3 Epic Cave Hikes in Sedona
Anyone who has seen photos of Sedona is aware that is not only gorgeous, but full of epic hikes that lead to beautiful vistas, rock formations, and sometimes, beautiful caves. Below we describe our three favorite caves in Sedona along with tips to ensure you have the best experience.
Soldier Pass Cave
Soldier Pass Cave is our absolute favorite cave as we had the entire cave to ourselves while we visited and the lighting was gorgeous. You can find this cave by hiking the Soldier Pass Trail in the Coconino National Forest near Sedona. It is a 4.5 mile loop hike, and on the way you pass other interesting sites, such as the Seven Sacred Pools and Devil’s Kitchen.
Tips For Best Experience:
The parking lot designated for this trailhead does not open until 8AM. We heard that typically there is a line of cars waiting beforehand, and there is only 14 parking spots. In order to get a parking spot and to start our hike before it became super busy at 8AM, we parked nearby at the Jim Thompson Trailhead on Jordan Road and took the Cibola Pass Trail, which meets up with the Soldier Pass Trail, after around one mile. This does make this a 6.5 mile round trip, and add quite a bit of time. We parked at the trailhead around 6AM, giving us quite a bit of time before the other parking lot opened at 8AM.
The road to Jim Thompson Trailhead is very rough. We had a 4WD vehicle and could not believe how rough it was. We some some sedans parked nearby, but if you had a vehicle with low clearance, I would not recommend this parking lot.
Stop to take photos at the Seven Sacred Pools before you head to the cave. Once we were coming back from the cave, a lot of people were already gathered around the pools and it was difficult to take photos. These pools are best seen after it has rained in Sedona. It had rained less than a week prior to our visit, and we were lucky to see quite a bit of water in them.
Keyhole Cave
Keyhole Cave is a bit harder to find, as the main trails do not lead to it. You will have to take a lesser hiked, spur trail to reach Keyhole. It is only a 2.2 mile round trip hike, and a pretty easy one (until you reach the cave). You start by parking in the Sugarloaf Trail parking lot, and then taking the trail that leads from there (Tea Cup Trail) to an intersection. To the Right, Tea Cup Trail continues, and if you take a left, you end up on Thunder Mountain Trail. The trail you need to take instead, is the spur trail that goes straight, right behind the sign. We continued to go straight, and eventually could see the cave in the rock wall in the distance. We also used the All Trails map, which we had downloaded to use offline.
This is not one of the most popular trails and we did not run into anyone else while hiking or in the cave. We still arrived early, before sunset, to ensure we could get parking and have the place to ourselves. When we arrived back to our car, there were still some parking spots available.
Tips for Best Experience:
Look up the directions on how to reach the cave beforehand (All Trails has a great map). You might be able to use it online, we had pretty good cell reception during our hike.
I would highly suggest visiting this cave with someone, unless you are super agile and good at scrambling up and down rocks. It is a bit sketchy climbing up to the cave (handholds are hard to find), and even worse getting down.
Boynton Subway
Boynton Subway cave is by far the most visited cave in Sedona, thus the most crowded. To get here you take the Boynton Canyon Trail. The parking lot is a decent size, but it fills up fast with the popularity of this trail. The entire trail is 7.3 miles out and back, but if you are only hiking to the subway, you will shave off a couple miles. The first waypoint is a vista that veers off to the right. Continue straight to get to the subway. Eventually the trail will veer again to the right (the path to the subway). There is not a sign and there was a log laying across the path, so we completely missed it at first and had to back track. Once we arrived we spent some time walking through the tunnel; if continue around the corner, you will find some small caves to explore.
Tips for Best Experience:
I highly suggest getting here early if you don’t want to wait until a long line for a photo. We got to the parking lot right before 6AM and were the first ones to the subway, but were joined soon after by several other groups.
I suggest checking out All Trails maps beforehand and using this map, it helped us realize we initially passed the trail.
There are two ways to climb up to the subway. The first way goes directly to it, but is steep and difficult to climb. We found out as we were leaving that there is an easier way up, that is less direct, but much easier to traverse. We ended up taking this way back down.