Yesterday, we hiked the west fork of the Oak Creek. The parking lot for the trail is about 9 miles out of Sedona up the Oak Creek Canyon. It’s $10 per car to park there.
The trail starts out by crossing Oak Creek and then going through a fruit tree orchard. You’ll pass some ruins as well. The ‘designated’ trail is 3.2 miles long. The trail does continue past that for another 11 miles until it hits a Forest Service Road. We went about 4 miles up the trail. No loop, you come back on the same trail you went up.
The crowds start to thin out after a mile and we saw only a few people past 2 miles in. The monsoon season in Sedona this year hasn’t yielded a lot of rain. The water was running real low and clear. A thunderstorm did mov in for a couple hours (we got wet) and the stream picked up appreciably.
It’s a fairly easy hike, you only gain 250′ in elevation on the first 3 miles. You do have to cross the stream several times.
Didn’t catch any trout. It’s catch and release and mostly wild Brown Trout.
It’s a trail I highly recommend. Easy going and small kids can handle it without much trouble. It is one of the most popular trails in Sedona’s Oak Creek Canyon.