Soldier Pass Trail: The Gate, the Fork and the Cave Spur

Soldier Pass is the West Sedona trail where a sinkhole, a chain of rock pools and an unsigned alcove line up within the first mile and a half, and where the real obstacle is not the walking but the gate at the bottom of the road. Sixteen parking spaces by our count, a lot that is locked to cars four days a week and every night, and a shuttle with a daily rider cap mean that how you arrive decides whether the hike happens at all. This guide settles the access question first, then walks the trail landmark by landmark so you know where the cave spur leaves the main trail and how far past it you want to go.

In This Guide

16 min read

Where: end of Soldier Pass Road via Rim Shadows Drive in West Sedona — from the Y, 1.2 miles west on SR 89A, 1.5 miles up Soldier Pass Road, right on Rim Shadows for 0.2 miles to the gated entry road (Forest Service directions) | Official figures: Soldier Pass Trail No. 66, rated moderate, 4 miles round trip to the Brins Mesa junction (the Forest Service narrative also prints 4.5), 641 ft of gain from a 4,444 ft trailhead, 2.5 hours | Lot: 16 spaces, open 8 AM–6 PM, closed to cars on every shuttle-service day | Shuttle: Route 14 from Posse Grounds, Thursday–Sunday year-round plus posted daily periods | Pass: Soldier Pass is not on the Forest Service's published fee-site list — follow whatever the sign at the lot says; shuttle riders need no pass at all

Which version of Soldier Pass are you doing?

	Pools and back	Cave and back	Full trail to Brins Mesa
Distance	About a mile round trip — Devils Kitchen is a quarter mile in, the pools about half a mile (Forest Service)	Roughly 3 miles round trip: 1.3 miles to the wilderness-boundary fork plus a steep quarter-mile spur each way	4 to 4.5 miles round trip, 641 ft of gain, 2.5 hours by the Forest Service's estimate
Best for	Families, anyone short on time, a first look at the trail on a shuttle morning	The hike most people mean when they say "Soldier Pass"; two landmarks on the way and a stop with a view	Hikers who want the quiet half — the pass, the mesa top and the Mogollon Rim view
What is hard	Nothing physical. Sun, and the lot.	The spur: a short, loose, hands-useful climb to the alcove mouth	Steeper, rockier trail above the fork, then route choices on the mesa
Turnaround	The pools are the finish line, not a compromise	At the fork, if anyone is unsure about the spur. The main trail continues without it.	The Brins Mesa junction, unless you have planned the loop back to Jordan Road
Family	Our standard family version of this trail	School-age children who scramble happily, with an adult directly below them on the spur; a judgment call, not a rule	Older children and teens with a full morning
Preview	The Soldier Pass Trail Preview shows the main trail first-person — the sinkhole, the pools, the unsigned fork and the climb to the pass. The film stays on the main trail and does not show the cave spur or the cave.

Why the parking lot decides your day

The trailhead sits at the top of a residential neighborhood behind a gate, and the gate follows two rules at once. Every day of the year the lot is closed from 6 PM to 8 AM. On top of that, it is closed to private cars whenever the Sedona Shuttle is operating, which means Thursday through Sunday all year and daily during the spring-break and holiday periods the shuttle publishes. The Forest Service lists 14 spaces (we count 16) and no restroom or trash at the trailhead. The streets below the gate are posted against trail parking, so there is no quiet overflow to fall back on.

When	How you get in	What to plan around
Monday–Wednesday, outside shuttle periods	Drive. Gate opens at 8 AM, 16 spaces, first come.	Arrive before the gate opens on any busy-season weekday; be driving out before the 6 PM lock. No sunrise starts from this lot.
Thursday–Sunday, and posted daily periods	Sedona Shuttle Route 14, boarding at Posse Grounds, the park-and-ride at 20 Carruth Drive (260 vehicles, restrooms, free).	First departure 7:00 AM, then every 50 minutes. Last pickup at the trailhead 5:08 PM. The route's Forest Service permit caps it at 300 riders a day — once the cap is reached, no one else boards.
Any day, any hour	Walk in from Jordan Road. The Forest Service points to the Jim Thompson Trailhead off Jordan Road for additional parking and restrooms; connecting trails join Soldier Pass partway up.	Jim Thompson is a Red Rock Pass fee site. Adds distance each way; the Soldier Pass parking guide maps the connector.

Two things trip people up on shuttle days. The first is frequency: fifty minutes between buses is long enough that missing one changes your morning, so check the timetable before you leave the hotel rather than at the stop. The second is the cap. Three hundred riders is not many on a spring weekend, and the shuttle does not add buses when it is reached; the earlier you board, the less the cap matters to you. The sedonashuttle.com FAQ says every shuttle pickup and drop-off has restrooms and trash receptacles, while the Forest Service trail page says the trailhead has neither — treat Posse Grounds as your last sure restroom. Riders need no Red Rock Pass and pay nothing to park.

