**Upper Cliff Dwellings Panorama**

Boynton Canyon Christmas Hike 2004

**B&W of manzanita trunk**

**A nice sunny Christmas**

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**

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**

**Looking up at some cliffs**

**Looking up the canyon from near the end of the resort**

**upper ruin alcove**

how the feds describe it
a different perspective