Doe Mountain Trail

“Let’s hike Doe Mountain,” I said to Lorraine. “It should be a quick and easy climb.”

Turns out that Doe Mountain is a little bit harder than it looks. Not anywhere as challenging as the Bear Mountain hike, but challenging enough to test your hiking skills in a few spots.

The mountain has a large mesa at the summit and the elevation climb is a little over 500 feet. The view at the top is amazing even if the summit is about a 1,000 feet below that of Bear Mountain. This was a late start to the hike and we had to take care to ensure that we began our descent before we lost the light.

Here is a video overview of the hike on the GaiaGPS app.

And here is a video of the hike.

We approached Doe Mountain from the Aerie Trail and, from here, it does not look all that hard. More like a leisurely stroll than a steep climb.

To our left is Bear Mountain. The peak, at the very left side of the picture, is roughly 6,200 feet. The climb up Bear Mountain was anything but leisurely.

Doe Mountain does gain some stature as you get closer to the trailhead.

At the base of the Doe Mountain trail are steps fashioned out of stones. This part of the climb is set to confuse the hiker. It starts off as a very welcoming and easy hike.

Casting another glance towards Bear Mountain and I was thankful that the Doe Mountain hike for this evening was going to be like a walk in the park.

It was here that the climb started to take a turn for the worse. Steep runoffs, difficult footings, narrow trails and blind turns really slowed down the ascent.

Still the climb offered amazing views.

We lost the trail just after this area and did a difficult ascent on an unmarked trail. We’ve done this a few times while hiking the Sedona trails. Even with a trail app it is easy to find yourself off the main path.

Bear Mountain off in the distance to the left and Doe Mountain looking quite impressive now to the right.

Once the summit is achieved, there is a wide and expansive mesa where you can roam about freely. There are no marked trails here.

That said, the number of people that come up here create well worn footpaths to take you around the top of Doe Mountain.

The edge of this part of the mesa is a sharp drop almost straight down for several hundred feet.

We were getting close to sunset at this point. We spent roughly half an hour on the summit before we began our descent.

Coming down Doe Mountain was much easier than going up and we made good time.

And here we are back at the trailhead.