Our First Mesa Climb

Last Sunday, Dr Desert Flower and I drove Celeste up to Sedona and hiked up "Doe Mountain" - it was not really a 'mountain' - it was a mesa.  400 foot rise from parking lot to the top.  About a mile across the relatively flat sand stone top.  The vistas from the top were spectacular.  We hiked around the East, Southern, Western, and a small part of the Northern edges of the mesa's rim. 

We took alot of pictures, but most of them turned out somewhat blurry =\  The "Doe Mountain" trail is near to "Bear Mountain" train but we did not go the extra 2 miles to "Bear Mountain" - no doe or bear were seen during the hike, but there were no shortages of whip tail lizards, who seemed quite tame.

Just before the crest of the mesa's edge on the ascent, the hiker on the "Doe Mountain" trail has to pass through what I called a "No Walmart" gauge, as in "in you need a scooter" or "if you've been pictured on 'Faces of Walmart' as one of those obese denizens" you would not fit through the crevasse.  It helped to keep idiocracy off the picturesque top if the hiker had made it up 400 feet vertically, and about 1.5 miles horizontally.

This was the first mesa we've ever fully ascended.   We've certainly hiked around and near and driven between many a mesa, but rarely have we made it all the way to the top and had a walkabout.  It was definitely worth the effort - and now I don't have to wonder what it looks like up there, or "how hard is it to get to the top?".  It's beautiful, and rather easy to get to, as long as you don't have a 50 inch waist band.