What is the Cathedral Rock Trail?
Cathedral Rock is the formation on the Sedona postcards, two clusters of spires with a notch between them, and the Cathedral Rock Trail goes to the notch. From a small trailhead at 4,043 feet on Back O’ Beyond Road it climbs 669 feet in roughly three-quarters of a mile: a short stretch of ordinary trail, then bare, steepening sandstone marked by wire baskets of rocks, then a crack where you put your hands on the stone and your feet in toeholds notched into it, then more slickrock to the saddle. The Forest Service’s own description calls it “more of a rock climb than a hike” and rates it strenuous. Round trip is listed as 1.1 miles in one place and 1.5 in another; call it 1.2 and 90 minutes with time at the top.
The saddle is the payoff: the spires overhead, the Verde Valley to the west, and at sunset the whole red rock country lit up behind you. It is also where people keep going along an unmaintained ledge beneath the spires, which is where most of the rescues happen. It is a hike for people who like short and steep, who are steady on sloping rock, and who have ninety minutes before sunset; it is not a hike for toddlers in carriers, new trail runners in smooth shoes, or anyone who freezes on exposure.
More than 80,000 people a year climb this trail, on a lot that holds a few dozen cars, which is why the parking is now managed the way it is. What you get is the best short climb and the best sunset seat in Sedona. What you do not get is a car at the trailhead four days a week, water, shade, or an easy way down in the dark.
How to hike Cathedral Rock right
Ride the shuttle. On Thursday through Sunday, and every day during spring break (late February to late April) and the Thanksgiving, Christmas and summer holiday weeks, the trailhead lot is closed to private vehicles from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Park free at the North SR 179 Park and Ride, 1294 SR 179 (65 spaces), and ride Route 15, which leaves about every 15 minutes and reaches the trailhead in 10. No pass, no reservation, no charge. The Little Horse Trailhead across the highway may not be used as overflow. Be at the park and ride by 7:15 or after 3; when its 65 spaces fill, the next option is a long walk. On other days, turn west on Back O’ Beyond Road 3.5 miles south of the Y and drive 0.6 mile to the lot, with a Red Rock Pass ($5 a day) or America the Beautiful pass on the dash.
Get there. Loop 101 north to I-17, north about 80 miles to exit 298, then SR 179 north 15 miles through the Village of Oak Creek. About 1 hour 55 minutes from Old Town to the shuttle lot.
Pick the season. October through April is prime, and a winter weekday afternoon is the best version of this hike. Summer is sunrise only, done by 9, under the summer rules. Do not climb in rain, within an hour after rain, in ice, or in high wind; the crack is a chimney and the slabs above it shed people.
Wear the right shoes. Trail runners or approach shoes with sticky rubber. The sandstone is grippy when dry and a slide when wet; sandals and smooth soles are how people get hurt here.
Water and toilets. A vault toilet at the trailhead, nothing else. No water. Carry a liter even for this short a climb; it is all in the sun.
Climb it. Follow the wire baskets of rocks; the route is easy to lose where it crosses bare sandstone, so find the next basket before you move. At the crack, face the rock, use the notched toeholds and keep three points of contact. This is a class 2 to easy class 3 scramble. If heights bother you, the first slab will tell you; Bell Rock five minutes south has the same rock with none of the commitment. Stop at the saddle; the ledge to the right is where the rescues come from.
Plan the sunset. The saddle faces west and the light on Courthouse Butte behind you is the show. The last shuttle back leaves the trailhead about 5:30 p.m., so a sunset climb on a shuttle day means walking out Back O’ Beyond Road and up SR 179 to your car in the dark. Plan it for a Monday through Wednesday outside the holiday calendar, or carry headlamps and accept the walk.
Dogs. Allowed on leash. Most cannot do the crack unassisted, and the rock is hot by late morning from April on.
Skip it if you want a walk rather than a climb. The Bell Rock and Courthouse Butte loop is flat and open, Red Rock State Park has Oak Creek and shade, and Devil’s Bridge is longer but far less steep. For the photograph of Cathedral Rock reflected in water, go to Red Rock Crossing at Crescent Moon, a $15 day-use site, not here.
The rock that swapped names with the courthouse
Cathedral Rock is Permian sandstone, the Schnebly Hill Formation, laid down roughly 280 million years ago as coastal dunes beside a shallow sea and then cemented into the red cliff-forming layer that every Sedona formation is cut from. Oak Creek did the carving, lowering the valley floor and leaving the spires standing a mile west of what is now SR 179. The people who first looked up at them were Sinagua farmers, who lived along Oak Creek and the Verde from roughly 500 until the early 1400s and left; the Yavapai and Tonto Apache held the red rock country after them until the Army marched them to San Carlos in 1875.
Settlement came the next year, when John J. Thompson took up land in Oak Creek Canyon in 1876. The Sedona post office opened in 1902, named for the postmaster’s wife, Sedona Schnebly, when the whole settlement had 55 residents; the sandstone formation itself was named for her family a few years later. On July 2, 1908, Theodore Roosevelt consolidated the Coconino National Forest, and Cathedral Rock, its trail and its parking lot have been federal land since. The names on the early maps were not the ones we use. Surveyors labeled this formation “Court House Rock” and the butte across the highway “Church House Rock”; at some point the labels crossed, and the rock that looks like a cathedral got the name while the one that looks like a courthouse kept the other. Rangers still spend part of every day explaining which is which.
Hollywood found the rock before the tourists did. Westerns were shot among the red rocks from 1923 into the 1970s, and Cathedral Rock in the background of a dozen of them is how most of America first saw it. The town came after the films: a resort and retirement community from the 1950s, electricity in parts of the area only in the 1960s, incorporation as a city in 1988, and most of the houses you drive past built in the 1980s and 1990s. By 2007 there was no large tract of undeveloped land left inside the city. The Slide Fire of May 2014 burned 21,227 acres in Oak Creek Canyon and closed the canyon until October, and visitation kept climbing anyway.
The trail could not keep up. By the late 2010s more than 80,000 people a year were climbing to the saddle from a dirt lot built for a few dozen cars, parking along Back O’ Beyond Road, blocking driveways and filling the Little Horse lot across the highway. The City of Sedona’s answer, worked out with the Forest Service, was to stop them driving in at all: on service days the trailhead lot is closed to private vehicles and a free bus, Route 15, runs every 15 minutes from a 65-space park and ride on SR 179. The same system now serves Soldier Pass and the Dry Creek trailheads for Devil’s Bridge, and the Forest Service caps daily riders on some routes as a permit condition. It is the first place in Arizona where a national forest trail is reached mainly by public transit, and it has cut the chaos on Back O’ Beyond without cutting the crowd on the rock.
Why it matters
Cathedral Rock is where Sedona’s two facts collide: the most photographed formation in Arizona and a trailhead the size of a gas station. Its history is the town’s in miniature, from Sinagua farms to Hollywood to the moment the city decided that the only way to keep the trail open was to take the cars away. For a Scottsdale visitor that is good news. The shuttle is free, frequent and painless, the climb is ninety minutes of the best scrambling in the state, and the saddle at sunset is worth the drive on its own. Go on a cool weekday, wear sticky shoes, stop at the saddle, and if you want the sunset on a shuttle day, bring a headlamp and accept the walk back.