The Mountains of Arizona
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Fortynine Hill • Spitz Hill • Beacon Hill I was driving to Laughlin, Nevada, and decided to take the scenic route through Flagstaff and Interstate-40, looking to climb a few volcanic mounds along the way. There are no shortage of mid-sized hills around Flagstaff and Williams, so I had a lot to choose from. I decided to pick off three hills, Fortynine Hill, Spitz Hill, and Beacon Hill. All are within a mile of Interstate-40, forest roads get close, all have about the same distance and elevation gain, and all looked hikable in an hour or less.
Date: June 14, 2018
• Elevation: 7,864 feet
• Prominence: 534 feet
• Distance: 1.6 miles
• Time: 53 minutes
• Gain: 520 feet
• Conditions: Clear, slight breeze
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I left Scottsdale at 3:30 a.m., and was up to Flagstaff a little before 6 a.m., the sun having risen about a half hour earlier. The day was clear and cool, with come high clouds. From Flagstaff, I had to take a detour through town to get to westbound Interstate-40, as the state is essentially repaving the whole highway in long segments.
I did not drive far, getting off in Bellemont, about ten miles west of Flagstaff. I went north, then immediately westbound on old US-66. Up ahead was a forest hilltop called Fortynine Hill. It gets its name because there are about 49 other hills that look just like it. I drove about three miles. The pavement ends, but the road is still solid hard-pack dirt. I passed through a section of private land, then back onto Kaibab Forest land. At this boundary, I was north of the hill, astride a scant track that leads south toward the hill. I parked beside the main road, got my pack on, locked up the car, and started hiking at 6:19 a.m.
I followed this scant road into the ponderosa forest. Shortly, the trail breaks out into a meadow, then gains moderately steeply to a saddle west of the summit. Turning left (east), I started walking up the slopes, weaving through a segment of rock outcrops. Occasionally, I'd find an old footpath and follow it, but the trees were spaced out and there was no undergrowth, so navigation was easy. The final segment was a short and steep haul, and quickly, I was on top, a 25-minute hike.
The summit is wooded, but open to the south where I had decent views. I signed into a small log, took a couple images, but didn't stay long, perhaps just a couple minutes. I hiked down following exactly my route up, and was back to my car at 7:12 a.m., a 53-minute round trip hike. I gauged the one-way mileage to be about 0.8, and it went easy. The morning was still cool and mostly calm, and I enjoyed this little hike. So far, one down, two to go. Next up was Spitz Hill, about five miles to the west.
Elevation: 7,700 feet
• Prominence: 540 feet
• Distance: 1.2 miles
• Time: 1 hour
• Gain: 560 feet
• Conditions: Clear
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From Fortynine Hill, I drove west along the old US-66 road alignment through the community of Parks, then west a little more to Kaibab Forest Road 76. I drove north on this road less than a mile, passing some powerlines, and parking in a camping clearing. I was west of the summit, about a half-mile away. It was 7:30 a.m. when I locked up the car and started the short hike.
I walked into the ponderosa forest, and soon was gaining uphill toward some low rock outcrops that form a weak west-trending ridge from the summit. I was soon above these outcrops, but still had about 300 vertical feet to gain to get to the top. I just marched uphill, weaving through the trees, past one open section with great views, and higher up, managing the waist-high grass, some denser undergrowth, a lot of downfall, and loose rocks. I took it slow, but soon, arrived to the top, 34 minutes after starting.
The top is crowned by a simple rock outcrop and is wooded but with enough breaks to see around the area. I could easily see Kendrick Peak to the north, and Sitgreaves Mountain to the northwest. I also found the Spitz Benchmark embedded in the rocks up here, which was a small surprise because I was not expecting one. There was no log book to sign in, though. I spent about three minutes up here.
For the hike down, I stopped briefly in that open area for photos. Back into the forest, I got back to the lower rocks easily, but then tacked a little to the south, tramping downhill on the easy slopes and having a merry old time. I was quickly back to a road ... the powerline road. It was easy to follow that to the main road and back to my car, but I was annoyed with myself for botching such an easy navigation problem. This "detour" added maybe an extra 0.2 miles to my hike, so it wasn't that alarming. Still, I should have done better.
I was back to my car exactly an hour after starting, down to the minute. I drove back to the US-66 road, now aiming for my third peak of the morning, Beacon Hill, which was pretty close, about three miles away.
