Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

March 6, 2026

1664m

Sedona, AZ

Courthouse Butte and Bell Rock are technical objectives in Sedona that are usually climbed together. My first visit to this spectacular area of red rocks was 9 years ago but I didn’t have a partner, so I only photographed them. They are by no mean “easy”. The easiest routes on these peaks are rated 5.6 and 5.8 respectively but I think the grading in this area is sandbagged, especially for those not familiar with climbing on sandstone. The climbing felt harder than what the grades suggested, so I likely didn’t have the skills to climb them 9 years ago anyway. By comparison most of the technical spires in Sedona area are actually very hard. Courthouse Butte and Bell Rock are actually two of the more achievable ones. There’s some confusion about Bell Rock as a lot of hikers and scramblers had claimed it but they were nowhere near the actual summit. The 5.8 pitch on Kamps Route is far from “achievable” by the averaged scramblers.

In any case these were the main objectives when I decided to fly to Phoenix to join Caspar and Erica for one week, and the ascents happened to be on the 4th day of this trip. In the previous day we drove to Sedona and found literally a million-dollar campsite right on someone’s million-dollar private property. The camping was of course illegal but I thought that’s what actually made it attractive. We still had about an hour of daytime to kill so made the spontaneous decision to hike up “Baby Bell” on the north side of these peaks. I had already done that short hike on the first trip but didn’t mind to repeat. The views were spectacular and we stayed up there until sunset. We then went for a luxurious Mexican dinner before sneaking into that campsite. The temperature had gone down to freezing so it was quite hard to get things going in the morning. Despite the short drive to the trail-head we didn’t manage to start hiking until 9:30 am.

We chose the southern starting point as the approach seemed shorter from this side. There are literally a maze of trails and we picked a combination of official and unofficial trails and quickly made our way to the base of the south route on Courthouse Butte. The route is well documented in various trip reports. We ditched a whole bunch of trad gears that were brought solely for Bell Rock before proceeding onward. The ledge system in the lower route was quite straightforward that in no time we arrived at the 4th class arete which was the “lower crux”. The section turned out to be a little bit harder than I thought, but we all soloed it (and downclimbed it a couple hours later) without a problem. The worst was the bushy amphitheatre ahead as we got sucked to the far climber’s right side. Too stubborn to backtrack we fought through some extremely tight Arizonian bushes as well as 4th class slabs before making our way back on route. And then there came the wide ledge traverse to climber’s right, which dumped us at the base of the upper crux.

There are conflicting information regarding the status of the fixed ropes at the crux. I think the situation differs from year to year but on our trip there were actually two fixed ropes. The older and shorter rope was only long enough for the actual crux wall whereas there’s a much longer and newer rope dangling all the way past the entire 5th class section. For that sake reason this peak is soloable at the moment but we didn’t know that beforehand. Caspar was originally planning to solo the route while dragging the rope but but he called for a belay at the actual crux wall, which was vertical to slighting overhanging at the bottom with tiny crimpy holds. There were three bolts as well as the aforementioned two ropes so one way or another we would make this summit. I turned out to be the only one in this team that used the ropes for assists, as my upper body was simply not strong enough for the vertical climbing. All of us thought the 5.6 grade was definitely sandbagged unless one’s willing to pull on those ropes. There’s another step of stiff 4th class scrambling above the crux where we ditched the rope, and from there it was a longer-than-expected stroll to the summit. We all carried our approach shoes past the crux so did the scramble more comfortably.

Since we didn’t start as early as planned we didn’t linger too long up there on the summit. We also made the in situ plan to skip “Queen Victoria” and instead, we would drive all the way south to Tucson afterwards to visit Caspar’s family, but to compromise the skip of the classic climbing objective the plan was made to tag Pinnacle Peak in the vicinity of Phoenix before driving down to Tucson. All the sudden we had to hurry up. The descent of Courthouse Butte was rather uneventful and then we made quick work to the west side of Bell Rock.

The approach of Bell Rock was literally nothing. We quickly made our way into the broad west facing gully and did a few interesting class 3/4 sections before topping out. There are numerous pinnacles in the summit area but the highest ones are obvious. The scramblers are stopping at one of the lower pinnacles. The direction to traverse to the base of the Kamps Route on the NE side of the true summit wasn’t very clear from the online trip reports but the route turned out to be straightforward. The lower 1/3 of the pitch seemed no worse than “low 5th class” so we all scrambled that section and geared up at the 2-bolt anchor underneath the actual climbing pitch. The climbing looked hard and it sure was.

Caspar was the only one in this team with the ability to lead such a climbing pitch and I offered him a belay. The lower section was just as hard, if not harder than the actual crux up high. A few handholds were critical as otherwise this pitch would easily be 5.10 or harder. I ended up slightly aiding the lower section by using the bolts as “foot holds”. There’s one critical bolt above the lower wall for the leader to decide whether to clip into or not. Clipping in would create massive rope dragging but skipping that would not protect the follower from a pendulum fall at the lower crux. Caspar led the pitch using two 30-m half rope and he only clipped Erica’s branch into that said bolt, so I was committed to finish that lower 5.8 crux with no option of falling, which was heady to say the least. Thankfully I figured out the moves and made no mistake. The upper mantle crux definitely lived up to his hype. I wasn’t anticipating to actually free it but I almost did so by using some crack climbing techniques. In the end my left arm pumped out and I just grabbed the ropes to top out. Erica, not to my surprise, free climbed the entire pitch. I couldn’t even photograph her climbing the two crux sections and that basically tell the angle of the terrain being vertical or slightly overhanging.

After making the rappel off the crux pitch we decided to split up. Caspar thought making another rappel would get us all the way down past the scrambling section but this wouldn’t be the same way that we came up from. Erica and I had unfortunately left our trekking poles in that west gully, so I volunteered to follow the same route back to retrieve the poles. Erica opted for having more fun with the ropes so the new decision was to regroup at the trail-head. I also scrambled up to that tourist’s summit for completion purposes. There were two scramblers up there. I ended up getting back to the vehicle 10 minutes quicker so the fastest way down was still to reverse the scramble route. Our round trip time was 5.5 hours on a rather leisure pace. We then wasted no time and immediately started the 1.5-hour drive southwards to Pinnacle Peak in the McDowells.