Oak Creek Canyon current fire situation and trail closures

We’re driving through Oak Creek Canyon this weekend during our stay in Sedona. We drove north up Highway 89a towards slide rock and Flagstaff. I’m doing this using my phone, so it might be a little choppy.

We’re traversing this to view the Slide Fire aftermath which ravaged Sedona last month while we were here. The entire week we were on site, smoke was pretty much at a hazardous level. (535 is considered hazardous, levels were at 750 at night) The forest service closed all of the road’s heading up 89a after the last hotel in uptown.

It holds some interest for us because of the Doce and Yarnell fires that wreaked havoc on Prescott last year. Both the Slide fire and Doce happened almost 1 year a part exactly.

Upon our return this year, we’re faced with more forest closures, trail closures, and road closures due to flash flooding; which is elevated due to the lack of trees stopping the flow of water.

The fire department did a great job of keeping the fire held west of 89a, and as a result, no homes were lost. I’ll post more photos as I procure them this week.