Red Mountain is one of the more notable cinder cone summits of the Coconino Plateau. Located on the northwest edge of the San Francisco Volcanic Field, Red Mountain is well-known for its dramatically-eroded “canyon” that is visible even from the highway. The canyon features a cascade of red cliffs, seemingly pulling away from the mountain in a slow-motion fall, as well as black mounds of cinder and a multitude of eroded pillars and hoodoos. A good trail (actually, an old road) leads directly into this canyon and is a very popular day hike in the Flagstaff area.

Beth and I were here a year ago, a day after I hiked nearby Saddle Mountain and nearly cut my finger off while preparing a camp-dinner that night. On that trip, we drove to the Red Mountain trailhead, and I made a short hike into this canyon while Beth stayed back, suffering from a migraine. The erosion and the forms it has created is quite remarkable, begging the question why it is so dramatic on this one cinder-summit, and not on the other nearby peaks as well. It is not the crater that has eroded away—the crater is on the west side of the peak. I have no explanation.

Although I did not hike to the top on our 2010 visit, I filed this one as a peak I’d like to try at a later date. The opportunity came this weekend as Beth and I were planning a get-away from the summer heat, hiding out up here in Flagstaff for the weekend. We left our place in Scottsdale at 8:30 p.m. on Friday. There was no traffic and we were in Flag by 11:00 p.m. The cool air was wonderful. After weeks of never-ending heat, when it’s still 105 at midnight and 95 at 6 a.m. down here in Hotville day after day, to feel 60-degree coolness on your skin is amazing.

The plan was for me to drive out early Saturday while Beth stayed back at the hotel. She was within walking distance of all sorts of shops and was fine with bypassing the drive and hike. I left town around 7 a.m. and made the 35-mile drive up US-180 to the trailhead, which is signed from the highway. I was mildly surprised to be the first one here today. I got my stuff in order and was hiking by 8 a.m. I just had to be aware of my right shoulder, as I’d had a little basal cell carcinoma dug out from it yesterday, my first skin cancer ever. It was stitched up and kind of sore, but not a problem overall.

The sign at the trailhead says it’s 1.3 miles to the inner canyon, where 99.99% of the hikers go. I covered the first mile in about 15 minutes, hiking across flattish pinon and juniper woodland with intermittent views of the peak and its amphitheater-like canyon. The trail drops into a sandy wash, the one that emanates from this canyon. I went left and followed it for a few dozen more yards, looking for a good chance to ascend out of the canyon and start the uphill portion of the climb.

Red Mountain has the usual smooth symmetry and rounded forms that is typical of these cinder peaks. The canyon is hemmed in by two long ridges, like arms hugging the canyon. Eyeballing these ridges, they are smooth and pitched moderately-steeply, and appeared to be mostly cinder, with moderate tree and grass cover. I opted to try the east ridge to the top, mainly since it would put me right at the summit, which lies at the southeast edge of the summit ridge. From the sandy trail within the canyon, I had about 800 vertical feet of elevation to the top. When it felt right, I angled left and started through the light brush onto this east ridge. Shortly, I had come up onto its main spine.

There appears to be a very old road or jeep-track up on this ridge, enough to allow for a mostly-open trudge upward, which I did methodically for about 20 minutes, gaining elevation at a good clip. It was just steep enough to tire me every couple minutes, but not so bad as to really slow me down. I was feeling a little winded by the elevation, though. The real treat was a birds-eye view into this canyon, being able to look at its formations from this higher-up angle.

The low grasses and brush petered out as I ascended the east ridge, until I was hiking on barren black cinder. I hiked up until it topped out at a tiny summit, shown as a small 7,460-foot contour on the map. I was kind of concerned when it appeared I had climbed into a dead end, as I was now facing a field of spires and hoodoos ahead of me, or steep cinder slopes if I angled left. I poked my way through the hard caprocks and descended through some chutes, losing about 40 feet, to come to a saddle. It looked more promising now. I could see a viable route with mature trees growing on it, suggesting firmer, more stable slopes and footing. I needed to scoot down into one more chute before scrambling up one short but steep slope of cinder rubble. I lost a total of about 80 feet of elevation along this segment. Some of these downclimbs (or down-scoots as is more accurate) were essentially unclimbable going up, given the marble-like nature of the cinder rubble.

