and difficult. It was an especially busy morning on the trail. Eventually we found a plan that worked pretty well. I would run ahead and find a spot large enough for the group. I would then direct traffic from there, telling my group when the coast was clear, and stopping on coming traffic if my group was coming up.

Eventually we got past the two-way section of the trail and onto the "lollipop," one-way, portion. Shortly after that, we took a short spur up to Submarine Rock. The climb up to Sub Rock looks more difficult than it actually is, and with a little coaching, we got everyone up without incident. The Toyota group was already up there, so we decided not to stay long so we could get out before them. As it turns out, they decided to leave right after us, so when we got down to the bottom of the hill we pulled off and let them pass. We ended up passing them shortly when they stopped for lunch.

We continued on and took the spur to Chicken Point and enjoyed the fabulous view. Seapahn was all over the place taking pictures of everything from every angle. It's a good thing his digital camera holds a lot of pictures! Some more Pink Jeeps came and went, and eventually the Toyota crew piled in. We made that our cue to leave and finish the trail. After consulting with a Pink Jeep to determine that the spur road back to the loop road was clear, we high-tailed it down to the one-way section to finish the loop. Unfortunately, we soon acquired a contingent of tailgaters and were forced to keep moving. We should have just let them pass.

With two Pink Jeeps hot on our tails, we eventually made it to The Road of No Return, what I've heard others call the Devil's Staircase. My memories of it from my mountain biking days in Sedona were that it was very ledgy and formidable. Years of heavy traffic had made it far less of both. It still looks absolutely brutal to the novice of course. The descent is really just a matter of staying slow, and staying straight. Yoli was the only one who had some problems with the former. Her tires didn't grab the rubber coated slickrock well so she did a lot more sliding down the road than rolling.

Once we all got past The Road of No Return, it was a short scurry out the two-way traffic section that we drove on the way in. We had far less trouble with traffic on the way out.

Once off the trail, we headed back to Raven Heart to see how everyone else was doing. The first group that went to Soldier Pass were hanging out in the parking lot, and the second group came off the trail shortly after we arrived. Without much delay, we switched trails. The five who had done Soldier Pass went out to do Sub Rock, and the five in my group did Soldier Pass. Apparently, the other group encountered far less traffic on Sub Rock than we did, and we encountered far less traffic on Soldier Pass than either of the two sub-groups had. In fact, we only encountered one other vehicle the whole time.

We drove to the end of the trail, then hit the side trips on the way back. First we stopped at the Seven Sacred Pools, which we didn't even realize we were at until we were leaving. It was there that we first encountered the Red Rock Tours Jeep that was our only company on the trail. She was leaking some fluid, so we told her about it as we left. Our next side trip was up to the Devil's Kitchen, a very large sinkhole. On one of the tougher ascents, we let the Red Rock jeep go by us. All I can say is that if I had paid $65 for that ride, I would have been pissed! She just slammed her way up the climb, nearly throwing her passengers clear out of the jeep! I would have been embarrassed to have given people paying me a ride like that.

I discovered the reason for it soon after though. As I was walking down the climb to spot Seapahn coming up, I found a quarter in the middle of the trail. I figure the tour operators try to shake all of the loose change out of their passengers' pockets then come back at night and collect it all for some extra profit. Once we got up to the Devil's Kitchen we sat around and chatted again for a while. Seapahn once again displayed his penchant for taking photographs of everything.

We left the Devil's Kitchen after the Red Rock Jeep had, and I noticed that there were only two tiny fluid spots on the ground where the Jeep had been parked. I speculated that either the leak had sealed itself, or she was completely out of (t-case I think) fluid. Care to take a guess as to which is more probable?

After exiting off of Soldier Pass trail, we stopped to say our good-byes to Yoli, who headed back to Prescott. We then headed south towards and past the Village of Oak Creek to find a place to camp. We eventually found a really nice, secluded area that was outside of the infamous Red Rock Pass (fee) area. We were all glad to avoid having to pay the fee to park in the National Forest. It was sunset when we arrived, so we moved quickly to try to get as much set up before dark as possible. We didn't get very far in that endeavor, so most of our set-up was in the dark. The B-crew entered radio range shortly after dark so we directed them in to our location and everyone went about the business of making camp.

I had the unenviable chore of trying to get a queen-size air mattress inflated to keep my Queen happy. Let's just say that a $40 K-Mart air compressor doesn't put out many cfm's . . . Fortunately, Chris came to the rescue with his on-board QuickAir2. After seeing how handy the QuickAir was in inflating her mattress, I almost had Shan ready to go out and buy one for me! At least something good came out of inflating that darn mattress! But the way I figure it, if it gets me on-board air, I can deal with the queen size air mattress every now and again.

Once the air mattress was inflated (this was done with the mattress already inside the tent since it was too big to fit through the door inflated), I enlisted Kyle's help to carry the tent with the mattress inside up the hill to our camp site. After getting that set up, we headed over to the group area where the others had already gotten a nice campfire going. Most of the group was there, and we sat around sharing food and stories for the rest of the night, all the while marveling at the vast number of stars that were visible from that isolated desert valley.

People packed it in pretty early though, and Dale decided to head back to Phoenix that night. It's too bad, because we really enjoyed his company, and he would have loved our travels the following day.