In the Direction of a Hangover

After reading about Hans and Lisa hiking the Hangover Trail, we headed out in that direction.  The hike starts on the Munds Wagon trail head off Schnebly Hill Road in Sedona.  We did not enjoy the Munds trail so much.  It parallels Schnebly Hill Road, and is sort of tedious.  In a perfect world, I could take a taxi up Schnebly Hill Road and get out at the exit to the Cow Pies trail head.  Jim does not want to take the truck up the road, and I think I have to concur.  But there is scenery to look at while slogging up the trail.

We came to this sign 1.75 miles into the slog.  We knew that the other end of Hangover would start approximately at 3.6 miles into the hike.  Total mileage for the loop is 8.6 miles.  Since I'm not sure my foot has 8.6 miles in it, we decided to turn here and go see what we would see.

We saw this.  We also saw a lot of very up hill very narrow single track.  I can see why people ride it in the other direction from which we were walking.  That would be a very strenuous ride up.

After awhile the trail become off camber rock.  We saw these guys up higher.  We know that at least one of them carried his bike down to this level.  Look at this guy, he's leaning into the hillside on what is basically 45 degree angled rock.  That white streak is not trail, it's just a white streak.

After a few feet he gave up on that and dropped down to a wider part of the trail.

Here are the other two riding with him.

He got too slow and could not make the little pitch up.

It never ceases to amaze me what people will ride their mountain bikes on.  Parts of that trail were making me uneasy due to sloping rock covered in sand.  We turned around at this point.  We knew we were not hiking in the preferred direction and decided to give a go another day.

There are cactus in bloom.  I think these are Hedgehogs.

Prickly Pear.

It was a good hike. My foot and my hip are singing to me a little, but it's been worse.