Sedona Sites Your Red Rock Pass Does Not Cover

By Phalen Vitas — Sedona-based hospitality professional. Spotted something outdated? Tell us.

Here is the irony nobody warns you about: the four places visitors most want to reach — the creekside photo spot below Cathedral Rock, two of the best swimming holes, and Sedona’s most famous canyon hike — are exactly the places where the Red Rock Pass is worthless. Each is run by a private concessionaire under Forest Service permit, and each charges its own gate fee.

The four sites and what they charge

Why these sites are different

Every one of these locations sits on National Forest land, which is what makes the situation so confusing. The difference is operational. The Forest Service contracts these high-demand day-use areas to a private operator — currently Coconino Hospitality (928-203-0624) — under a special use permit. The operator staffs the gates, maintains the grounds, and sets the fees. Because the fee is a concession charge rather than a federal standard amenity fee, the interagency pass rules that apply at ordinary trailheads simply do not apply here.

That distinction trips up even well-prepared visitors. A driver with a $20 annual Red Rock Pass and an $80 America the Beautiful pass on the dashboard still owes $15 at the Crescent Moon gate. If you have older information mentioning $12 fees or an operator called ExplorUS, discard it — both changed with the current concession arrangement.

Crescent Moon: the photograph everyone wants

Crescent Moon Picnic Site — locals say Red Rock Crossing — is where the classic reflection shot of Cathedral Rock over Oak Creek is taken. Gates run seasonally: 7am–7pm April through September, 8am–6pm in October and November, and 9am–5pm December through March. Arrive early on any weekend; the lot is modest and the light is best before mid-morning anyway.

Grasshopper Point and West Fork: the canyon pair

Grasshopper Point is the swimming hole two miles up Oak Creek Canyon; Call of the Canyon is the fee gate for the West Fork trail, the most photographed hike in the canyon. Both normally charge $15 per vehicle with $4 walk-in entry, and both are shut as of this writing while post-fire flood danger is assessed. When they reopen, expect the fee structure to return unchanged.

Beaver Creek: the outlier

Beaver Creek Day Use sits south of the Sedona area proper, off I-17 in the Verde Valley, and charges a dollar less — $14 per vehicle. It is open year-round, dawn to dusk, and tends to be the quietest of the four.

Arriving without a car

Every fee in the table above is a per-vehicle rate, which is the only figure most sources quote. All four sites also charge per person for walk-in and bicycle entry: $4 a head at Crescent Moon, Grasshopper Point and Call of the Canyon, and $4 at Beaver Creek as well.

Work the arithmetic before you assume walking in is cheaper. Crescent Moon’s $15 covers a vehicle carrying up to five people, so a full car pays $3 a head. On foot or by bike, one person pays $4, two pay $8 and three pay $12 — all under the vehicle rate — while four people pay $16, which is more than the car would have cost. Beaver Creek breaks the same way against its $14 vehicle rate: three walk-ins at $12, four at $16.

So the per-person rate is a real saving for a solo visitor or a pair, and a false economy for a family of four. It matters most if you are arriving by bicycle or being dropped off, in which case it is the only rate available to you.

Senior, Access and Military passes are no exception

The exclusion at these gates is not a local decision. These fees are charged by a private operator working under a Forest Service special use permit, and the government-wide rule is that federal recreation passes are not valid for concessionaire services. That covers the whole America the Beautiful family, not only the $80 annual: the Senior pass at $20 a year or $80 for life, the free lifetime Access pass, the Military pass and the 4th Grade pass all buy exactly nothing at these four gates. Nor does the $20 Red Rock Pass annual.

This surprises Senior and Access holders in particular, because those passes do carry a discount elsewhere in the same operator’s system — passholders pay half the nightly rate at the district’s campgrounds. That is a camping discount. It does nothing at a day-use gate, and no version of it applies to the four sites on this page.

If you visit these places often

There is one pass that does work at all four gates: the $50 Coconino Hospitality Annual Pass, sold by the operator itself. If your year includes four or more visits to any combination of these sites, it pays for itself — but note that it is the mirror image of the Red Rock Pass, covering only the concession sites and none of the regular trailheads.

Common questions