The time is 9:00 AM on a clear and sunny Saturday morning in Red Rock Country, as five Arizona Trailblazers – Ted Tenny, Joe Michalides, Darleen Lindquist, Michael Humphrey, and hike leader Chuck Parsons – arrive at the South Gateway Visitors Center on Highway 179 south of Sedona. We will be picking up our Red Rock Passes and meeting John Floyd, a new resident of Sedona, who discovered The Arizona Trailblazers Hiking Club while doing a web search for local hiking clubs. Within minutes we meet John, purchase our passes, and head back south for about 1.5 miles on 179 to the Woods Canyon Trailhead, located at a gated turnoff on the east side of the highway at Milepost 304.7. We park our vehicles outside of the gate and get ourselves organized for the day’s hike.

Just inside the gate an ancient, rusted metal sign reading “Woods Canyon #93” marks the beginning of Woods Canyon Trail. We get off to a somewhat confusing start on the old jeep road that will serve as our trail for the first mile and a quarter. A distinct – although obviously long abandoned – roadbed suddenly seems to disappear into a tangled mass of weeds and undergrowth, as we soon find ourselves hiking alongside a clear, running spring. After a bit of backtracking, we finally manage to find our jeep road/trail once again and proceed on our way. Although we enjoy a slight breeze from time to time, it is already starting to get a bit warm, as we hike down the road with full sun overhead, the temperature already over 80 degrees and not a cloud in sight.

The Woods Canyon Trailhead starts out at 3,900 feet, and we will ascend a total of 400 feet today, before topping out at 4,300 feet at trail’s end.

Moving steadily along on this relatively flat and level portion of the trail, we see large, scattered patches of prickly pear cactus, numerous small mesquite and ironwood trees, occasional manzanitas, picturesque multi-stalk yuccas, and pesky cat claw acacia, whose wicked curved thorns reach out to scratch unprotected arms and legs and grab clothing.

We make good time on the jeep road, as it ends and makes a subtle transition to a regular hiking trail and starts a gradual ascent, as we get deeper into Woods Canyon. At some point along the trail, everyone gathers around a large, hairy tarantula just off to the side of the trail and attempts to take its picture, before it scurries off into the underbrush in search of the safety of its cool underground burrow.

Deeper into the canyon, the vegetation transitions into more juniper, pine, and scrub oak that overhangs the trail in places and affords us some meager shade from time to time. The trail crosses a dry streambed a number of times, while some sections of it seem to go right down the middle in a jumbled mass of river rock that makes for more challenging hiking conditions. We long for the flat, relatively smooth jeep road again – much easier on the feet and knees. At two miles, we cross the streambed once again and pass through a cattle gate, before coming to a signed fork in the trail.

The Hot Loop Trail traverses uphill to our left and steadily climbs to the top of Horse Mesa. We will continue straight ahead today, although Ted remarks that the Hot Loop could be a possible future hike under cooler conditions – perhaps next spring.

As the morning progresses and the sun slowly moves higher into the brilliantly blue Arizona sky, the temperature continues to rise and is now approaching 90 degrees – unseasonably warm for the Sedona area in mid October.

We all start to wish for cloudy, overcast weather to give us some relief from the relentless sun, as we make our way into the Munds Mountain Wilderness Area, one of three such wilderness areas totaling 124,000 acres surrounding Sedona. We stop in the shaded areas from time to time to take short water breaks and cool down a bit. The trail starts another gradual ascent, and at roughly three miles we find ourselves hiking along side and about twenty feet above the wide and boulder filled Dry Beaver Creek.

Dry Beaver Creek lives up to its name today without a drop of water in its wide, expansive bed. It almost seems to mock us with the promising shade of its huge cottonwood and sprawling sycamore trees that are deeply rooted in the middle of the creek bed, their long taproots probing its depths, searching out any remaining moisture they can find far beneath the surface.

As promising as the enticing shade is right now, it would be quite an arduous task to boulder hop down the middle of the creek bed, so we opt to hike the easier, although hotter, path along the sunny edge of the creek. We marvel at the vast width of this dry creek bed, before coming to realize that it is the major drainage for Woods Canyon. During the annual spring thaws of March and April (during normal non- drought years), Dry Beaver Creek can carry an enormous volume of water, as it drains much of the Woods Canyon watershed and flows bank to bank.

During the flash floods that can occur after heavy summer monsoon rains, Dry Beaver Creek can quickly turn into an angry, raging torrent of swirling, muddy water ripping through Woods Canyon with the power and the fury of few other things in the natural world.

By 11:30 we have hiked 3.7 miles into the canyon, and we are ready to stop for a lunch and rest break.

We seek out the cool, inviting shade of a few large sycamore trees and sit among the large boulders in the creek bed, as we break out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, chips, apples, and cool water. Thankfully, there is not too much chance of a flash flood on this unseasonably hot and dry fall day in Red Rock Country, so we don’t need to worry very much about a quick escape route to higher ground for the moment. Finishing our lunches, we note some very unusual and interesting markings high up in a few of the vertical slabs of red sandstone above the trail and opposite our lunch site. They are very circular in shape and roughly several feet in diameter, with the sandstone eroded away several inches deep.

Back on the trail, we examine them closer and wonder if they are the result of wind or water erosion.

We take a few pictures for the record and move on down the trail, as Ted stays behind to investigate a smaller side canyon. We keep in touch with him via the Motorola TalkAbouts, as we hike deeper into Woods Canyon.

The trail now starts to gradually gain elevation, climbing out of the Dry Beaver Creek area and moving farther inland into a high desert environment once again. We continue on for another half-mile, before the trail begins to get rougher and more impassable, the deeper we go. We radio Ted that we are going to turn back and meet up with him at the side canyon, where he informs us that his hike was pretty tough as well. The Woods Canyon Trail actually runs almost fifteen miles end to end, terminating near Robbers Roost, an abandoned cabin near the Rocky Park exit off of I-17.

However, beyond our turn around point (4.2 miles), much of the trail follows an old game trail that requires some major bushwhacking and boulder hopping, along with occasional wading or swimming to ford some of the deeper pools in the upper Dry Beaver Creek area.

Perhaps that might be a future two-day backpacking trip to consider.

With the hot afternoon sun bearing down on us, we start the long trek back to the trailhead. At one point I check my thermometer and discover that it is now a blistering 98 degrees. No wonder we are all sweating bullets! Hard to believe that it is this warm in the red rock country of Sedona in mid-October. A few small clouds drift across the sky from time to time, blocking the sun and giving us temporary relief, but it is all short lived. The goal now is simply to hike out of here as quickly as we can and get out of this heat.

By 2:15 PM, we are all assembled back at the trailhead, where we brush off the day’s trail dust and Ted shares some of his cold water with us. Joe and Darleen decide to do some sightseeing in Sedona and John heads back to his new Sedona home, while the rest of us head back to the Valley of the Sun, aptly named since it will be even hotter. Perhaps we should start hiking the Sedona area in November from now on.