Self Portrait at the Wave, Coyote Buttes North

JOURNAL: March 27 – Into Coyote Buttes North and the Wave

Posted on April 8, 2010 by Kristen Westlake in Snow and Sand - Journey West Feb 2 - April 2

I headed down the easy back road Hwy 89 from Kanab, Utah to the Wire Pass trailhead, excited to do my much dreamed of hike into Coyote Butte North and 3 or so miles in to the wave.. No trail at all to get to the wave had me slightly nervous since my adventure not even a few weeks before, that got me lost and overnighted in the Oak Creek Canyon of Sedona. You will see from this video that the road that heads in to the Wire Pass Trailhead is VERY rutted! .. When this road becomes wet it is impassable. .. I thought that of it at first when I turned on to the road. 8.5 miles took me to the trailhead… On the way out later in the day I was loving the old rutted back country road!

It’s really important to not only check for landmarks that got me out to the places that I wanted to go but also to turn around and either photograph or memorize what the view looks like from the “way back” … its always very different! I used my tracking device “TRAILS” on my iphone which also helped me immensely as it tracks my own tracks on the way out and subsequently allows me to follow my own “bread crumbs” back (this stopped tracking me in the steep canyon of Sedona though .. ) … I still however, got off track slightly and ended up coming down a pretty steep slick rock cliff towards the end of my hike back… ah, it was fun though and worth it!