While you are visiting Sedona, please be sure to practice the Seven Principles of Leave No Trace (LNT). These guidelines are easy-to-understand and help minimize your impact on the outdoors. Here’s a brief overview of LNT: 

Plan Ahead & Prepare

Planning helps you be prepared for the conditions of your adventure and ensures the safety of yourself and others. Be sure to look at maps, check the weather and know the skills of yourself and the people in your group. 

Travel on Durable Surfaces

When you spend time outside, your main goal should be to explore with minimal impact or damage to the land, waterways, plants, and animals. Staying on the trails and traveling on surfaces that withstand the impact of your travel (rocks, sand, snow, etc.) are all ways to do this.

Dispose of Waste Properly

The litter I see on trails (crying emoji). Please be sure to dispose of your waste properly to make everyone’s experience in nature more enjoyable! And waste includes your poop. Digging a cat hole and burying your toilet paper or using a Kula Cloth is a great way to leave no trace!

Leave What You Find

As much as we love to bring home cool rocks and pick flowers, it’s important to leave nature as you found it. Stacking rocks or carving your name into the sandstone or a living tree causes damage and only encourages others to do the same.

Respect Wildlife

For everyone’s safety, it’s important to respect wildlife – after all, you are in their home! Give them their space and don’t feed them.

Be Considerate of Other Visitors

Everyone in Sedona is just trying to enjoy their visit. It’s SO important to be courteous to others because when people are out in nature, they want to listen to nature. Excessive noise, wild pets, or a trashed trail take away from the appeal of the outdoors.

Do not touch dwellings sites or petroglyphs 

There is a lot of indigenous history in the Sedona area – this land was once inhabited by the Sinagua, Western Apache, Hopitutskwa, Pueblos, and Hohokam People. If you find an ancient dwelling site or petroglyphs, do not touch them. 

Before you visit Sedona, consider signing the Sedona Cares Pledge:  

1. The rocks are red and the silence is golden. I vow to respect the natural quiet of Sedona’s open spaces and neighborhoods.
2. I will be mindful of Sedona’s arid environment by minimizing my water and energy use and I will be extremely careful with fire.
3. I’ll make my own memories, but not my own trails.
4. I won’t risk life or limb (human or sapling) for more likes. I won’t get killed for a killer photo.
5. When playing outside, I’ll be ready for rapid changes in weather and random episodes of magic.
6. Leave No Trace and pack out your trash – that includes TP and your pup’s poo!
7. I will discover art in Sedona’s galleries rather than making my own. Carving on trees or rocks, stacking stones, or defacing the environment diminishes nature’s art.
8. If I can’t find a parking spot, I will not invent my own. I will go with the traffic flow, using my turn signal often and my car horn seldom.
9. I’ll be caring and considerate wherever I go, because that’s the Sedona way.