Upper Cliff Dwellings Panorama
picture of clif dwellings

Boynton Canyon Christmas Hike 2004

B&W of manzanita trunk
picture of Boynton Canyon
A nice sunny Christmas
picture of Tom

Rather than just sit around doing nothing by myself for Christmas, I noticed that the weather was going to be sunny and decided to head down to the Sedona area for a hike. I settled on Boynton Canyon, as it is supposed to be a nice scenic hike, and there were a number of Indian ruins you could scramble up to. The start of the hike was marred by red rock pass nonsense and having to hike past a large resort complete with barbed wire fences, noisy equipment, no trespassing signs and even a video camera! (rooms go for 395-1075 bucks a night)(I also saw on the web that there is a super top secret underground military base under this resort (and we all know that if it is on the web, it must be true.)) After that things were a lot nicer. I spotted a cliff dwelling up above me and took off up a small trail that looked like it might head that way. It didn't. After a lot of bushwhacking, and a little scrambling I got up to it. There were a lot of potsherds and bits of charcoal on the ground, plus a few pieces of tiny corn cob. This is the site of the panorama at the top of the page. From here I followed a much better path down past 5 or 6 smaller sites to a large alcove with a number of buildings in it. Then back to the trail to continue up the canyon.

A smaller ruin
picture of Boynton Canyon

The trail headed up a broad canyon bottom with a lot of trees. Along the way I passed an area where there were many little stone towers made by stacking brick to pebble sized stones. Supposedly this is a vortex area, and thick with new agers. Then the trail headed up a narrower canyon to the west and started rising. This is where I went into the shade, and the temperature dropped a lot. Near the end of this canyon, the trail headed steeply up out of the trees to a sandstone bench. I headed up and along the bench to sit in the sun and take more photos. Then back the way I came.

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Looking back down and across the canyon
picture of Boynton Canyon
Looking up at some cliffs
picture of Boynton Canyon
Looking up the canyon from near the end of the resort
picture of Boynton Canyon
upper ruin alcove
picture of Boynton Canyon

how the feds describe it
a different perspective

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