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Tag: oak creek canyon

Beneath Secret Mountain: The Palatki & Honanki Ruins

Arizona Winter Loop | Saturday, February 4, 2023

After spending the last seven days in Arizona it was unfortunately time to start heading home. But first, we would be spending this morning visiting a couple ruins and rock art sites in the Red Rock Wilderness near Sedona. This would be our very first time in the Sedona area, and even though we knew it would be a little more popular and crowded than we would like we were a little interested to see what this area was all about. Before we had left home on this trip I had booked the earliest tour at the Palatki Heritage Site for Saturday morning, and even though the site was closed at the time due to muddy roads, I hoped that it would be open by the time we got there, and thankfully it was! Since the tour did not start until 9:30am, we were able to sleep in a little later than usual before leaving our hotel in Camp Verde and making our way to the base of Secret Mountain.

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Twin Peaks

Saturday, June 13, 2015

This morning I drove down to Ouray so I could try and climb my first mountain summit of the year. After this weekend I’m going to be pretty busy for the rest of June and I didn’t want to wait until July to get into the mountains for the first time this year. Since I’m not in the best shape right now and the weather forecast was predicting that storms would move into the area late in the morning, I decided to hike to the top of Twin Peaks (10,798 feet), a famous Ouray landmark. There are currently two trails that will get you to the summit- a new trail and an old trail. The reason for this is because in the early 1980’s the Old Twin Peaks Trail was washed out by a major storm. To replace the old trail, a new connector from the Oak Creek Trail was built to bypass the washed out section. This trail is now known as the New Twin Peaks Trail. In 2004 the Ouray Trails Group reconstructed the old trail which now consists of over 300 steps and 1,300 feet of elevation gain within 1.2 miles. Apparently, the Forest Service won’t officially sanction the reconstructed trail because they consider it too steep, but it is back on the maps.

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