Jordan, Soldier Pass, Cibola Pass

Friday’s hike? Jordan Trail to Soldier Pass with a cut back through Cibola Pass to the trailhead. The hike was 4.73 miles with a mild ascent of only 346 feet. We spent just over three hours on the trail. It is the purple one on the map. The trailhead was located on the bottom right which is about a 20 minute hike from the Brins Mesa parking lot.

Here is a short video overview of the hike.

We parked our car near the Jordan Trail trailhead. Our car is the one in the middle. There are only 5 spots at this parking area. We arrived here around 3pm. If we had elected to do a morning hike, I doubt that we would have found a spot here nor, for that matter, at the main Brins Mesa parking lot further up the road.

This is the road that leads up to the Brins Mesa main parking area. The road into these trailheads is very rough. If you want to save the suspension system of your car you must take it very slowly.

We encountered more hikers and bikers along the trail than we expected. Not hundreds of people mind you. Perhaps 20 or so along the Jordan Trail. Soldier Pass Trail was a different story. Very busy up there.

This part of Jordan trail takes you through a forest.

The weather that day was mild but overcast. We had a lot of cloud cover for the hike although it did break up somewhat towards the end of the day.

Even with the clouds, it was possible to get a few good frames with the camera.

Although the temperatures have been quite mild in Sedona, the mountains in the distance still have snow. Our elevation on the trail was between 4,500 and 4,700 feet. I suspect those snow-covered mountains are somewhere around the 5,500 foot mark. Colder up there.

Lorraine was enjoying the hike even with her newfound videography duties.

Here we made the turn from Jordan Trail to Soldier Pass Trail. And, with that turn, we encountered many more hikers.

The local jeep tours come up this way to show the tourists a few of the main sites on Soldier Pass Trail.

The Seven Sacred Pools does attract a lot of people. Through the magic of Photoshop, I was able to remove them from the photo. There was one young couple that hovered over the pools for at least 20 minutes or so taking dozens of selfies. They spent so much time at this spot that another couple asked them to leave so that they could take a picture of the pools.

I blame Instagram.

We followed Soldier Pass until 5pm. And, at that point we knew that we would need to turn back to avoid being out on the trails at night.

And success. We made it back to the intersection of Cibola Pass Trail and the Brins Mesa trailhead. A relatively short hike to where we had parked our car and another hike down.