The Fat Man’s Loop in Flagstaff is a nice walk thought the pines. It has connections to the Sandy Seep, Elden Lookout and Pipeline trails. It is also part of the Arizona Trail bypass of Flagstaff.

There are eight of us that decided to escape the Phoenix heat (Rudy, Dave, Molly, Gary, Begona, Jim, Debbie, Michael)

We start off at the Elden Lookout parking lot which has the trailhead for the Fat Man’s Loop. We get there just in time, because we take the last few spots at 9AM. This trail does a slow uphill climb though the pine forest on the east side of Mt Elden.

Ride ’Em Cowboy/girl

Some of the junipers in this area are very large. This one has many trunks that you can climb on. Everyone makes it though the crack in the rocks that gives this trail its name.

Can we slide though?

This trail winds around many lava rock pillars, as it make its way uphill. Some of these rocks have rolled down the hill, while others are left over from blobs of lava that shot out of the volcano. We continue up the trail until we get to the junction with the Elden Lookout trail. This is the highest point on the loop. You can look over the east side of Flagstaff from here.

Looking east.

You can see Sunset Crater from here. We go down a short distance, to the junction with the Pipeline trail. This trail runs over to Buffalo Park where the Flagstaff bypass and main Arizona trails rejoin. We continue on the Pipeline until we get to the old Elden homestead. This is why the mountain is named Mt Elden and helped get Flagstaff started.

Why is this called Elden

At this point it is time for lunch, so we head over to Elden Spring and some nice shade for our lunch break.

Oasis in the pines.

After lunch we go to the Elden grave site. This is a very large pile of rocks, to mark the location of one of the Elden children’s grave. This is as far west we are going today, so time to go back to the trailhead. We get back to Fat Man’s Loop and it is time to go downhill. We walked 2 miles on Fat Man’s Loop to get to this altitude, but in only ½ mile we will be back at the cars. This is a good summer hike when Flagstaff is in the 80s and Phoenix is in the 100s.