THE FIVE VOLCANOES LOOP

North of Flagstaff are five geologically unique cinder volcanoes. Sunset Crater is the most famous and a national monument. Strawberry Crater is so named for its shape and red color. SP Crater is revered as the classical definition of a cinder cone by geologists. Colton Crater has a extremely violent past. And last is Red Mountain with a labyrinth of canyons and hoodoos.

Starting from Flagstaff they are linked by a 105 mile loop of paved and dirt roads. All of them can be visited in a single day if you don't stop long at every crater. There are hikes at each that vary in length and difficulty and if you want to do-it-all it would require an overnight dry camp or a two day trip. It is worth it, the views are spectacular and the night skies dark.

Five Volcanoes Loop

There are parts of the drive that require a high clearance four wheel drive vehicle. All of the roads are legal and appear on a Coconino National Forest Map except for the 25 mile stretch between Highway 89 and 180, which is outside the national forest boundary. That section is a checkerboard of state land and private property. Keep to the established roads and away from ranch houses and all will be good. Unless you know the country well take a topo map or GPS. Few, if any, of the dirt roads outside the national forest boundary are marked.

SUNSET CRATER

Summer view of Sunset Crater

Measured from downtown Flagstaff drive 16 miles north on Highway 89 to the park entrance to Sunset Crater. It is certainly the most famous and beautiful of the five volcanos, but unfortunately with fame comes regulation. There is a $5 dollar fee payable at the visitors center and hiking is prohibited except on established trails. It is still worth the price.

I will not go into the geology of Sunset Crater. At the visitors center is a plethora of information, displays, maps and photos you can look at and read. I don't feel a need to repeat what they already have.

Sunset Crater is less than a thousand years old and virtually no natural erosion has taken place, but many hikers, including myself in 1962, caused extensive erosion and worn a wide and deep trail into the loose cinders of Sunset Crater. In 1973 the forest service closed the crater to hiking and spent considerable time and effort filling in the trail and raking out the scared slope. The only tracks to be seen today are those left behind by deer, elk and bear. I hiked up a nearby crater to take the photo below and I found bear tracks in the snow.

Winter storm clouds approaching Sunset Crater.

There are three trails at Sunset Crater. The first is a short but rocky path over the Bonito Lava Flow at the View Point pullout. Directly across the road from the view point parking lot is another trail up Lenox Crater. It is a strenuous hike 1/3 of a mile to the top where there is great view of San Francisco Peaks but not Sunset Crater. Go figure. The third trail and my favorite is the north and south Lava Trail. The north trail starts as a sidewalk but it ends and the trail wanders around several volcanic features such as a pressure ridges, lava caves and a spatter cone you can walk into. The south Lave Trail is a new 1/4 mile strip of sidewalk that goes to a point overlooking the Bonita Lava Flow, a torturous landscape which still looks freshly erupted and is as jagged and sharp as broken glass.

On the North Lava Trail

From the South Lava Trail

Looking through the lava along the South Lava Trail.

A tall lava squeeze at the end of the South Lava Trail.

After touring Sunset Crater take the highway towards Wupatki National Monument. Forest Service Road 546 is on the opposite side of the highway from the Cinder Hills Overlook at the NE boundary of the park. It is a good two track road of hard packed cinders but beware the loose ones on both sides. Drive 6.2 miles to the "T" intersection with FS Road 779, which is unmarked. Turn right at the "T" and it is a rocky 2 miles to Strawberry Crater. A left turn at the "T" and the road will take you directly back to Highway 89.

View of the San Francisco Peaks from FSR 546.

STRAWBERRY CRATER

Strawberry Crater is a relatively small cinder cone a deep red color with a black veneer on top. It sort-of looks like a strawberry dipped in chocolate. There is a parking lot and a 1.8 mile moderately difficult trail that climbs 300 feet up to the saddle, down into the crater and around the volcano. Wear high top shoes, there are deep cinders inside the cone.

The saddle is the result of a landslide.

If you hike the trail to the right up to the saddle, you will see a perfect example of an event called 'rafting'. Cinder cones have an eruption sequence which they typically follow; first they erupt cinders because the magma contains a lot of gas in the form of water steam, sulfur compounds and other atmospheric constituents such as oxygen, nitrogen and argon. The gas expands as it nears the vent hole and ejects the molten rock into the air to build the cinder cone. Later in the eruption, magma with less gas from deeper in the chamber is pushed out as a lava flow. Often it has enough force that it lifts the lighter more buoyant cinder pile and rafts it away down slope.

The entire north side of Strawberry Crater was rafted away during it's eruption. The arch at the bottom of the 'V' was part of the rim and the hummocks past it are piles of the cinder cone. There is a fog bank in the distance covering the Little Colorado River Valley.

The arch was a section of the rim that rafted away.

From Strawberry Crater follow the power line maintenance road 9129L north for 7.6 miles to Highway 89 at the Antelope Hills Trading Post. There are some rocky stretches along the way but they aren't to bad.

Power line road 9129L

Head north on Highway 89 for 3.5 miles to Hanks Trading Post and gas station that has no sign. Turn left on the dirt road south of the building and head west onto the Babbitt Ranch cattle range.

Hanks Trading Post

SP CRATER

For the next five miles you are looking directly at SP Crater. When approached from this direction it has a stunning profile with near perfect symmetry. Even though it is 55,000 years old it has stood up to erosion exceptionally well, due in part to its hard cap of welded spatter and low rainfall. SPC is the classical definition of a cinder cone. I have seen more photos and descriptions of it in geology books than any other volcano.

