Flagstaff Adventure Course & Volcano Exploring

The last few months have been on-call hell for me. I am on-call 3 weeks, off 1. I had two cycles that really wore me out so I decided during the next break from on-call hell I'm getting out of the valley. I was originally planning on taking the kids to the new Gondola at Snow Bowl but it's currently down for maintenance. 

I was talking to my friend from work who recently sold his home to live in a travel trailer and tour the country. Right now he's staying just outside of Flagstaff boondocking it on forest land. I asked him about the access up there and he told me to come on up and join them. Since we haven't sold the trailer yet we decided to take one more short trip in it.

Friday afternoon we headed up to Flagstaff. We stayed just a couple miles from Lockett Meadow. The next morning we went to Flagstaff Extreme Adventure course for the kids. They have courses for adults but they take twice as long and I didn't want the kids waiting on us so we're saving our turn for a no kids date day. I was a little worried that Adri would be afraid of heights and Zach would have trouble with the clips. Well Adri decided that this day she wasn't afraid of heights and Zach had no problem figuring out the clips. He was being his normal Zach self during the training, not paying attention, kicking rocks etc.. But once he got on the course he got it figured out really quick and was actually going much faster than Adri. 

After the kids did their adventure course we got pizza at our favorite spot and then went over to the lava river cave. Almost 40 now and I've never been in a lava cave. I had fun in the cave but once we got almost halfway through it was all looking the same so we turned back. The first couple hundred feet were really challenging with Dean because it was rock scrambling but once we got down to the bottom it was fairly flat.

We spent the rest of Saturday in camp and went to bed early so we could have energy for S P Crater. I had to look up where they came up with the name S P Crater. Apparently the land owner back in the 1800's decided the crater looked like a shit pot, so it became known as Shit Pot Crater. However, navigators didn't want to put that on maps so it's S P Crater instead. This crater is a 800 foot high cinder volcano. I'm not sure when it was last active but the nearby Sunset Crater (the youngest crater)  was active around 1085.

The views from this crater were amazing. The lava flows run about 4.5 miles to the north of the crater and are 100 feet deep. From the top I could get a view all the way to the reservation to the north and the San Francisco Mountains and Colton Crater to the south. One we got to the first summit everyone decided they were done. I went up alone with Zach and we walked the west and south sides of the crater before he told me he needed to poop. As expected once we got down from the volcano he didn't need to poop. The way down was a lot easier than expected. Going up was slippery and challenging but going down the rocks and sand just caved in and made waves under our feet. Took us a half hour to get up and five minutes to get down. 

Our campsite

Flagstaff Extreme Adventure Course

Zach says this was one of the hardest parts. The platforms are a bit higher than they look in the picture.

Setting up for the zipline. Love the facial expression.

Zach ziplining. He didn't make it all the way across so he had to start pulling himself from here. Not only did he do all his clips himself but he hooked up and unhooked the zipline hooks himself.

Adri and my friend Nick's son. I don't even know which one of them was trying to scare the other at this point.

Adri, no longer afraid of heights.

Lava River Cave hike. The cave goes something like 3,800 feet from one end to the other but the exit is a tiny crawl space. So we hiked about half of it to a point where there is a loop and then came out the same way we went in.

Cave entrance

Zach is always asking questions about how things work. Here he figured out all of the rocks are from cave ins.

The ceiling was white like it's staring to grow stalactites and it was dripping water from the recent storms.

This part absolutely sucked. I had my backpack on and was trying to help Dean. Using my hands for balance on the sharp rocks was painful. After this we were done and got out taking another route that looped back.

Back at camp

Satellite view of S P Crater. The lava flow extends over 4 miles to the north.

Lava flows down by where we parked.

Dean wanted to lead the way about half way up the mountain.

Lava Flow. Once we got this high up the kids decided they were hungry and the snacks were left in the truck. You can see the trucks  towards the left side on the road. I told them don't wait for me and ran down the hill for their snacks. Then when I caught back up with them I couldn't even catch my breath before Dean wanted to be carried.

Adri is 3/4 of the way up that hill.

Zach is a beast. I had to keep telling him to slow down climbing this crater. He got up with no problem.

Colton Crater and the San Francisco Peaks.

Inside the crater