Oak Creek Canyon Picnic Sites: Which Need a Pass

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 Spotted something outdated?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

Before you plan a creekside lunch on the switchback drive between Sedona and Flagstaff, check the status box below — the canyon is still recovering from the 2026 Pocket Fire, and not every site has reopened. Four Forest Service picnic areas along SR 89A sit inside the Red Rock Pass system, and when they are open your pass handles the parking at every one of them.

The four pass sites, in canyon order

What the 2026 closure orders covered — and what is still closed

The Oak Creek order reached further than the picnic sites. From July 31, 2026 it closed National Forest land within 100 feet of the West Fork drainage, and within 100 feet of Oak Creek from the point the creek enters National Forest land north of Call of the Canyon south to the private property boundary. Inside that strip it was being at the water that was prohibited, not merely parking near it. Named alongside the picnic sites were Call of the Canyon, Grasshopper Point, Manzanita Campground and West Fork Trail No. 108, and the stated reason was flash-flood danger in the watershed burned by the Pocket Fire.

The Forest Service lifted that order on September 17, 2026. What remains is narrower: order 03-04-00-26-007 keeps West Fork Trail No. 108 and the land within 100 feet of the West Fork drainage closed through 11:59pm on October 31, 2026, unless it is rescinded or extended, because fire damage and flood risk are higher in that watershed. Read that date as a scheduled expiry rather than a reopening date. The Coconino National Forest alerts page, or a call to (928) 203-2900, will know before any calendar does.

The trails closed in the same watershed

A second order, 03-04-06-26-003, covered the trail network on the same burn scar from July 31, 2026. It closed five trails outright, along with the land within 100 feet of each: Bear Sign No. 59, David Miller No. 164, Dry Creek No. 52, HS Canyon No. 50 and Secret Canyon No. 121. The Forest Service’s September 14 release put its end at October 1, 2026, and it no longer appears on the forest’s alerts page as of October 17, 2026. We have not seen a reopening announcement for those five trails, and the same release warned that monsoon storms may have washed out sections of wilderness trails, so confirm their condition with the Ranger District before you hike them.

Dry Creek Trail No. 52 is not Dry Creek Vista. They are two different places that share a name. Dry Creek Trail No. 52 is a trail in the burn area, and it was closed under the trail order. Dry Creek Vista is a Red Rock Pass trailhead parking area on the trailhead list, and a stop on one of the three Sedona Shuttle routes — the Dry Creek Vista and Mescal route, the usual approach to Devil’s Bridge. The closure order names the trail. It does not name the Vista.

The shuttle’s routes were all restored to full operation on July 31, 2026, the same day the closure orders took effect. If someone tells you Dry Creek is closed, ask which Dry Creek they mean, and confirm the current status of either before you build a day around it.

How parking works here in a normal season

Each site is a designated fee area: pull in, display a valid pass (or rely on your license plate if you bought online), and the tables are first-come, first-served. Daily passes purchased for a Sedona trailhead that morning are still good in the canyon — the pass follows the vehicle for the calendar day, not the location. On summer weekends the smaller lots, Banjo Bill especially, fill before noon; the canyon has almost no legal roadside overflow, and parking on the highway shoulder where it is posted will get you towed long before a pass question arises.

Winter is the sleeper season. The sycamores are bare, the crowds are gone, and a $5 daily pass buys you a creek that actually sounds like a creek.

The canyon’s split personality

Not every fee gate on this road answers to the Red Rock Pass. The two most famous stops in the canyon — West Fork and Grasshopper Point — are concession-operated and charge their own per-vehicle fees, pass or no pass. If your canyon day includes one of those, budget for a gate fee on top of whatever is on your dashboard; the picnic sites on this page are the ones your pass actually covers.

Midgley Bridge: the asterisk at the canyon mouth

Midgley Bridge Observation Site, just north of uptown Sedona, is a Red Rock Pass site too — the trailhead for Huckaby and Wilson Canyon and the classic bridge photo stop. The conflicting closure reports from the summer have resolved: as of October 17, 2026, its Forest Service page lists the site as open. A pass is required to park there, as at any other designated fee site.

Camping in the canyon

The Red Rock Pass is a parking permit. It buys no part of a campsite, and a campground booking buys no part of trailhead parking.

The canyon’s two main bookable campgrounds are Cave Springs and Pine Flat, both $30 a night for one vehicle and up to eight people, with each extra vehicle adding $10 a night. Pine Flat runs a season from mid-April to late October. Both are operated by Coconino Hospitality and booked through Recreation.gov. Manzanita was named in the Oak Creek closure order that lifted on September 17, 2026. Campground availability shifts with the season and with flood and fire closures, so check the Recreation.gov listing before planning around any of them. The stay limit across the Red Rock District is seven days. Senior and Access interagency passholders pay half the nightly rate — one of the few places where a federal pass does more for you than cover a parking space.

Sleeping anywhere else in the corridor is not an option: order 03-04-06-23-03, in force until January 2033, prohibits camping on National Forest land across the Sedona and Oak Creek corridor except inside Pine Flat, Cave Springs, Manzanita and Chavez Crossing — and it counts sleeping in a vehicle as camping, which is the detail that catches out people planning to pull over for the night on the switchbacks.

Common questions