I came upon the trees and grasses again, now able to get a solid footing and work my way upward again. I was in a broad chute, with very steep cinder slopes on either side of me, while the chute itself was wide with lots of trees, undergrowth and organic detritus. As I climbed this chute, it would open up to where I could walk over to some remarkable hoodoos, some standing about 20 or 30 feet tall. Some had boulders perched on their tops, forming a caprock barrier, while the softer rock underneath had eroded away over the millennia. They looked like rock mushrooms. As I ascended, the trees gave way again to cinder, and I had no choice but to scramble and grunt my way up a slope of no more than 50 vertical feet, but each time combating a “screefall” of hundreds of little cinder rubble stones, some getting into my shoes. In some cases, I would take three steps, and slide my way right back to where I started. I finally tried spreading my weight around by “crab-crawling” up these slopes. It worked, and I was able to get to another slope with grasses and low scrubby growth, where I took a long break as I had really tired myself out there. The good news was the summit was just a couple hundred feet higher up, with no more ridiculous cinder slopes to deal with.

The final hike was through low brush, some pinon and juniper, while the summit ridge had some mid-sized ponderosa growing atop it. I grunted up the slopes to come upon the summit, a somewhat anticlimactic mound of shrub and trees, with a big dead ponderosa standing nearby. Another point about 300 feet north along the ridge looked about as high, so I walked over to it also, then walked back to the south point, which is probably the true summit. There are just enough trees up here to make a line-of-sight determination impossible. I could see no cairn, benchmark or other sign of previous visitors, which suggests this peak might see just a handful of fools like myself in a given year.

I stayed up top for about 10 minutes. The views were magnificent. North of me was the vast flat Coconino Plateau, with Red Butte off to the northwest. Big Kendrick Peak stood high to the southeast, a few other cinder summits and ridges also taking up room, while giant Humphreys Peak stood above us all to the east, like a giant wall. It was still kind of early (about 9:45 a.m.) so shooting photos in that direction was not possible. The day was clear and dry. The humid air had been suppressed for the day, as not a single cloud was visible from horizon to horizon, like being underneath a brilliant blue-colored dome. It was beautiful, as was the scent of pine and mint-brush, and the soft breeze. A perfect Northern Arizona summer day.

The hike down was as fun as the hike up had been a grunt in dealing with the cinder slopes. I retraced my route back down for the first couple-hundred feet, then followed another northeast-trending ridge slightly more offset to the east than the one I had taken coming up. It too was mostly open, with consistent slopes of cinder but with lots of grasses and other organic crud holding it all together. As a result, I could literally jog down the slopes, with the cinder catching my boot and allowing it to slide an extra foot each time. I made fantastic time, dropping about 700 feet in about 20 minutes.

I just needed to be sure I got myself back to my truck okay. When I was pretty low on this ridge, I went left (north), cut through a small drainage and got myself onto the slopes of the original east ridge I had taken going up. I traversed its lower east-facing slopes, gaining maybe 50 feet in about a quarter-mile until I naturally merged onto its main spine, where I had actually been just a short while earlier. From here I could see the trails below me, so I descended to them and made the easy hike out to my truck, saying hi to a few people as they were hiking in. Not surprisingly, the parking lot had about 6 vehicles by now, with more sure to come. I was back to my truck at 10:45 a.m. and back to Flagstaff by noon.

This hike had gone well, with about 1,100 feet of gain (including some of the drops I had to regain). I call the mileage to be 4.5 round-trip, given some indirect paths I needed to follow to get past the hoodoo section, and the deliberate alteration to my route coming down. The climbing had been a little more challenging than I had thought, but it was a lot of fun and it was a real treat to get up close to these hoodoos, where very few people get to, it seems. The canyon is very interesting, so I don’t blame people if the vast majority skips the hike to the top.

Beth and I enjoyed our remaining time in Flagstaff. The Arizona Cardinals (who train in Flagstaff) were having their first public pre-season scrimmage on Saturday, and the whole city was crawling with Cards fans (yeah, us too). Traffic was very heavy, so we generally stayed close to the hotel, although I made a late-day visit to the Lowell Observatory while Beth took an extended nap. The news reports that the scrimmage attracted 18,000 people. Probably 17,500 of them were from the Phoenix area, and we knew they’d all be heading back down Sunday, so we got moving kind of early to beat the traffic. All went well and we were home to our cats by noon. The trip had been a great success.