Day 3 of 2022 Arizona Trip, Sedona

Third day of my 2021 Arizona trip. My friend and I would spend the day hiking among Sedona’s buttes and canyons, among its red rocks that had been a defining character of America’s west.

Devils Bridge

After leaving the warmth of Tucson, we arrived in Sedona last night, and would spend the next two days exploring places around it.
Sedona was a popular tourist destination, known for its arrays of red sandstones and the many outdoor activities it afforded. In particular, it was known for its mystical vortexes (they believe it’s so unique that they didn’t use the conventional plural of “vortices”) that were believed to be centers of energies for meditation, enlightenment and healing. Despite there were no scientific explanations for the vortexes, which was a big red flag that they were between a lie perpetrated by the local tourism board and an outright cult, enough followers of the vortexes flocked to Sedona every year to experience their spiritual powers.
Apart from its eluding vortexes power, Sedona’s popularity could also be attributed to its higher elevation and relatively cooler climate, making it a great summer escape for people from Phoenix just over an hour’s drive away. In this aspect summer was its peak season for tourism. But for nonlocals like us, winter turned out to be a great time to visit Sedona. The weather’s perfectly mild, not too cold that we were wearing single-layers on the hiking trails, also not too hot that we didn’t sweat at all. The trees didn’t seem to shed leaves in winter so the scenery was as spectacular. Adding that to the rather cheap hotels, it was just perfect except for the limited daylight hours.

A dashcam video clip of our drive from the Village of Oak Creek to Sedona.

Devils Bridge

Speaking of red rocks, Arizona’s northern neighbor of Utah was synonymous with this impressive landscape that it boasted about its “Mighty Five”, the five national parks in its borders (three of which I visited two years ago). While only one of those five was called “Arches”, each of them contained at least one iconic arch. Following that convention, it seemed only appropriate for Sedona to have one too, and that turned out to be Devils Bridge, which my friend and I picked for our first stop in Sedona. It turned out that Devils Bridge was the second most popular trail on AllTrails, next to Angels Landing.
After some teleconference in the morning, we only made it to the trailhead of Devils Bridge at 10:50am. The small “Dry Creek Trailhead” didn’t have enough space for the popularity of Devils Bridge (luckily we pulled into a space just as another vehicle left), so a few people parallel parked along the nearby Boynton Pass Road as overflow parking.
The trail was 6.3km out-and-back with not much elevation change, with about half the distance along a dirt road that could be traveled by high clearance vehicles. There wasn’t much view along the way, except for the constant sight of Soldier Heights and distant Maroon Mountain in the sun.

Here’s GPS tracking:

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Butte
Devils Bridge was located on the back side of it.

Dry Creek Road

The first and last 1.8km of the trail was along this Dry Creek Road. With an offroad vehicle, one may opt to drive instead of hike through this part. During our trip we encountered a few ATV’s, and from time to time we had to wait along the trail for their dusts to settle.

Maroon Mountain

Soldier Heights
A constant sight opposite of Devils Bridge, in the sun.

Soldier Heights
A constant sight opposite of Devils Bridge, in the sun.

Looking up towards Devils Bridge

Looking up towards Devils Bridge

Mountains to the West

Mountains to the West
Bear Mountain

Devils Bridge was on the northern slope of a mountain. As the trail approached it from the north, we crossed from the sun into the shade, and immediately felt the difference in ambient temperature. I put on my coat, and with the trail going uphill, it wasn’t that much an issue.

View near Devils Bridge

Close to Devils Bridge there was an open platform for people to enjoy the views without the exposure at Devils Bridge.

 
Devils Bridge

The surface of Devils Bridge was pretty wide and flat (left), that didn’t post any dangers to photo posers. The bridge was most accessed from the east side (left). Adventurous souls may opt to access the bridge through the west side (right), which required a leap between two giant slabs of boulders.

We got to Devils Bridge at around 11:50am. Typically, some people would step onto the bridge and pose for photos, with their photographers back away from the bridge. Not everyone was brave enough to do so, but with its popularity, there was always a line.
Unfortunately, with Devils Bridge on the northern slope of a mountain, the background contrast between areas of light and shade was demanding on a camera’s dynamic range, so I did my best post-processing to make them look natural.

