The Mountains of Arizona
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Strawberry Crater • Stewart Crater • Sunset Crater This was the third day of a four-day peakbagging trip to the Flagstaff area, coinciding with the Memorial Day weekend. I arrived two days ago and hiked some peaks on the south and east sides of Flagstaff, then yesterday, hiked a few on the north side. Today, I would be meeting with Matthias, who was coming up just for the day. Our plans were a pair of crater-peaks on the northeastern side of the volcanic field, Strawberry and Stewart, then we'd discuss and see what else was available to do afterwards. We agreed to meet at the O'Leary Peak trailhead parking lot, since I could stash my car there without worry of it being by itself for a few hours. I rolled into the lot at about 6:30 a.m., the day sunny and mild, even a little chilly at the moment. However, we could expect temperatures in the mid-70s as the day developed. Matthias rolled in at 6:45 a.m., I got my stuff into his car, and we were off.
Date: May 25, 2025
• Elevation: 6,526 feet
• Prominence: 466 feet
• Distance: 2.4 miles
• Time: 90 minutes
• Gain: 395 feet
• Conditions: Warm, some clouds, a breeze
• Partner: Matthias Stender
• Prog-rock bands played: U.K., Birth Control
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Interactive map
Strawberry Crater is a lone mound of volcanic cinder and welded agglutinate rock, forming a very steep-walled crater with rocks and cliffs lining its topmost ridge. The peak is relatively young, about 2,800-3,500 years old, a mere infant in geologic time. It rises by itself, there being no foothills close by. A lava flow called the Kana'a flow emanates from the base of the cone and stretches about three miles to the northeast. The peak, lava flow and some surrounding countryside are all contained within the Strawberry Crater Wilderness.
We rode on US-89 a few miles, then took a right onto Coconino FR-546, heading east. At a junction about three miles in, FR-546 goes south, and FR-779 continues east toward the peak, a total of about six miles from the highway. The road was okay except when it wasn't. A few spots were rocky and sloppy, and a couple spots might have stopped me in the Subaru. Matthias' 4-Runner made a big difference.
We rolled into the tiny parking lot set aside for the lone trail here, the Strawberry Crater Loop Trail. This trail circumnavigates the mountain. A sign says it's 1 mile, but in truth it's almost 2 miles to complete the loop. It was sunny and warming, now in the 60s. Not surprisingly, we were the only people here.
We started hiking at about 7:30 a.m., heading east on the trail. At a Y-split, we stayed left, to follow the loop trail in a clockwise orientation around the mountain. The trail was a narrow lane in the cinder ash, with moderate low brush. It gained onto the north slopes of the peak and at times could be narrow with steep slopes below us, but it was never precarious.
The trail then gains onto the northeast ridge of the peak, now within its lava field, all the "dirt" here black cinder pellets and fine dusty ash. Shortly, the trail had curled around the northern lobe of the peak and we were within its crater, descending about 40 feet into it.
We could see the trail in the cinder slopes aiming toward a pass in the rim above us. We followed the trail until were had ascended to this pass, which is at the southwestern quadrant of the peak.
A rough path leads from here upward, gaining about 60 feet toward some low rock bands above us. From this vantage, we could see the entire northern lobe and rim of the mountain, the highest point somewhere up there. Being such a young mountain, its rocks haven't weathered much and still are mostly a heap of cliffs and massive agglutinate boulders that have "partially" fallen down. They all had interesting striation patterns and a reddish tint, possibly inspiring the "Strawberry" name.
Once above the initial rock barriers, we were essentially on the high rim, just needing to circle around to the highpoint. We found paths that generally stayed high, but below the highest rock fins, there being no need to scale these.
Along the way, we encountered at least three stone structures, small wall-like ramparts that may have been put in by the ancient Indians for defensive purposes. We walked about a quarter mile along the rim, going slowly, trying to keep to any path we encountered.
We soon came upon a room-like structure, the walls about four feet high, the room about ten feet to a side. This was below a cliff of that agglutinate, which rose about fifteen feet above us. Matthias said the highpoint should be on top of that cliff; we were literally just a few feet from it where we stood.
We found separate chutes to scramble up. The top of this cliff is a narrow catwalk, a fin about 3 feet wide. Matthias walked over to what seemed to be the highpoint. Me, I didn't feel so confident to walk it, so I did a combination of butt scoots and four-on-the-floor crawls to get to the highpoint. It seemed any one of about five rocks on this ridge could have been highest.
Views up here were outstanding. We had a fine view of Humphreys Peak and its remnant snow, plus all the surrounding peaks to the south and west. To the north, nothing until Utah. The land just flattens that way and fades into a mush of tan, pink and gray, this being the high desert and mesa country of the Navajo Nation. It was breezy up here. We stayed for about five minutes.
We eased off the rocks back to the ledges and followed them out to the high pass, where we picked up the trail. We completed the loop by following the trail steeply down to where it met back with the original trail at that Y-split. We were back to the car a little after 9 a.m..
Given the unique nature of this particular cinder cone, we both enjoyed it very much. It is still very young and rougher than most of the other cones. The ancient walls were a neat find, and I understand there are petroglyphs in the area, although we did not seek them out.
