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.