Fay Canyon Trail And the Arch

On January 16, 2010, twelve members of the Skyliners (Lila Wright, George Everman, Donna Goodman, Virginia Driscoll, Dolly Yapp, Gordon Bice, Miriam Sterling, Ellis Price, Betty Williams, Anita Jackson and two others) group hiked up the trail in Fay Canyon and then stopped on the way out to visit the arch.

We parked at the trailhead on Boynton Pass Road. To get there from Cottonwood, we traveled north on Hwy 89A to Sedona and turned left onto Dry Creek Road (Forest Road 152C). About 2 miles from Hwy 89A we passed Vultee Arch Road, a very rough dirt road leading off to the right. After about another 0.85 miles (2.85 miles from Hwy 89A) we reached a stop sign. Long Canyon Road leads to the right from here. We turned left on Boynton Pass Road. Actually, according to the Google map, we had been on Boynton Pass Road since passing Vultee Arch Road. We traveled for another 0.6 miles to reach a second stop sign at the junction with Long Canyon road. We turned left to continue on Boynton Pass Road for just over another 0.5 miles before turning left into the trailhead parking lot. The trailhead is directly across the road from the parking lot.

We intended to visit the Fay Canyon Arch which we were told would be on the right side of the canyon about 0.5 miles from the trailhead. We were thus alert to find the trail leading up to the arch. That to be rather easy, as there was a substantial cairn marking the spot and the trail itself, at least in the lower stretch, was well defined. However, as we were to find out later, the upper part of the trail turned out be be pretty indistinct and was very steep. We also had a good view of the arch from the main trail at the turnoff.

However, it was not clear at first that we were actually looking at an arch. It appeared to me to be little more than a rock overhang.

Fay Canyon Arch viewed from the main trail

After a brief discussion, we decided to continue on up the main trail and reserve our visit to the arch for the return leg of the hike. About 1 mile from the trailhead, we came to a fork in the canyon. The fork is marked by a rockslide below a jutting brow in the cliff separating the two branches of the canyon.

We followed a well-traveled trail that led up the rockslide to the brow and continued close along the cliff wall up the left branch of the canyon. We later determined that we should have taken the right branch instead. As it were, we found the trail we did take to be not too difficult, although it did involve a bit of climbing over and around rock formations along the wall of the cliff. Looking back the way we had come, we had a good, if somewhat hazy, view out the canyon mouth and on to Courthouse Butte in the distance:

Looking down Fay Canyon. The block like formation, extending just to the horizon, in the very middle of the canyon mouth is Courthouse Butte.

We followed the trail up the left canyon branch for about 0.6 miles before it dissipated in a grove of trees hard against the cliff wall. I took a photograph on the way up this branch of the trail, a couple of photographs where the trail ended at the base of the cliff and several on the way back down the trail. These are shown on the following pages.

The trail ahead on the way down The trail ahead on the way down

View back down the canyon from the left branch trail - note the goblet-shaped formation (center)

The end of the trail up the left branch of the canyon

Looking back down the canyon from the upper end of the left fork trail

We had reached the end of the left fork trail a bit past noon and we were getting hungry. However, we had left one hiker back at the canyon fork and decided to return there before stopping to eat. When we reached the fork and settled down to eat, some of the group, perched high up on the rockslide near the brow of the cliff dividing the canyons, were able to see the Fay Canyon Indian Ruins (mentioned in the Forest Service trail description) up the canyon branch that we had not taken. That is when we knew for sure that we had gotten off the main trail.

Rather than exploring the Indian Ruins after finishing lunch, we chose to head back down the trail and visit the Fay Canyon Arch on our way out. We were not sure that we wanted to do both. We did pause for a group photo before heading down the canyon.

Hikers arriving at the arch Sky between the arch and the cliff

When we reached the turnoff to the arch, the entire group decided to make the rather steep climb up the canyon wall to see it close up. We all made it to the arch and several of us climbed further to reach the top of the arch.

Lila atop the arch Dolly and George (upside down) atop the arch

Gordon and George atop the arch Anita and Lila between arch and cliff

The entire group had made the rather steep climb up the canyon wall to to the foot of the arch so as to see it close up. Several of us then climbed further to reach the very top of the formation. From there we could see that it did indeed stand apart from the cliff face proper. The hikers shown atop the ledge in the following photograph can look down into a gap between the cliff proper and the broken-away ledge that contains the arch.

The arch (lower left quadrant) with Dolly and George still on top (upper right quadrant)

We lingered at the arch for quite some time before descending back down to the main trail and returning to the parking area.

And, finally, a photograph of the plant of the day, a gorgeous, perfectly-formed hedgehog cactus noted, needles at the ready, squatting alongside the trail in the upper canyon.

Hedgehog cactus growing alongside the trail in the left branch of the canyon

My unedited GPS file, which was divided into three separate segments due to signal loss, gave the total hiking distance as 7.2 miles. Even after I cleaned the file up by erasing some of the wild swings due to signals bouncing from the canyon walls, the file still showed a hiking distance of about 5.5 miles. A quick measurement using Google Earth, on the other hand, indicated that the total distance was only about 3.60 miles. GPS readings in these deep canyons (Loy, Fay, etc) simply cannot be trusted due to signal reception problems. One can, however, get a pretty good track of the route traveled by erasing some of the wilder swings and just looking at gross data. The GPS track is shown on the included map (below).