AZ: Mogollon Rim – Wilson Canyon, East Fork – 03/10/2013

We had a late winter snow storm in the Arizona high-country on the 8th and 9th of March this year, but with forecasts of clear skies and warm, sunny weather for the next day. So my girlfriend had this great idea that we should drive up to Sedona and check out a little-known side-canyon off of the popular Wilson canyon trail, just north of town. As we drove to the trail head parking lot, I was a bit apprehensive. Sedona had gotten several inches of snow the days before and the beautiful red rock hills were still covered quite a bit, even though it was well above freezing. We decided to hike up the trail and check out how slick things were on the climb up to the drop-in point and agreed that we’d turn around if things seemed slick or sketchy. Amazingly enough, that wet, red sandstone was still pretty grippy. So it was onward and upward!

Wilson Canyon, East Fork is one of two roughly parallel canyons that enter into the main canyon from the north east. These canyons are visible from the Wilson Canyon trail head and don’t look like they’re anything special. The route involves hiking up the main trail to the first side canyon and then hiking up the series of dry falls in this canyon until you can scramble up on to the ridge that separate the two. This is followed by about an hour of bush-whacking up the ridge, dodging prickly-pears and cats-claw bushes before dropping into the second canyon. There are 5 rappels that range from about 120 feet to 40 feet and aren’t too difficult. The canyon can be run in a couple hours leaving a nice hike back to the main trail and then back to the car in an “out-n-loop-n-back” kinda route. The canyon itself doesn’t ever really slot-up and there’s nothing technically difficult about running it. The real draw to this canyon is the spectacular scenery that is visible from within the canyon. The snowfall and waterfalls from the snow melt and runoff made the views that much more impressive during this trip.

We hiked up the Wilson Canyon trail for about a mile or so, enjoying the all the little waterfalls that the snow-melt was creating, snapping many pictures. When we finally turned into the climb-up canyon, we were greeted by some spectacular cascading waterfalls. We continued hiking up this canyon for a ways until we could find a good spot to scramble up to the top of the ridge to the right. This was the toughest part of the hike. From there, it was humping up the ridge line up to the point where the color of the rock on the cliffs went from red to white. We then angled over to the left and made our way to the drop-in point, next to a couple big pine trees perched on either side of the canyon. From there, we geared up, got our cameras ready and setup the first rappel.

Normally dry, the canyon a descent a mount of water running through it, creating some cool waterfalls. The flow was enough to make it look pretty, but not so much to give it an “R” rating, IMHO. The first rappel was about 115ft. and anchored off a big boulder about 20 feet back from the edge. This went straight down the fall and into a small pool that my girlfriend gracefully avoided, as seen in the pictures below

The second rappel was immediately after this, anchored off a small pine tree to the left of the falls. This rappel was about 100ft and was pretty simple, except that the angle of the rock face had a tendency to swing you into a nice big prickly pear, about 20 feet down. I was able to avoid it, but my girlfriend wasn’t so lucky and spent the next 10 minutes pulling spines out of her leg and arm.

After a short hike down the canyon, we came to the third rappel. This rappel was about 40 ft, but had an angled notch and overhang that caused us to swing right into the waterfall! Up until this time, we were trying to stay reasonably dry, but after this rappel we gave up!

Finally we came to the fourth rappel – about 115 ft. (A previous trip report I had read listed this rappel at about 80 feet, but I put it closer to 115, although you could probably down-climb the difference if you needed to.) The anchor for this rappel was on the right, from a small pine tree, but it caused us to rappel right down into a jumble of manzanita bushes and agave. Next time, we’ll try to anchor off of one of the larger pine trees on the left and get a better clear rappel down and avoid all the shrubs and cacti.

Finally, we cam to the fifth and final rappel – a sweet, simple 100 ft rappel from a tree to the left. This waterfall was really pretty and I was able to lock-off half-way down and get a shot of it.

After this we packed up our gear and headed down stream, where we met up with the Wilson Canyon trail and headed back to the car for the drive back into town and some well-deserved Mexican food!

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