Woods Canyon: Searching for the Lost Soul of Secret Sedona
I park my car near the trailhead, beside the cattle loading ramp at the end of the corral. The ramp still works. Only a few years ago I saw two weathered vaqueros loading bovines into a trailer. A coyote prances between the bushes, tail held high. The wild canine dances like a puppy, scaring the birds from the bushes. The coyote chases the birds just to watch them fly. His tongue hangs out as if he is laughing.
It is barely after sunrise and I am at the trailhead despite the chill, hoping to beat the hordes of tourists who descend upon our small town in the spring. Driving along Beaverhead Flat Road I notice that Dry Beaver Creek is flowing pretty good with snowmelt. Woods Canyon stretches for 18 miles, reaching from just south of Sedona to just south of Flagstaff. Every spring snowmelt swells the creek with whitewater. I love this time of year, miles of waterfalls hidden in a canyon which is dry most of the year.
My first few hikes in Woods Canyon were in the dry season. I hiked there 4 or 5 times during my first 3 years living in Sedona and fell in love with the steep rugged canyon and its red rock cliffs. I had no idea of the waterfall wonderland which awaited me.
As the waterway exits the protective embrace of steep canyon walls the name shifts from Woods Canyon to Dry Beaver Creek. I was exploring Dry Beaver Creek at a place called Stagecoach Stop. There is nothing left of the old stagecoach stop but there is a commemorative plaque erected where the stagecoach building may or may not have been located. Hiking beside the creek bed you can still find remnants of the old stagecoach road. There are some year-round springs along Dry Beaver Creek, places adorned with reeds where the thirsty horses could grab a drink. One day while walking over the dry creek bed stones I stumbled upon a field of bleached crawfish skeletons. I suddenly realized the creek must flow pretty good sometimes.
There is a bridge where state highway 179 crosses Dry Beaver Creek and I began watching every time I drove over the bridge. I knew that if Dry Beaver Creek had even a trickle of water out in the flatlands that it must be spectacular inside the steep red rock walls of Woods Canyon. A few hundred yards north of the new highway bridge are the remnants of the old highway bridge. The old abandoned highway bridge looks interesting when the water flows beneath it and I wonder if the bridge ever had a Model T roll over the top of it. When the automobile became a part of American culture, and driving somewhere on vacation became a pastime, Sedona started to be marketed as a tourist destination. Oftentimes Sedona was the subject of picture books put out by companies like Kodak, encouraging people to visit scenic places like Sedona, buy film, and take photos of their own.
Woods Canyon has other surprises. The Wild Horse Mesa trail runs along the rim of Woods Canyon and shortly after Rattlesnake Canyon joins Woods canyon there is a large Sinagua pueblo sitting atop the nearly sheer canyon walls, near the edge of the precipice. These 800-year-old ruins are built of black lava rock with an impressive protective wall built around it from the only direction you can approach. There are dozens of interconnected rooms in the pueblo. I discovered a black obsidian arrowhead, a beautiful tiny bird point.
The view from the ruins is fantastic, looking down on the creek from high above. In the bottom of the red rock canyon there is a red rock shelf which forms a notable large and shallow pool. While sitting in the ruins we could hear two hikers walking far below. The hikers popped into sight, just above the tree line. They walked up to a large tree, disappeared behind it into an alcove and I realized there were more ruins at the bottom of the canyon.
The hike along the bottom of the canyon to reach the shallow pool atop the red rock shelf was rather long and took several hours but it was easy to recognize the shallow pool. Climbing to the top of the tree line was further and steeper than it looked. I discovered three small alcoves located just above the tree line and all of them held small one room ruins. None of them were as grand as the castle on top but all of them were filled with pottery sherds — a sign the sites are little visited.
I finished my explorations and turned around to begin the long hike home. Unexpectedly, I startled an elk. The large female cow charged past me, frightened beyond panic to run away from me. I got out of the way as fast as I could before I got stomped on. It happened far too fast for me to open my backpack, grab my camera, and take a photo. Luckily, on the long trip back I paused by the creek to rest and came upon a stunning looking frog.
