Taylor Cabin Trail
State: Arizona
Location: Coconino National Forest
Length, One-Way: 2.9 miles
Trail Type: Out and Back
Minimum Elevation: 6400 feet
Elevation Change: 1800 feet
Best Season: April to November
Difficulty: More Difficult
Usage: Moderate
Trail Information
Just getting to this trail is an adventure. The last mile of primitive road that leads to the trailhead is a place of tire bruising rocks and bottom scraping ruts. Actually, it might be a good idea to hike or mountain bike it, so you don’t abuse your car driving it. Don’t try it at all without a sturdy, high clearance vehicle. There is a FS/APS gate about 300 yards from the trailhead sign. Once you get to the trailhead you’ll forget all about that rocky ride. The view is magnificent-Grand Canyon quality. You can see into Mooney Canyon, part of the lower Oak Creek basin and Sycamore Canyon at the same time. In Sycamore, sheer walls, towering buttes, teetering pinnacles and huge lava flows stretch to the horizon.
Taylor Cabin Trail provides good views of all this then drops into a sheltered drainage which it follows to the canyon floor. The steepest part of the climb is mercifully shaded by Douglas firs and ponderosa pines. At trail’s end, on the floor of Sycamore Canyon, you’ll find everything associated with a desert river except the river itself. Rounded boulders and gnarled sycamore trees attest to the fact that water flows here regularly, but unless you come during the snowmelt or after a thunderstorm, you won’t see it. Some of the larger pools hold water into late spring, but eventually they all dry up.
Taylor Cabin, a historic old rancher’s shack listed in the National Register of Historic Places, is about a mile and half downstream. You can either boulder hop down the stream bed to it or follow the Sycamore Basin Trail. That trail is directly across the main stream bed from the end of the path you have just walked down. Following the trail is the best way of finding the cabin, otherwise you could boulder hop right past it.