Click here to display photos of the Devils Bridge.

Devils Bridge

Devils Bridge

I was among the most mischievous that decided to sit on the edge of the bridge.

Between waiting in line, posing for photos, resting and eating snacks, we weren’t moving a lot near Devils Bridge. It was a bit cold in the shade, so after less than 30 minutes, we felt we had to get going before the bitterness would overwhelm us, and thus we started to head back to the trailhead.

We got back to the trailhead at 1:15pm. But before we left, I thought the open valley around us was a great place for an aerial tour from my drone.

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Valley

Where Dry Creek flew through. Capitol Butte and Solder Heights towards the right, Bear Mountain and Maroon Mountain towards the left.

Soldier Heights

Dry Creek
The first part of the trail towards Devils Bridge followed a nearby road named after this creek.

Mountains to the West
Mescal Mountain in the foreground.

Mescal Mountain

Mescal Mountain

And here’s a video:

Rocks of Sedona
Taken south (top) and north (bottom) of Soldier Heights, over the valley where Dry Creek flew through.

Soldier Pass

We left the trailhead of Devils Bridge at around 2pm. There was still time left in the day, so my friend and I opted for some more hiking, and we decided on Soldier’s Pass Trail.
For Soldier’s Pass, its official parking lot was in a residential neighborhood and had space for 15 or so cars, and the gate closed at 6pm daily. There was no obvious overflow parking in the nearby residential neighborhood, so we ended up queuing for about 25 minutes for other vehicles to leave, quite a turn of fortune as earlier today we pulled right into an available spot at Devils Bridge’s trailhead. While doing so, I guessed the property owner nearby mustn’t be happy with us waiting in front of his/her driveway. There were proposals of running a shuttle bus to the trailhead from downtown Sedona, hopefully that will address this issue in the future.
An alternative was to use Jordan Road Trailhead (required Red Rock Pass or parking permit), about 2km away on foot. That’s certainly a better idea if one wanted to hike the loop trail circumventing Brins Butte.

Here’s GPS tracking:

In the end, it’s almost 3pm by the time we set off from the parking lot. Following the trail for a few minutes, we were at Devils Kitchen.

Devils Kitchen

 

Devils Kitchen

A giant opening in the ground, created by erosion. It’s named “kitchen” probably due to the piles of crumbling rocks in the opening, resembling different food ingredients being cooked together (for that I thought “cookpot” was a more appropriate name). From a distance, I was having a hard time associating it with “devil”, and I took it coming from the local people’s obsession with mystical things (like the vortexes).

After that, the trail wound its way on the side of a valley, with sights of various hills and boulders around us, some in rather interesting shapes.

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Morning Glory Spire

Morning Glory Spire
Looked pretty narrow from this angle.

Cibola Mitten
Another spire to the east of Morning Glory Spire.

Brins Ridge

Hills to the West
Coffeepot Rock on the left.

Hills to the West

Soldier Heights
The top white part didn’t look that lofty from Devils Bridge earlier today.

Soldier Heights

About 2km from trailhead, the trail would reach an intersection, a right turn would lead onto a spur trail to Soldier Pass Cave, while continuing forward would lead to Soldier Pass (and the Brins Butte loop). The AllTrail map we relied on visited both branches, but we were pressed on time and picked Soldier Pass Cave over Soldier Pass.
That meant after leaving the intersection, the trail started to gain elevation. But Soldier Pass Cave was only about 400m from the intersection, and we reached it at 3:45pm.

Soldier Pass Cave

Soldier Pass Cave was an interesting cave on the side of Brins Butte. Despite its name, it’s more like a crack that opened up in the rocks, as one could still see the sky from inside. My friend and I took some time to find its proper entrance (see photos below), which required some scrambling. But it’s well worth the effort as the cave’s interior was just too fascinating to miss.

Click here to display photos of Soldier Pass Cave.

Soldier Pass Cave

Benches at Entrance

For those not in shape to climb through a narrow and steep set of rocks into the cave. The entrance to the cave was towards the right of this set of benches.

Opening above Soldier Pass Cave

At first my friend and I didn’t find the entrance to the cave. Instead, we were attempting to enter the cave through an opening from a ledge towards its right.

