Dave here...For quite some time now I’ve wanted to get down to Arizona and climb at Granite Mountain and Sedona. I’ve never climbed at Granite mountain, outside of Prescott, as it’s in a fairly isolated location and it’s closed more than half the year for falcon nesting. I’ve only climbed in Sedona once, about 22 years ago, so I was looking forward to going there again…
I contacted my friend Greg down in Phoenix to see if he might be up for an extended weekend adventure to Granite Mountain and Sedona – he was keen on the idea, so we made plans for a 5 day adventure. I flew into Phoenix on Oct 7 and we headed up to Granite Mountain. 
Granite Mountain is a fairly broad south facing Granite formation, it’s about 450’ high and sits at about 6500’ elevation. There’s a somewhat strenuous 45 minute hike to the base. Combine that with true “old school” ratings and lots of meat and potatoes crack and corner climbing and you know the crowds will be elsewhere, which is fine with me. 
Greg gave me the tour – we only did really good quality routes and it was nice to be with someone familiar with the logistics of the area. We climbed quite a few of the classic routes, all of which were on top notch granite and kept your attention despite relatively moderate grades. Most of the routes we did were in the 5.9 to mid 5.10 range, at least according to the AZ locals ;-) 
We spent 3 days at Granite Mountain and stayed in the campground just down from the trailhead. Greg brought his pop up camper, so ‘camping’ was a fairly posh affair, including a fun dinner down in Prescott.
After 3 days at GM, we headed northeast to the red rock country of Sedona. Here oneyou’ll find wealthy Arizonians, crystal seeking tourists and mountain bikers. We even saw a few other climbers… On the first day there we did a really cool 4 pitch buttress called Mars Attacks, which sported a most unusual second pitch; 90’ of horizontal traversing on a limestone band to a crack system on the other side of the buttress – very cool!
There were several other fun pitches as well. We camped at the Sedona RV park with the rest of the hard core RV crowd J On the last day, we climbed a really fun 4 pitch tower called Dr. Rubos Wild Ride which featured some fun cracks and a really cool summit block pitch. After that, we had some expensive sandwiches in Sedona, waved goodbye to the tourists and headed back to Phoenix so I could catch my flight home. A great time was had by all! Many thanks to Greg for taking a few days off to give me the tour!!
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