Elevation: 7,547 feet
• Prominence: 527 feet
• Distance: 1.6 miles
• Time: 1 hour
• Gain: 560 feet
• Conditions: Clear
PB
Beacon Hill is about ten miles east of Williams along Interstate-40. I had just worked up a small sweat on Spitz Hill. The distance from Spitz Hill to here was just a couple miles.
The hill is on the south side of the interstate, behind a hotel-complex formerly known as Mountain Ranch Resort, but recently purchased and renamed the International Kadampa (Buddhist) Retreat Center. I drove in and bypassed the main complex by following an old frontage road, then a good dirt road, until I was behind the facility, parking in the trees near a water tank. I was near a fence, the boundary between the complex and the Kaibab National Forest. Thus, I was probably on the Kadampa people's land. I left a note in my windshield and hoped they were cool with me being there. I was not expecting they'd come at me with barking dogs and shotguns, but you never know.
I started hiking at 8:50 a.m., stepping over the fence and following the forest road south, angling left at an early junction, where a right would have led me to an old quarry site. Within minutes, the road ended in a small pocket against one of the ridges coming down from the hill. I was expecting to cross-country my way to the top, but was delighted to see a pretty solid-looking trail angling to the right. I followed it uphill. The trail went west across the north slopes of the hill. Soon, I was on a main north-trending ridge, the summit to the south now.
The trail went left and gained up this ridge, sometimes steeply. The tread was good but a little loose, and cairns helped whenever I came upon a split, keeping me on the correct path of enlightenment. Not long thereafter, I was one with the summit. A stately juniper tree rises here, all by itself, slightly off-set from the actual highest point. I tagged the highpoint cairn, signed into the log book (someone had been here a couple days ago), then sat on the rocks below this lovely tree and relaxed.
Although lightly forested, I still had good views in most directions. Looking east, I could make out my first two hills from this morning, plus giant Humphreys Peak. The sky was clear with some wispy high clouds and a very bright sun. I spent about five minutes enjoying the views. It was a little buggy, though.
I followed the same route hiking down, and came back to my car exactly an hour after starting, my second exact-hour hike this morning (Spitz Hill had also taken me exactly one hour). It was 9:50 now, and I was done with my hikes. Together, the three hills amounted to about 5 miles of hiking with about 1,600 feet of gain, or about one moderate mountain hike. I enjoyed these hills and the surrounding areas. I got myself situated for the drive to Laughlin, Nevada.
Getting back onto Interstate-40 was tricky. The westbound onramp was shut, so I had to take the eastbound highway back to the Parks exit, then double back to head west. The state was repairing the interstate so lengthy segments were reduced to one lane, often going at 40 miles per hour. It was like this most of the way into Seligman, about 40 miles later.
I exited the interstate at Seligman and drove the main road through the center of this wonderfully curious town. It may be the best-preserved "Old Route-66" town in the United States, so the main street had tour busses and gobs of people, walking among a bunch of curio shops and old-style motels. Me, I was fed up with the construction on Interstate-40, so I decided to take the scenic route into Kingman via AZ-66, or Old Route-66 where it heads northwest through Peach Springs. (The interstate construction is necessary. Whole segments were in horrible shape, so I accept the short-term inconvenience this repairing will require).
The drive into Peach Springs is great. Very few cars are up this way, and long bands of cliffs line the far horizons. There are no towns out here, but old relics from the Route-66 days. At any moment, you expect to be bypassed by a roadrunner, and possibly see a coyote up on a cliff, wearing a bat-suit with rocket roller skates, ready to chase down said roadrunner. The terrain up this way really does look like what you see in those cartoons. It's not hard to assume the animators had been up here way back when.
The land gets hillier around Peach Springs, the capital of the Hualapai Indian Reservation. The road drops into the town, and if you look north, you can see down into the western reaches of the Grand Canyon. Wow, what a view. Then the highway weaves through canyons in the Cottonwood and Music Mountains, through the little towns of Valentine, Truxton and Hackberry. Finally, the highway flattens out and makes a straight shot into Kingman. By now, the temperature was in the low 100s, and it was very windy. I got gas in town, then drove into Laughlin to our new condo, temperature outside a lovely 114 degrees.
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