8 Sedona Hikes You Can Hit Without Ever Leaving Highway 179

You could spend a week in Sedona chasing trailheads on six different apps, or you could drive one road and let it hand you eight hikes in order. That's not an exaggeration   it's the actual route. Highway 179, the stretch that runs south from the Y intersection through the Village of Oak Creek, passes within a few minutes of nearly every trail Sedona is famous for. Sinkholes. Slickrock saddles. A chapel wedged into a cliff. A "chicken" overlook with two separate origin stories. All of it, one road.

This is the trail guide for Sedona hikes built the way you'll actually experience them: in the order you'll drive past them, with the parking reality nobody puts in the brochure.

The Trail Lineup, In Drive Order

Here's what you're working with, mile marker by mile marker, before we go deep on each one.

Now, the story behind each one   because a red rock without a story is just a rock.

1. Broken Arrow Trail   The One With the Hollywood Origin Story

First stop off Morgan Road, and the one most rental-car tourists drive right past because it's not the most photographed name on the list. That's a mistake.

Broken Arrow follows an old jeep road across sandstone shelves before splitting toward three features. The Devil's Dining Room comes first   a sinkhole where the ground straight-up collapsed into an underground cavern, viewable from a fenced overlook. Next is Submarine Rock, a flat-topped formation you can actually climb and walk across, like the desert grew its own aircraft carrier. Then Chicken Point, a wide slickrock shelf where pink Jeeps do their turnarounds.

• Distance: 3.4 miles round trip

• Elevation gain: ~400 feet

• Difficulty: Moderate, with scrambling sections on slickrock

• What to bring: Water, grippy shoes   there's no shade anywhere on this trail

The trail's name comes from the 1950 Western Broken Arrow, starring Jimmy Stewart and Jeff Chandler. Director Delmer Daves brought his crew to Sedona to film chase scenes through these exact canyons, and when the film hit theaters, audiences saw Sedona's red cliffs on screen for the first time in American cinema. Tourism took off almost overnight. Decades later, when this trail needed an official name, locals honored the movie that put the town on the map.

2. Raven Caves Trail   The One With No Signs and No Crowd

This is the hike nobody puts on a "best of" list, which is exactly why it's worth the five minutes it takes.

It's a short, steep, unofficial path   loose dirt, minor scrambling   that drops down to a cluster of natural sandstone caves above Oak Creek. Multiple chambers open up with red-rock views framed like windows.

There's a small dirt parking area along the Red Rock Scenic Byway, no facilities, no trail signs. Shakaguide clocks it at about half a mile and 20 minutes round trip,  short enough to squeeze in without derailing your day, adventurous enough that it feels like you found it yourself.

3. Mystic Trail: The Quiet One on the Way to the Chapel

Tucked onto Chapel Road just before the climb to the Chapel of the Holy Cross, Mystic Trail runs about a mile along the western edge of Mammoth Rock, the big red mountain you'll see looming ahead as you drive. It's moderately easy, popular for hikers who want red-rock views without a crowd or a scramble. A small pull-off on the left marks the trailhead.

One local trip report notes that finishing the loop can involve a walk of several blocks through a residential neighborhood before you reconnect with your car, so budget a little extra time if you go all the way around.

4. Cathedral Rock Trail   The One Everyone Photographs

If Sedona has a signature hike, this is it. Every "best hikes in Sedona" list opens with Cathedral Rock, and once you've stood in the saddle between its spires, you'll understand why.

• Distance: 1.2 miles round trip

• Elevation gain: ~600 feet

• Difficulty: Moderate on paper, genuinely strenuous in practice   there's no flat stretch

• The move: A narrow stone chute called The Crack, where you'll use both hands to scramble up to the saddle

Early settlers thought the four spires resembled Gothic cathedral towers   hence the name. From the saddle, you get a real 360-degree payoff: Oak Creek to the west, Bell Rock to the east, the Chapel of the Holy Cross to the north, Verde Valley to the south.

The parking reality: the lot on Back O' Beyond Road holds about 40 cars and fills early on weekends and during spring/fall high season. If it's full, the free Sedona Shuttle from uptown is your backup, or you wait for a spot to open. There's no shade on the trail and the scramble genuinely needs both hands and feet   wear shoes with real grip.

Cathedral Rock is also one of Sedona's four recognized energy vortex sites, alongside Bell Rock, Airport Mesa, and Boynton Canyon. Whether or not you buy into vortex energy, the calm you feel at the top is real   it just might be the view doing the work, not the Earth's magnetic field.

5. Little Horse Trail:  The Other Way to Chicken Point

Yes, there are two "Chicken Point" spots on this route, and no, that's not a typo   it's just Sedona having fun with itself. This one is reached via Little Horse Trailhead, starting on Bell Rock Pathway before branching off through open red-rock country.

