The construction of new rock steps and other infrastructure improvements on Cathedral Rock Trail was completed ahead of schedule on Wednesday, April 11, and the partial closure has ended.

Elsewhere in the Red Rock Ranger District, the decision on a proposed new Arizona Public Service powerline between McGuireville and the Village of Oak Creek has been moved back. The Red Rock Trail Access Plan has also been delayed and the Cave Springs Campground is closed tentatively until the end of July.

“Folks will be able to get up [to Cathedral Rock] and start hiking again … and that’s super exciting,” Acting District Ranger Alex Schlueter said. “I just want to thank the partners involved in that project. First and foremost is the financial components of the Sedona Red Rock Trail Fund, and their fundraising played a huge role in making it possible, and then Friends of the Forest and the Westerners contributed … hundreds of volunteer hours to help us with the closure.”

APS Powerline

A draft record of decision for the proposed APS powerline to the Village of Oak Creek has been moved back to the “late fall, maybe end-of-year,” Schlueter said, adding “we’re looking at a final environmental assessment for the Forest Service to review this fall.”

APS is currently finalizing its plans for which sections of the line are to be buried and which sections will be strung above ground.

The VOC nonprofit Big Park Regional Coordinating Council is campaigning to have more of the line buried, citing resident concerns such as the loss of viewshed and the potential for lower property values. Late last year, the nonprofit raised $10,000 to pay Earthrise, an environmental nonprofit law clinic at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Ore., to investigate the BPRCC’s potential legal routes.

There are two issues with burying the line. The first is that some sections cross archaeological sites where burial would be “extremely difficult, if not impossible” Schlueter said. “The other is simply feasibility. There are some areas that are extremely rocky and would take a lot to get that buried into the rock … We’re really thinking about the scenic integrity, say along Beaverhead Flat Road, where right now it’s an undisturbed viewshed and we’d like to maintain it that way.”

In February, the BRCC conducted an anecdotal survey looking at the effect of wildfire risk on the home insurance costs of its members and polled them for their views on the APS proposal.

Of 246 respondents, 68% said they were very or somewhat concerned about the potential for an increase in the risk of wildfire from the proposal, with 26% saying they were not concerned and 6% having no opinion. Sixty-one percent of respondents said they were very or somewhat concerned about the potential future cancellation or nonrenewal of home insurance due to perceived wildfire risk and 16% asserted their annual premiums had increased in the last three years.

“I notice that the concerns that insurance rates and cancellations has occurred dramatically in the last two years,” immediate past president of the BPRCC John Wichert said during the group’s meeting Thursday, April 11. “Which is right after the comment period to the Forest Service was initially made and the issue of wildfire was really minimally addressed in the first BPRCC comment on the initial environmental assessment. So I think this is something that can be powerful in the appeal to the regional forester that [wildfire risk] is an issue that was not an issue then but is a serious issue now.”

“No firebreaks have been created between the forest and the [VOC] communities,” the BPRCC noted in its report, with Schlueter confirming he was unaware of any firebreak projects currently in the works.

Red Rock Trail Access Plan

The Red Rock Trail Access Plan has now been split into two phases. Phase one will cover the construction of 3.15 miles of new trail adjacent to the Oak Creek Elementary School in Cornville, the construction of a 0.64-mile-long new trail at Bell Rock, a new 500-foot connection to the Schuerman Mountain trail to divert hikers away from Sedona Red Rock High School, the formal adoption of a social trail around the perimeter of Doe Mesa and the adoption of 0.92 miles of social trails connecting the Easy Breeze and Templeton Trail to the Hiline Trail.

Schlueter said a decision about those projects could be made over the summer with work starting as soon as October.

Phase two of the plan will focus on the Turkey Creek area, where the district is proposing the construction of 20.17 miles of new trails and potentially eliminating equestrian access in some areas.

Phase two will include a second public comment period but Schlueter said the date for the comment period has not yet been determined, nor if there will be a public meeting.

Cave Springs

The Cave Springs Campground that is managed by Forest Service concessionaire ExplorUS is currently closed through the end of July. The closure is due to a construction project that is reinforcing a 500-foot-long section of the streambank and stabilizing the campground’s access road to prevent undercutting by the creek.

“Because surface flow in Oak Creek would have to be diverted in order to implement this project, the timing of the construction would need to coincide with periods in which flow in Oak Creek is historically at a minimum,” the scoping document said.