For the exit, rather than take the road out that we came in on, we chose to follow a powerline access road that heads south and would connect us to the Sunset Crater Road about five miles away. We also hoped this road would be better than the one we came in on. Other than one rocky stretch near the start, the road wasn't bad, mostly a soft bed of the black cinder. In about fifteen minutes, we were onto the paved road, close by our second peak of the morning.
Elevation: 7,177 feet
• Prominence: 657 feet
• Distance: 1.5 miles
• Time: 90 minutes
• Gain: 855 feet
• Conditions: Pleasant
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Stewart Crater was next on our agenda. It lies a couple miles south of the Sunset Crater Road, and is accessed via FR-244. We were last on this road when we climbed Haywire Crater back in 2020. Stewart Crater is the next mound to the southeast, about a mile and a half away.
We were on the Sunset Crater Road for just a mile, then on FR-244 for about three miles, parking in a flat area below the peak. The road was somewhat rough due to overuse. It is mostly cinder kibble, but with the amount of vehicles on it, the tread sometimes gets loose or washboarded.
We started walking almost immediately. We walked through open lanes to the base of the slope in front of us, then started the slow march upward. The slope was steep and loose, each step usually resulting in sliding back a foot. About twenty minutes of this later, we were on the peak's southwestern lobe.
The highest point is on the northeastern lobe. We descended down about 80 feet, walking the rim hemming in the peak's crater. Then we walked up the slope to the summit. We had made it in 38 minutes, said Matthias.
The top was brushy with low trees, but no obvious cairns or markers for the highest point. We walked around and tagged what we felt was highest. There was no place to sit down except on the ground directly. I needed to sit to get the little rocks out of my boots. We took about a ten minute break up here. Views were good, if a little hazy on the horizons.
The descent went fast. We walked down to the lower rim, then up the first lobe, then we long-stepped down the steep slope. All that laborious uphill grunting was now gong to pay dividends, as we could take big long steps and slide with the kibble, sometimes surfing it. I think we got down this slope in less than ten minutes. I accumulated another batch of pebbles in my boots, but it was worth it. Counting breaks, it took us an hour and a half round trip for this peak.
I was pleased also to get this peak done, as it filled in one major hole in this area. I had done nearly all the other peaks in this area but always skipped over this peak for whatever reason.
We got back in Matthias' vehicle and we drove back west through the Sunset Crater National Monument to the O'Leary Peak trailhead parking so I could fetch my vehicle. It was not yet noon and we had some time to kill.
Elevation: 8,041 feet ✳
• Prominence: 1,007 feet ✳
• Distance: 2.4 miles
• Time: 1 hour, 45 minutes
• Gain: 1,158 feet
• Conditions: Cloudy, breezy, noisy and one badass dust devil
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Sunset Crater is a remarkable mountain. It is Arizona's youngest mountain, erupting and forming in about the year 1085, plus or minus a decade or two. A thousand years ago, this giant cinder cone simply wasn't here.
They say it formed fairly quickly, about a year. Big blobs spat out and fell to the ground, smaller cinder and dust got picked up by the winds and covered many hundreds of square miles of the high desert, mainly north and east. There were two large lava flows, the Bonito and the Kana'a. The ash column rose about 30 kilometers (20 miles) into the sky. It must have been something to see. The ancient Sinagua Indians must have been utterly terrified if not fascinated, or both. It surely was and is part of their oral history. The Sinaguas disappeared a few hundred years ago but some of today's tribes such as the Hopi can trace their lineages to these ancient peoples.
There was apparently a trail to the summit at one time. Some of the topographical maps still show the dotted line for this erstwhile trail. The trail was closed down in 1973 due to erosion from the many hikers.
Many of the surrounding peaks such as Double Crater have been sacrificed to the off-highway vehicle crowd. People in specialized contraptions race through the cinder and up and down the hills. On a long weekend such as this one, the whole area is teeming with these people and their things, a hellscape of dust and noise. Despite the numerous vehicles, the "tracks" on these peaks are nothing more than divots in the cinder. The cinder doesn't seem to erode away. It just shifts to one side or the other. The tracks do not dig deeper into the cinder down to whatever underlying rock there is.
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Back at the cars, we relaxed, changed out of our boots and stood around. Suddenly, a massive dust devil is coming right at us! I was in my front seat so I shut my door, but Matthias was standing and he had no choice but to cover his face. The dust devil was a monster! It twirled across the road and at one point picked up a branch about five feet long and sucked it into the air about twenty feet.
I went ahead and got moving, but Matthias was only a minute behind me. Toward the highway, traffic backed up, so we were all creeping along at about 5 miles per hour, and I was about the tenth vehicle in line. It took awhile for this to move through. I went for a dinner at a Chipotle, while Matthias headed home. My thanks to him for his companionship today and his driving us to the first two peaks.
I had one more day here planned, so I found a spot not far from where I had camped the first two nights. Tomorrow, I would hike two more peaks on the CO Bar Ranch, then do a driving tour through the Hopi Nation and a long circuitous drive back to Bisbee.
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