• Distance: Sources land between 3.4 and 4.3 miles round trip depending on how far you push past the overlook

• Elevation: Roughly 350–500 feet gain

• Difficulty: Easy to moderate   one of the more approachable "big view" hikes on this list

• Parking: A Red Rock Pass ($5/day) is required at the trailhead, or take the free Sedona shuttle from the North SR-179 Park and Ride Lot to skip the fee entirely

This Chicken Point is a wide red-rock overlook with big views of Bell Rock, Courthouse Butte, and the Village of Oak Creek. Its name has the same jeep-tour logic as the other one: guides used to drive a hair-raising loop around a rock knob near steep drop-offs, and anyone who backed out got called "chicken." That specific maneuver isn't done anymore   it's too dangerous   but the overlook itself remains one of the most rewarding easy stops on the whole route.

6. Yavapai Vista Trail   The Half-Mile Payoff

Named for the Yavapai people, whose history in this valley includes forced relocation to the San Carlos Reservation in 1875   a march the Yavapai themselves call the Exodus   this is one of the smallest but most efficient hikes on the list.

About half a mile out to a broad slickrock plateau, opening onto sweeping views of Gibraltar, Lee Mountain, Rabbit Ears, Bell Rock, and Courthouse Butte. If your legs are tired from Cathedral Rock but you still want one more red-rock view before lunch, this is it.

7. Courthouse Butte Loop Trail:   The Full Circuit

This is the commitment hike on the list if you want to do more than glimpse the butte from the road. The loop circles Courthouse Butte   the blocky formation that earned its name from its courthouse-like silhouette   and runs roughly 3.8 to 4.4 miles depending on which trailhead you start from.

Parking is the trick here: the Courthouse Vista lot is small and fills fast, so the Yavapai Vista lot across the road or the larger Bell Rock Vista lot to the south are your realistic backups. Moderate difficulty, mostly desert scrub and slickrock, with Bell Rock as your constant companion on one side.

8. Bell Rock Pathway (Bell Rock Loop Trail)   The Easy Finish With a Legend Attached

The last trail stop on the route, and the gentlest one   which makes it the perfect way to close out a day of scrambling and slickrock. The pathway loops around the base of bell-shaped Bell Rock, which rises about 500 feet and tops out near 4,919 feet in elevation, with Courthouse Butte in view for most of the walk.

Bell Rock became known as a vortex site in the 1980s, and it's the trail most associated with Sedona's twisted-juniper legend: visitors search out junipers supposedly bent by the Earth's energy. The less mystical explanation is that junipers twist naturally from growing in windy, rocky terrain   no vortex required. But watching the light hit those twisted trunks at golden hour, you'll understand why the story stuck anyway.

Distance: just over 2 miles for the loop, easy grade, well-maintained   the trail that lets everyone in your group keep up, no matter how the other seven hikes went.

Why This Route Works Better Than Cherry-Picking Trails

Most visitors treat Sedona hikes like a scavenger hunt across scattered parking lots and separate drives. The reality is that seven of these eight trails sit along one continuous stretch of Highway 179, in a logical sequence that also happens to double as the town's most scenic drive  past Tlaquepaque Village, the Chapel of the Holy Cross, and the Village of Oak Creek. Doing them in route order means less backtracking, fewer wasted permits, and more actual hiking time instead of GPS-guessing time.

The trade-off is that timing and parking matter more here than almost anywhere else in the Southwest. Cathedral Rock and Little Horse fill early. Broken Arrow and Courthouse Butte have their own separate rush hours. Get the order wrong and you'll spend your golden-hour window circling a gravel lot instead of standing on a saddle between red spires. Check out the Best Things to do in Sedona!

Skip the Guesswork and  Let the Road Narrate It For You

Reading eight trail descriptions before a trip is one thing. Remembering which turn leads to which trailhead while you're actually driving 179 with a rental car and a coffee in the cupholder is another thing entirely.

That's exactly the gap a GPS-aware Sedona and Red Rock State Park driving tour closes. The narration triggers automatically as you enter each story zone   Broken Arrow, Raven Caves, Mystic Trail, Cathedral Rock, Little Horse, Yavapai Vista, Courthouse Butte, and Bell Rock Pathway   plus Tlaquepaque Village and the Chapel of the Holy Cross along the way. No script-reading at red lights. No missed turns. Just drive, listen, and pull over when the story tells you to.

Download the Sedona driving tour before your trip and turn this entire eight-trail route into one narrated, GPS-guided day   parking notes, trail difficulty, and the stories behind every stop, delivered exactly when you need them.