On the pass: this trailhead does not appear on the Forest Service's published list of Red Rock Pass fee sites, though it has been treated as a pass lot before now. Go by the sign at the gate on the day you visit, and if it asks for a pass, display one — a Red Rock Pass is $5 for the day, and a valid federal Interagency pass substitutes at ordinary Forest Service fee sites. The where-it's-required guide tracks the official list. The full access picture, including your options for a full lot on a no-shuttle day, is in the Soldier Pass access plan.

The trail, landmark by landmark

The Forest Service's own distances are the ones worth memorizing, because the only navigation decision on this hike depends on them: sinkhole at about a quarter mile, pools at about half a mile, the end of the jeep road at 1.2 miles, the wilderness-boundary sign and fork an eighth of a mile after that. Until the fork, the trail is a wide, mostly level path through juniper and open red dirt with the unpaved Soldier Pass Road never far away. Jeep tours and off-road vehicles use that road to reach the sinkhole and the pools, which is why the Forest Service describes the first half as often busy and why the walk only goes quiet once you pass the boundary sign. Bikes are allowed on that first 1.3 miles and not beyond it.

Devils Kitchen, a quarter mile in

Just off the trail to the right, the ground drops into a collapse sinkhole with blocky rubble on its floor and raw walls that look recently broken because, geologically, they are. It takes two minutes to reach and five to see. Stand where the viewing area and fence line put you; the rim is open in places and sandstone edges give way without warning, so the photo from a non-designated spot is not worth the ground under it. Morning light reaches the east wall first and makes the depth read in a photograph; by midday the whole pit is lit flat. The Devils Kitchen page covers how the feature formed and why it is still considered active.

Seven Sacred Pools, about half a mile in

After a level stretch, the trail drops left into a slickrock drainage where runoff has carved a descending chain of basins into the sandstone. The count depends on the water level and on how generously you define a pool; the name is a brand more than a tally. What is in them depends almost entirely on the last storm. After winter rain and snowmelt they hold water and reflect the cliffs; by early summer they are usually dry bowls, still worth a look for the shapes; monsoon season, officially June 15 through September 30 with the first real storms usually arriving around early July, refills them within hours of a downpour. Keep out of the water. The basins are small seasonal habitats, and the tilted rock around them is at its most slippery exactly when they are full.

For families, this is the finish. The pools are a destination a child can see the point of, the walking is easy, and the trip back is downhill-flat. Nothing about turning around here is a lesser outing; it is the version our family guidance recommends. The Seven Sacred Pools page has more on timing a visit for water.

The jeep road, the boundary sign and the fork

At 1.2 miles the trail meets the end of the jeep road and the engines stop. An eighth of a mile later a sign announces the Red Rock–Secret Mountain Wilderness boundary, and the trail forks. This is the one place on Soldier Pass where you can go wrong, so slow down and look at both branches. Left is the main trail, which climbs toward the pass. Right is a narrower, steeper line that the Forest Service describes as a quarter-mile climb to an arch. The arch and the alcove that every visitor calls the Soldier Pass Cave are the same destination up the same spur, and nothing at the fork tells you that.

The cave spur

The spur earns its "steep" from the Forest Service. It gains height fast on loose red dirt and bare rock, and the final stretch below the opening is the one section of the whole hike where most people put a hand down. Nothing about it is technical; it is simply short, steep and loose, with the kind of footing that punishes smooth soles and sandals. Go up the way you intend to come down, because descending loose rock is where the ankles get turned.

The alcove is open-fronted and eroded back into the cliff, with daylight reaching most of it and a ceiling pitted with the honeycomb weathering that makes everyone look up — which is how people trip on the uneven floor. The opening faces the light, so mornings are bright inside and the back wall stays in shade. Expect company. This is one of the most photographed spots in Sedona and on a weekend late morning there can be a polite queue for the framed view out; if you want it to yourself, be on the first shuttle or through the gate at eight.

If you have climbed well past the boundary sign and the trail keeps steepening toward a pass with no fork behind you, you have missed it. Drop back down to the sign; the spur will be on your left as you descend.

The pass and Brins Mesa

Back at the fork, the left branch is where the trail changes character. It gets steeper and rockier as it works up to the pass, levels out on top of Brins Mesa near the two-mile mark, and runs another quarter mile to meet the Brins Mesa Trail. The view opens south over Sedona and north into the wilderness toward the cliffs of the Mogollon Rim, and the crowd that filled the cave is gone. Most hikers turn around at the junction. With a second car or a willingness to walk pavement, the Brins Mesa loop continues down to Jordan Road instead, and the Jordan Trail loop is the gentler circuit from that side.