After 5 miles you should be at the base of SP on the east side. Follow the road south past a large steel tank and stay right when the road splits. In 300 yards take the dirt track on the right that goes up the hill to the saddle between on the west side SP and the adjacent cinder cone. 4WD ONLY! The saddle is the best place to climb SP from. There are a dozen trails and all are the same. It's a difficult 400 foot climb straight up a steep, loose cinder slope. Literally, you slide back one step for every two taken forward. It is rewarding to reach the top but walking the rim is still rough. It is littered with volcanic debris that want to rock-or-roll when stepped on.

In spite of its age it has a black lava flow that stands out well enough against the surrounding landscape that it is easily visible from the space shuttle. It can be seen in the Google Earth view at the beginning of this essay. The flow crept north for over four miles and two lobes from its western edge spilled into a graben. A graben is a down dropped strip of land between two parallel faults that forms from stretching of the crust.

The lava flow with two lobes on the left that poured into a graben.

3' long volcanic bomb shaped like a bulls skull.

A tunnel through the spatter layer.

The inner crater is deep and dangerous and a pit best to stay out of. On the sides are thick layers of spatter that appear as steps, each indicating a pause in eruptions. At the bottom is a large scree pile, not a resurgent dome as one might think.

Inner crater with Kendrick Peak in the distance.

COLTON CRATER

Colton Crater from the flank of SP Crater. The San Francisco Peaks rise in the background.

Colton Crater is just 2 miles south of SP Crater. It is easy to spot, just look for the volcano with the gaping maw chewing at the sky. It reminds me of the mouth of a sand worm emerging from the desert in the Frank Herbert book 'Dune'.

There are two unmarked dirt roads to CC and either will get you there. On the NNW side of the volcano is a gate through a barbed wire fence and a road that climbs up to the lip of the crater. It takes four wheel drive to get up it. Close the gate behind you to keep cattle where they belong and the Babbitt Ranch cowboys happy.

Track up the NNW side.

NASA test drove the Space Exploration Vehicle here in 2008. Standing on the rim you might notice that this cinder cone is unlike any other you've ever seen. If you walked the trail into the bowl at Strawberry Crater you almost waded through cinders. If you trudged up the loose cinders at SP Crater you saw volcanic debris everywhere on top and inside its inner sanctum. But this is just an empty, massive bowl except for a very small cinder cone in the bottom.

The strata in the walls are layers of spatter from the original cinder cone.

At the bottom of the crater is a 150 foot tall cinder cone that was a last-gasp effort from the magma chamber. It sputtered for a few days then lost pressure and froze in place. It is partly buried by an alluvial fan washed down from the south wall of the crater.

200,000 years ago Colton Crater was like any of the other cinder cones you see surrounding it. Then ground water found it's way through limestone caverns into the magma chamber beneath the volcano. When the water flashed to steam it expanded 1,700 times exploding with tremendous force. A few hundred feet of limestone strata under the volcano was pulverized and the cinder cone was catapulted into the sky. A sizable earthquake radiated out from the site and a pyroclastic mushroom cloud rose into the stratosphere. As the debris fell back to earth it buried what remained of the cinder cone and the countryside around it. Chunks of white limestone can be found lying around on the surface and in piles of soil that rodents pushed out of their burrows.

CC has a much larger crater compared to most cinder cones. It is 4,100 feet across and 1,100 feet deep. The bottom of the pit is 250' lower than the surrounding plain outside of the volcano making the crater deeper than the volcano is tall. It is 3 times the diameter of the hole left by the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated on earth and Meteor Crater could nest inside it.

There is no trail around the crater rim but there is a track part way up to the highest point on the south side. It's a about a mile to the top and a moderately steep hike on packed soil. The views are wonderful and I found a small geocache at the top in a rock cairn. You can walk 2.5 miles all the way around the rim but I wouldn't suggest it. The east rim is rugged and large, loose cinders make the footing treacherous.

The next stretch from Colton Crater to Highway 180 is 19 miles. It starts as a narrow two track road heading west then veers north past the abandoned Aso Ranch. After that it turns into a dirt highway for the rest of the way.

Road heading west from Colton Crater.

Aso Ranch

It winds around a bit and other roads intersect it and none of them are marked. Just stay on the primary road and keep working your way west. At high points along the way you can see Red Mountain in the distance. Turn left towards Flagstaff when you reach SR 180 and drive 1.3 miles to the sign to Red Mountain on the right.

RED MOUNTAIN

It's an easy 1 1/4 mile walk to the volcano.

The trail to Red Mountain is an easy 1.2 mile walk over flat ground. Once you climb the wooden staircase you are inside the cone but not the crater.

The stone wall was laid by ranchers to entrap water. The staircase was built by the forest service.

The crater is actually on the opposite side of the volcano, but half of it was rafted away 740,000 years ago and only a drab semi-circular hill remains. However, the amphitheater you have entered was likely formed by a landslide possibly started by a small steam eruption that blew out one side of the cone. Millennia of erosion carved the towering hoodoos and the spectacular maze of narrow dead end canyons. Lying in the stream bed and embedded in the canyon walls are crystals of black amphibole (hornblende) and smoky gray pyroxene. Both silica minerals formed underground inside the magma chamber and were erupted along with the cinders. (Bowens Reaction Series).