My last Arizona adventure

Page Type Page Type: Trip Report
Location Lat/Lon: 34.91780°N / 111.7503°W
Date Date Climbed/Hiked: May 4, 2004
Did this with a freind from church named Tree. This was Trees first time to Sedona. He wanted to do something with me before I spit to Colorado, So I chose Wilson Mountain. This will have been the last hike in Arizona for me in a long time. Tree just move to Arizona from Chicago and new nothing about hiking in Arizona. He showed up to my apartment with nice white tennis shoes. I did not realize those were the shoes we was planning on hiking in. After reaching the red rocks he noticed the red dirt and was amazed by it and asked me, "are we going to be hiking in that? I responed, "Yes we are. That dirt will stain your shoes and go right through them and stain your socks red. He said, "We are going to be finding a hiking store, I'm going to buy boots. illinois does not have anything like this and it's ok to go hiking in white shoes." We found a little outdoor hiking store and he got some boots along with a few other things. I picked up some film and we were on our way to Wilson Mountain. We started at 10:05. We reached the plateue at 12:24. We then continued to the Tool Shed. From here we did not go to the canyon overlook or the Sedona overlook We decided to head south off trail up to the true peak at 7,122'. This proved to be a steep little hike, hiking up about 200 verticle feet weaving our way through the forest. Tree is 6'5" and kept hitting his head on low (or not so low) branches. We came to a point that we had to scramble up about 20 feet up some rocks. We finally reached the peak at 12:48. The peak is a small rock outcropping with a fairly small point. It is one of the smallest peaks I've ever seen. This was very unexpected. I figured a mountain with such a huge mesa would have a relitivly good sized peak, but this is not so with Wilson Mountain. we stayed on the summit till 1:40 resting in the coolness of the forest. We then started heading down. Before we knew it we were back at the first bench and the heat started rising. As we decended the heat just got worse. At one point I was so sick of the heat I was moving as fast as I could without running. This proved to be a bad mistake. I started overheating and so did Tree. We finally stopped under some shade and took a long break. Moving was slower then to maintain cooler body temperature. Tree ended up running out of water and I gave him a liter more. He ran out of that too. This guy can drink like a madman and he still got dehydrated. We got back to the trail at 3:24 and it was about 90 degrees. Tree was not feeling so good. We went into Sedona and got some ice cream and headed back to Phoenix. After blasting the AC and drinking water he ended up feeling better. It was a very good day overall reaching a summit and going to my favorite place in AZ. This was a really good introduction to Sedona for Tree and a really good last hike in AZ for me. I cannot say I will be missing the heat though.

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