Narrow Ledge

However, the ledge (photo’d here) was narrow and cramped at places, we didn’t feel comfortable about this path and backed off. That’s when we found the proper entrance underneath.

Soldier Pass Cave

A popular photography site inside the cave was the aforementioned opening, in the left of this photo. The access to that opening was safer inside the cave.

Soldier Pass Cave
Like how I posed for my photo here.

Soldier Pass Cave
Looking south.

The crack/slit that made up Soldier Pass Cave ran throughout the entire length of the cave. Once inside, there was a ledge on the eastern side of the slit that’s barely wide enough for passage. A popular posture for photos was to straddle between the slit, near the northern end of the cave (photos below).

Click here to display photos inside Soldier Pass Cave.

Soldier Pass Cave
Looking north from the southern end.

Soldier Pass Cave
Looking south. This was a popular place to people to straddle across and pose for photos.

Soldier Pass Cave

Looking north. One may opt to carefully traverse the narrow ledge on the right of this photo and climb over the rocks at the end of it to ascend onto Brins Butte.

Soldier Pass Cave
A few rock climbers. I wasn’t dressed in climbing gear so I opted to stay back.

During our visit we shared the cave (and the many photography ideas it offered) with a few other groups of visitors, and we spent about 45 minutes at the cave for all its fascinations before we started to head back. We wanted to catch sunset later at Sedona Airport vista, so we didn’t have time for Soldier Pass farther north, as indicated by AllTrails map.

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Soldier Pass

The trail would find its way through these woods onto the plateau in front. We were pressed on time so we didn’t continue beyond the spur towards Soldier Pass Cave.

Pools
In addition to Seven Sacred Pools, this was another set of fewer pools along the trail.

Cascade
Only that it’s dry.

Soldier Wash
Riverbed that’s dry. The trail crossed Soldier Wash multiple times.

Soldier Pass Road

A road for high clearance vehicles that could shave 1.6km (one-way) of hiking towards Soldier Pass. We spent more time at Soldier Pass Cave than expected, thus in order to catch sunset, we followed this dirt road (instead of trail) back to parking lot.

Then we found out that for most of the main trail towards Soldiers Pass, a dirt road ran in parallel with it. The dirt road was in thicker forest and didn’t offer much view, but since it’s late in the day and most of the surrounding rocks were in shades, that’s not a problem for us. The dirt road had fewer curves and less elevation change, which helped us hurry back towards the trailhead.

Seven Sacred Pools

About 900m from trailhead, there was another attraction called “Seven Sacred Pools”. They were seven cascading pools naturally carved by a seasonal stream.

 
 
Seven Sacred Pools

The pools were right along the main Soldier Pass Trail (lower-left). To view them in one frame, I thought the best place was across the riverbed from the western side (lower-right), a small detour away from the dirt road.

It was just past 5pm by the time we got back to the parking lot, about half hour before sunset. After that, we headed towards Sedona Airport Vista, a great place to view sunset.

Sunset at Sedona Airport Vista

Given its mountainous landscape, Sedona built its airport on top of a long and narrow mesa (now called “Airport Mesa”). Near the airport’s entrance was a vista directly overlooking the town of Sedona, backdropped by various buttes and mountains.
The airport offered convenient parking ($3 per day) to the vista. We arrived at 5:20pm to join throngs of spectators for sunset.

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Capitol Butte

Brins Butte

Valley
Between Capitol Butte and Brins Butte, where Soldier Wash flew through and we hiked just hours ago.

Mescal Mountain

It’s winter so the sun set at a southernly angle, from airport vista it’s obstructed by some trees. But on a different angle, the sight of Capitol Butte and Brins Butte in front of us bathing in the soft and vibrant twilight colors was sure a spectacular way to end the day.

Red Rocks of Sedona from Airport Overlook

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Mountains under Sunset Glow
Capitol Butte and Brins Butte

Capitol Butte

Brins Butte

Mountains to the West

Only that without obstacles, wind was strong at airport vista, and temperature was plummeting once the sun set below the horizon, and we weren’t dressed for that. So not long after sunset, we packed up and headed back to our hotel, concluding the day.

END

Day 3 of 2022 Arizona Trip, Sedona by Huang's Site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.