Soldier Pass Arches and Seven Sacred Pools

Author's Comments

The pools are the reason most people walk this trail, and the pools are honest about their conditions. They hold water when the season has been generous and they do not when it has not. I have arrived in late March after a wet February and found all seven of them full, the red rock above doubled in the still water, the reflections so clean they read almost as a second landscape laid beneath the first. I have also arrived in October and found dry stone basins, beautiful in their own way but not what I came for. This is a trail that rewards checking the recent rainfall before you commit. Morning is the only time worth considering. The parking lot fills before eight, the light is still cool and angled, and the pools sit in shadow long enough that you can work the reflections without fighting glare. Past nine the sun climbs over the western wall and the surface goes silver and unreadable. The arch is further up the trail and most hikers turn back before reaching it. That is the quiet part of the walk. The juniper opens, the rock gets stranger, and the arch itself frames a piece of sky that feels deliberately composed. Devil's Kitchen on the way in is worth a pause but not a long one. The pools and the arch are where the trail actually delivers, and they deliver best in the wet months when Sedona is between its tourist seasons and the light still has winter in it.

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