Cathedral Rock Trail

Cathedral Rock Trail, long an icon of Sedona’s Red Rock hiking adventures, received a facelift over three work seasons, 2022-2024. Costing over $500,000 to complete, the work was funded primarily by the Sedona Red Rock Trail Fund and the Great America Outdoors Act. In addition to monetary support, volunteers from the community generously donated their time to support various aspects of the project.

Seeing over 30,000 visitors each month, and even more during the Covid crisis, Cathedral had been loved to death. Social trails multiplied unchecked, existing rock features crumbled, and the delicate red rock landscape was ravaged.

Working with the USFS, we helped fund trail specialists who not only created a design that rebuilt the trail to more rigorous National Park standards, but also provided specialized training for many of the seasonal crew members…training that was needed to safely and efficiently stabilize the trail and prepare it for many years of future users.

Work involved replacing rock steps, installing drainage structures, armoring rock steps and retaining walls, closing social trails, installing fencing, and renewing interpretive signs. The crews battled ice, wind, cold, hot, and high waters to quarry, move, split, shape, and install rock features. In closing the project, thousands of seed balls were planted to lessen the chance of erosion and damage to the adjacent Oak Creek watershed.