A few weeks ago my friend and former instructor Randy texted me up and mentioned that he wanted to go to Sedona for his birthday. He wanted to go wheeling and asked if we wanted to come with. Now... mind you, this man has blown off every single wheeling trip I've ever invited him to (5 and counting as of this blog post) and now that he's finally put some shinny new toys on his Jeep he's asking if we want to go wheeling?!? Hell yes!
Phone calls were made, reservations were screwed up and Saturday morning we all met at the Thunderbird exit Home Depot parking lot. We proceeded to tank up and head up the I-17 towards Schnebly Hill Road.
We pulled off at the first available spot to air down while Peachy struck a pose:
And to take in the scenery:
The locals didn't seem mind and gave us directions to lunch:
After an hour of driving, passing a handful of infamous Pink Jeeps from the scenic tour company and stopping for a few more pictures, it was time for lunch:
The crew decided on pizza in Sedona, not a bad way to go:
Now that we finished the appetizer, it was for the main course... the trail of the day was Broken Arrow. I've been wanting to hit this trail for years (yes, literally years). From the guide book, and hearing Brady talk about it, this was a pretty serious rock crawling trail. We were ready to go and eager to see this supposedly "Most Scenic Trail in Arizona" for ourselves.
Like Soldier's Pass, the Broken Arrow trailhead is actually in a subdivision in Sedona. I still find it amazing that someone can literally pull out of their driveway, turn left and hit one of the most well known trails in Arizona.
The trail really starts just past the dirt parking lot at this sign:
Immediately to the right is a slick-rock formation which, while not particularly challenging, will probably be enough to discourage soccer moms who accidentally mistook their new Jeep Cherokee FWD for an actual off-road vehicle from getting in over their heads.
Randy didn't have this problem:
From here we started the trail in earnest. While it was mostly a narrow, single lane dirt road through the beautiful red rocks of Northern Arizona, it was not quite the hardcore rock crawling trail we had been lead to believe (of course, Brady's daily driver is an M3 so if he runs into two consecutive pot-holes he thinks he's off-roading).
The higher we climbed, the better the scenery got:
We stopped at the top to catch the view, but it was actually a lot more crowded than we anticipated:
Thus we started our descent:
The trail looped down, then around and back onto a wonderful slick-rock path. It was just stunning (I recognized this part from blogs and forum posts):
We proceeded to the famous Devil's Staircase. Now... for hardcore rock crawlers this isn't a major obstacle but I will say we had a ton of fun on this descent. It's probably not a place you want to take your stock Grand Cherokee without some skid plates, but it's not as bad as the guidebook made it out to be. The descent was definitely one of the most fun little "staircases" we've run across:
The pictures really do not convey the steepness. Even so, we had no issues with it as I followed a mildly lifted rental Jeep with the rest of the crew right behind me.
We finished out the trail and returned back to the slick rock boulders to make it down to the trailhead:
Once off the trail, it was a simple matter of finding an proper air-up spot. Fortunately, these appear to be well marked in Sedona:
By now it was getting to be later afternoon and we decided to head towards our hotel for the night (Super 8 baby, swanky-swanky).
Not bad for a our first day of wheeling Sedona this summer.
Till next time, keep the rubber side down.
Keep up with various Tuff Writer schenanigans and follow us on Facebook
