Thunder Mountain Trailhead — Attraction in Sedona

We live in the neighborhood and hike these trails nearly everyday: Adante' Thunder Mountain Teacup Chimney Rock

Chimney Rock is the most difficult - I wouldn't recommend doing this trail with "tennis-shoes", worn-out hiking boots, let alone "hiking sandals" or worse - "flip-flops". You need good sharp well defined treads/lugs under boots with superior ankle support. The trail takes on steep angles where slipping and loose gravel combine. The gravel acts like "ball bearings" that will roll out from under you, sending down steep inclines that are hard to stop on once the slip is underway. The Adante' presents a well balanced, easy to "you need to focus" levels of trail terrain. Some parts are also steep with, again - loose, small gravel combined with that steep incline. You still need sharp, newer lugs/treads under stronger ankle supporting boots to traverse this trail. The length of the steep parts are not as long as the Chimney Trail, as a note of relief. Teacup is a little easier than Adante', and it opens up going in the Eastward direction to overlooking parts of Sedona, the 179 and parts of "UpTown" Sedona. There is one part where you need to climb a few feet of Sandstone, but it's something you could do with low-top hiking shoes.

For all these trails, the random, intermittent rocky parts of all these trails requires thick, hard soles with healthy lugs/treads to provide grip and protection from sharp rocks, random cactus remnants mid-trail with attached spines that sandal-type of foot wear cannot protect you from. The sandstone also breaks down into very fine red-orange sand that gets everywhere below your ankles. If we bathed our 2 dogs everytime we hiked, the bathtub bottom would be littered with the stuff. Their fur pulls it in and there it stays, until it is shaken loose upon jumping into our car's back seat or cargo area.

By far, the near-by Lizard-head trail is the most difficult. Do not take small children or your dogs on this trail. You encounter near-vertical, tall (8' or over) walls with small, widely spaced footholds to climb the walls for the next trail segment. Hope this helps with your decision-making of what to...

Level 2 trail: Lower Chimney Rock. I recommend walking counter-clockwise; there seems to be a lot more signage for the correct trail to take. We tried going clockwise as suggested and got lost 6 times. Either the map needs to be updated or more signage is needed. The map says there is 2 passages on the track, well there's 14. Enjoy finding the correct path if you aren't a local. Sights aren't great, houses 500 yards from track, and another 500 from the road. Fences are barricades if you go on the wrong path. Some lower hanging powerlines without warning signage, so be careful...

I came here around 12:45PM on a Thursday and the parking lot was about 2/3 full. There's a map in the beginning and the signage is decent, saw quite a few people on the trail. The trail I did (Thunder Mountain - Andante - Chimney Rock Pass) is pretty much in the city, so the views include power lines which isn't really ideal. The hike is pretty flat and not super interesting but is still pretty because it's still Sedona after all. Took me about 1.5 hours to...