A Long Loop and an Old Favorite

Today's hike was a little complicated. I started out on the Chimney Rock Pass Upper Loop, which was a hike I did last year. I decided to add the Thunder Mountain Trail to it since I was going to be hiking part of it anyway in making the loop back to the parking lot. There was a similar loop in the same area involving the Andante trail, so I ended up doing Chimney Rock Upper down to where it intersected with the Thunder Mountain Trail, then hiked Thunder Mountain up to where it ended, and came back on the Andante trail. That eventually led me back to the Chimney Rock/Thunder Mountain intersection, where I hiked the first part of Thunder Mountain back to my car. The timing worked out great! I needed to be back at my hotel room in time for Enterprise to pick me up for my SUV rental for next week. I got back just in time to have lunch. After I had the SUV, I headed down Highway 179 for my favorite sunset viewing area. For the third time this trip, I ran into Alan and Elaine, who share the same first names as my aunt and uncle. I guess photographic minds think alike! Alan gets the credit for suggesting I try this shot of Court House Rock with the moon above it after the sun had set.

I have previously mentioned the book Sedona Hikes by Richard and Sherry Mangum. I consider it an essential tool for hiking in Sedona, and wouldn't think of coming here without it. However, one thing the book misses the mark on in my opinion is setting expectations on the difficulty level of certain hikes. Take, for example, the Thunder Mountain Trail. The authors have it rated as "Easy", and describe it as "mostly level". Therefore, I thought it would make a great addition to what I had intended to be a break from climbing today. The trail might average "level". Maybe if you take all the multiple times it moves up and down crossing this same dry creek bed again and again, and count the ups as plusses and the downs as minuses, you'll end up with a zero overall. But to me, the bulk of the hike resembled a rocky sine wave, and seemed to be level only near the end and near the beginning. I wouldn't say the trail was difficult, just that it was much more of a workout than I was expecting from an "easy, mostly level" trail.