Notes
Katie and I hiked along the West Fork Trail, which is located 10 miles north of Sedona, Arizona in the Coconino National Forest. It was a great first hike in Sedona, especially for a late afternoon hike. The trail wound its way along Oak Creek and in between the cliffs of Oak Creek Canyon. The trail crossed the creek about a dozen times each way and provided for some interesting moments during the first few crossings. Because the trail followed the creek, there were plenty of large trees that provided shade for the basically the entire length of the trail. This is the most popular trail in the Red Rock District so it is very wide at spots and very sandy the whole way due to the amount of traffic it sees.
We had a little trouble not only finding the trailhead, but also the actual trail. While driving, I missed the trailhead parking lot and drove a fair bit past it, not realizing my mistake until we started to head up into the mountains. It took a while to find a spot to turn around. After finding and parking at the trailhead, locating and sticking to the actual trail was also a little difficult as there were numerous outshoots either due to shorter trails leaving the main trail or additional trails created by hikers leaving the proper trail. At first we got on a trail which eventually led us back to the start after a few short minutes. This aggravated me because I thought and expected that the trails would be better marked. The correct path was on concrete for a few minutes before crossing over Oak Creek via a nice bridge. Shortly after the bridge there were ruins of a building and the remnants of the guest cottage of the Mayhew Lodge. There was also a man-made cave built into the rock face next to the old guest cottage that was about 12 feet in diameter and about five to six feet high.
On the way out, we encountered a great number of hikers for the first 0.5 to 0.75 miles. The crowd thinned out as we got further down the trail and it got later in the day. About a half mile into the hike, we saw a narrow-headed garter snake ( http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/coconino/forest-resources/wildlife-fisheries/garter-snake-need-help.pdf ) on a rock in the creek attempting to eat fish that were trying to swim and jump up some rapids. The snake was a little over 2 feet long and the fish were only a couple inches long. It was quite a sight to see the little fish trying to propel themselves up a 35 degree, six foot long rock face. On the way back we heard bullfrogs in the creek. Their calls reverberated through the canyon and it almost sounded like the smoke monster from LOST.
This trail ended up being by far the easiest trail we hiked, but was very scenic and allowed us to get to get a good view of Sedona's wooded landscape.