Mescal

Alas I am still behind with our posts. Mescal was a hike we did on Monday. Actually, we did not plan to do Mescal on Monday. We planned to get to the Mescal trailhead and hike down to Devil’s Bridge. However the creek near the trailhead was too high for us to cross. I suppose we could have taken off our boots and socks and made the attempt but we know that the creek will dry up in another week or so. Devil’s Bridge will still be there.

This is the view when taking a different direction on the Mescal trail, away from Devil’s Bridge.

The trail takes a bit of time to build up steam. But I thoroughly enjoyed this hike despite getting lost a few times along the way.

After a mile or so, the trail opens up some wonderful landscapes.

We reached this amazing mesa and we had a choice to make: difficult or intermediate? But, of course, this only applies to bikes, not hikes. The hike is relatively easy on the Mescal trail.

A couple of hours in and Lorraine is still smiling!

I wasn’t sure what to do at this point in the hike. We were two hours in and we had perhaps another hour or so of daylight. Do we turn back? Or do we keep going? And, if we keep going, where does the trail take us?

We had made it to the other side of the mesa. From the picture it might be hard to guage the distance but the mesa hugs the rock face for a few thousand feet. It was here that we met a couple of very serious hikers and they helped us to plot a path back to our trailhead.

He uses Gaia GPS, a hiking app, to help navigate. And, after this hike, I downloaded the app and paid for the premium plan. Since then I have been using the app to track our hikes and to keep us from getting lost.

Based on where we were, we decided to break away from the Mescal trail and follow the Canyon of Fools trail back to Yucca and then reconnect to the Mescal trail about half a mile or so from where we were parked. It looked as though we could make it back before dark.

Note to self: bring a flashlight.

Lorraine is still smiling even though we got lost in the Canyon of Fools trail.

As fate would have it, we met a biker and he pointed us to the trail and we did make it back to our car safe and sound.

It would be hard to get really lost on the trails here in Sedona. Eventually you will find a way out. But it might add hours to a hike and, as we were getting closer to sunset, we really did not want to be navigating the trails in the dark. Rocks, cacti, twists in the trail along with elevation changes are challenging enough in the light.