Difficulty, dimension by dimension

Dimension	To the cave and back	Full trail to the Brins Mesa junction
Cardio	Low until the fork, then one short hard push on the spur	Moderate; most of the 641 ft comes after the fork, on the climb to the pass
Scrambling	Hands useful on the last stretch of the spur; nothing technical	None beyond the spur; the main trail is walking, rough in places
Exposure	Minimal; the spur is steep but not perched over drops. The sinkhole rim is the one edge to respect.	Open mesa top, no drop-offs on the trail itself
Footing	Packed dirt and slickrock, then loose rock on the spur	Rockier and steeper above the fork; mesa top is firm
Navigation	One decision: the unsigned right fork at the wilderness sign	Trail is signed at the junction; use-paths on the mesa can confuse the return
Heat	Largely open; intermittent juniper shade on the lower trail, none on the spur	Fully exposed on the mesa; start early from May through September and carry more water than seems reasonable (heat plan)

Soldier Pass is not an accessible trail experience in any formal sense: the surface is natural, there are drainages and slickrock before the first mile, and the lot has no documented facilities. If limited mobility is part of the plan, our accessible hikes guide lists the routes we call friendlier for limited mobility instead.

Turnaround rules, and who should choose something else

The hike has three natural ends and no shame in any of them. Stop at the pools if the group is young, the day is hot or the shuttle clock is tight. Stop at the fork if anyone looks at the spur and hesitates: the alcove is a good stop, not a summit, and the main trail goes on to a better view without it. Stop at the Brins Mesa junction unless you have arranged the loop. Two conditions override all of that. Wet rock turns the pools' drainage and the spur into a different hike, and if the slickrock is dark with rain the spur is off. And lightning on the pass is an afternoon problem in monsoon season; if clouds are stacking by late morning, the mesa top is not where you want to be at two.

• Choose something else if the access rules are the problem: the views from the top of Brins Mesa are reachable from Jordan Road, where the lot has no gate and no shuttle-day lock. The Brins Mesa guide starts there.
• Choose something else if your children are small: Fay Canyon is our younger-children recommendation, and the family hikes guide ranks the rest.
• Choose something else if you want the famous photo with less hassle: Devil's Bridge has its own crowd problem, but Dry Creek Vista does not lock its lot on shuttle days; the Soldier Pass vs Devil's Bridge page compares them as a decision, and hikes with caves lists the other alcoves.
• Choose something else if you want West Sedona without a crowd: Teacup and the Sugarloaf summit sit a few minutes away with far less traffic.

Timing the day around the gate

Plan	Works because	Watch for
First shuttle, 7:00 AM from Posse Grounds	You are at the fork before the jeep tours and ahead of the rider cap; the alcove is quiet or empty	Fifty-minute headway on the way back — note the timetable before you walk
Drive-in at the 8 AM gate, Mon–Wed	Sixteen spaces go to the people already in line; the cave is still uncrowded by nine	Spring-break and holiday weeks switch these days to shuttle-only; the lot locks at 6 PM
Late afternoon	Lower light in the alcove, fewer people on the spur	Last shuttle pickup 5:08 PM; by car you must be out before six. Sunset from the trail is not an option from this lot.
Summer	Only the first plan. The lower trail is open to the sun and the spur has no shade at all.	Monsoon storms build in the afternoon; be off the mesa by early afternoon

How long it takes is mostly a question of how long you sit in the alcove. The Forest Service allows 2.5 hours for the full round trip; a cave-and-back visit usually runs shorter, and the walking portion of a pools-and-back is well under an hour. Add the shuttle headway on either end if you are riding.

Questions people ask before they go

How long is Soldier Pass Trail? Four miles round trip to the Brins Mesa junction by the Forest Service's figure, with 641 feet of gain; the same page's narrative says 4.5. The cave-and-back version that most people hike is roughly three miles including the quarter-mile spur each way, and pools-and-back is about a mile.

Is the Soldier Pass Cave really a cave? It is an open-fronted alcove in the cliff rather than a cave you go into with a light. The Forest Service refers to the spur's destination as an arch. Everyone else says cave, and the spot is the same.

Do I need a Red Rock Pass? Not to ride the shuttle. If you drive in on a Monday–Wednesday, read the sign at the gate: Soldier Pass is not on the Forest Service's published fee-site list, but display a pass if the signage asks for one. The Jim Thompson lot on Jordan Road is a fee site.

Can you swim in the Seven Sacred Pools? Don't. They are shallow seasonal basins that small creatures depend on, and the sloping rock beside them is slick when wet. Look, photograph, move on.

Is it good with kids? To the pools, yes — that is our family version. The spur to the alcove is short, steep and loose; school-age children who like scrambling usually manage it with an adult directly below them, but decide at the fork, not at the trailhead, and there is no age that makes it automatic.

What if I arrive and the gate is locked? On Thursday–Sunday and the posted daily periods that is expected: go to Posse Grounds and ride Route 14. On a Monday–Wednesday it means you are before eight or after six, or it is a spring-break or holiday shuttle week. Jordan Road is the walk-in option any day; the parking guide maps it.

Can I ride a bike on it? On the first 1.3 miles, to the wilderness boundary sign. Not on the spur and not beyond the sign.

Last updated: October 20, 2026