Review Date
March 1, 2008

Overall Rating
 5 of 5

Aerobic Difficulty
 3 of 5

Technical Difficulty
 3 of 5

Ridden Trail:
Ridden Once

Reviewed by: daugela ,  Weekend Warrior

Summary:
After craving some quietness and serenity that I used to ride in Oregon years back, my friend and I decided to ride Sedona for the first time this weekend and fell in love with it!

The greatest part about this trail is the scenery by far. The views are absolutely spectacular and beautiful.

The trail begins at the main trailhead which is 100 yards off the main road in Sedona. Be prepared to pay a $5.00 daily park pass which is purchased on a machine at the start. The machine accomodates ATM cards and the pass is left on your dashboard.

The trail slowly accends as you ride about 3 miles on nice, smooth sigle track. At that point, the trail goes underneath the highway but WATCH OUT - danger lies ahead for those that don't like jumps. Immediately exiting the tunnel, there's a 3 foot drop into a rocky creek bed. Don't go too fast off the drop because you'll nail the creek embankment. There are no ride arounds.

Stay in the creek and ride up the steps to your right.

From here, you ride some awesome rolling singletrack with a few minor technical spots and several rolling jumps. You can get some good air on these jumps with speed!

The trail travels west towards Cathedral Rock on an AWESOME slidrock trail that wraps around the site. Watch out, because there are some sttep cliffs to your right.

Once on the west side of Cathedral Rock, it descends down a fairly technical, rocky, steep trail. Reminds me of National Trail, but with more jagged rocks.

We were delighted to find a large rolling river at the botton. I didn't check my map to see if this is a regular running river, but I suspect in March, it was the runoff from Flagstaff.

From here, it's practically impossible to ride since you're transversing 1000's of sharp, jagged river rocks on the embankment. We carried our bikes here.

The trail eventually hooks into other trails about 1 mile past this point. You can either turn around or connect to the other trails which either wrap you around to where you began or take you onto a road (Verde Valley School Road). It's about 3 miles of road riding back to the trailhead from here.

All in all, we had a great time and will be back every other weekend. It's that good!

I think beginners to experts would like this trail. The beginners would naturally walk their bikes down the steep stuff, but enjoy the other 90%.