Marv & Liberty Lincoln Thunder Mountain Productions

Exploring the Brins Mesa Burn

By Marv & Liberty Lincoln | SedonaPr.com

Our return to Brins Mesa on a crisp December day was a double-edged mission. First, we hadn’t visited this remarkable plateau for nearly a year and, second, we wanted to check out the extent of fire damage.

Brins Mesa

There are two major trails that lead to the mesa: Brins Mesa East, which begins in Uptown Sedona and really kicks your butt with its ascent the last half-mile, and Brins Mesa West, which starts off FR (Forest Road) 152 in the Dry Creek area and is a much more leisurely stroll (or so we thought) to the top. (Soldier’s Pass Trail offers an alternative way to reach the mesa, but it’s not our first choice.)

We chose the West trail because we hadn’t taken it for several years. Unfortunately, the access road is a real mess, worse than ever. FR 152 is in the same class now as Schnebly Hill Road, which means sharp jagged rocks and deep, dangerous ruts. A decent enough adventure for Jeeps and big, bad American-built pickup trucks, but not for the likes of our sensitive Chevy sedan. From Dry Creek Road, it’s about 2-1/2 unpleasant miles down FR 152 to the trailhead.

One wonders what our Forest Service is doing with all the money they get from the despised Red Rock Pass — they certainly aren’t taking care of the roads that lead to some of Sedona’s most prized hiking trails.

It turns out that the West trail is a bit of a slog. Oh, beautiful scenery, to be sure — your usual assortment of juniper and pine and oak, cottonwoods, prickly pear, etc. — but there is a sameness after awhile. At least once or twice the wife stopped, looked around and asked, “Have we gotten anywhere? It all looks the same!”

That was so true, until we hit a rocky stretch of trail just at the lip of the mesa. This quarter mile of sharp rocks tortured our feet and tested our balance until, finally . . . Brins Mesa.

It is shocking, the first glimpse of the fire’s devastation. All of those beautiful trees, reduced to charred and withered twigs. Prickly pear cactus fried and shriveled. The tall grasses, once a banquet for the cattle that grazed here — just gone. It is an eerie scene, and analogies like Post-Nuclear Wasteland and Moonscape come to mind.

Still, it isn’t as bad as we thought it would be. The fire jumped around up here, as fires are wont to do, and some patches of vegetation escaped the blaze. And in many places, the flora is making a comeback. We saw lots of purple Verbena in bloom, some wildflowers bravely returning, Manzanita coming back to life, and in some areas the grasses were also returning.

Some people are saying the fire might have been a good thing, as non-native invasive plants were destroyed and won’t be seen again. And because Mother Nature works in mysterious ways, she often stages her own natural burns to clean up the forest.

Still…it was a big shock to see one of our favorite landmarks, an ancient juniper near the East Trailhead, burned to a cinder. We took some nourishment and a much-needed rest on a jutting rock formation we call The Ship, but we didn’t have time to go to one of our favorite spots on the mesa, a kind of rock peninsula that stops just short of a deep chasm that separates Brins from giant Wilson Mountain.

We had heard that the fire devastation was quite extensive in this red rock gap and on top of Wilson, but it was too late in the day to hike over there. The sun disappeared behind red rocks on our way down, and it was a long, cold journey to the trailhead parking lot.

We will be back to Brins Mesa some day soon. And hopefully the forest will have healed itself by then. We are grateful that the fire was not worse; it was a grim reminder of how vulnerable we are here in Red Rock Country.