[Gimpilator]

The day after her race in Phoenix, Frances wanted to hike Capitol Butte near Sedona. This is the main peak which stands up behind the town. I suggested that afterward we might do Wilson if it wasn't too hot.

There was a cardinal at the base of the mountain, the first one I have ever seen. The climbers path on the west ridge is steep. We traversed along the base of a wall and then up to the narrow crest.

After passing around a high point, the trail ended at the base of some vertical rock. We scrambled up a chimney and some exposed downsloping slabs before finding the continuance of the trail above.

This peak has good views of Sedona and the many sandstone cliffs that make this area famous. Our round-trip time was only about 3 hours and it wasn't hot yet, so we drove to the Wilson trailhead.

photo taken by Frances

The Wilson trail goes up the east side onto a intermediary plateau before the final switchbacks to an upper saddle. We saw a king snake in those switchbacks. At the saddle the trail splits to go to various canyon overlooks, but we left the trail to go up to the summit.

The Sedona area is primarily sandstone, however the top of Wilson is capped with volcanic rock. The register indicated that not many people leave the trail system to go to the actual summit. We saw a large bull snake before heading back down.

Humphreys

[Bootpathguy]

I like the reptile shots. Thanks for sharing

[Nancyann]

It looks a bit more warm than when we were there a couple of weeks ago. So many interesting places to explore in that area! Nice pano by Frances!

[puzzlr]

Capitol Butte is a great route -- unofficial steep trail at the start and lots of scrambling above. All of it is interesting and fun. One of my top 5 hikes in Sedona, but you have to do some sleuthing online to find it. On recent trips I've been scrambling up some of the other high points around it. For all the hiking that is done around Sedona, there don't seem to be many peak baggers, at least ones that sign a register. That's a new sheet of paper than what was there in 2015.

Wilson Mountain summit register. Not many people hike to the summit and sign the register because this was placed 5 years ago and there were only 10 small pages of signatures.