Sedona ATV Tours and Side-by-Side Rentals

What You Actually Drive

A guided ATV tour puts you on a straddle-seat quad with handlebar controls that you drive yourself, following a guide who leads the line. A rental goes further: you take a side-by-side out with no guide at all and navigate from a paper map or a GPS tablet. A jeep tour is the only option where you never operate anything, because the operator's own driver does all the driving in an open 4x4.

The ATVs used on the guided tour have fully automatic transmissions, so there is no manual shifting to learn, and no prior ATV experience is required. If you want your hands on the controls, the guided option or a rental is the right category. If you want to look around and take photos without watching the trail, book a jeep tour on our jeep tours page instead.

How the Guided Tour Handles Beginners

The one guided card on this page is the guided ATV tour, billed by its operator, Arizona ATV Adventures, as Sedona's only fully guided ATV tour. Before departure you get an instructional session and everyone passes a mandatory in-house skills test, which is exactly what a nervous first-timer needs. The tour runs four hours with about three hours of riding, out of West Sedona.

Drivers must be at least 15 and a half years old with a valid learner's permit or driver's licence, and under-17 drivers need a parent or guardian on the tour. Passengers must be at least 5 years old or 50 lb. Helmets, goggles, water and a snack come with the tour, with gloves added in winter.

You pay a $500 refundable security deposit per ATV at check-in, which comes back when the machine returns undamaged.

The 11 Designated OHV Routes

The Red Rock Ranger District of the Coconino National Forest designates 11 named OHV routes around Sedona, graded from easy to extreme. These are the only named routes your rental is meant for, and rental companies build their suggested itineraries around them. The table below lists all 11 with their lengths exactly as the Coconino National Forest's Sedona OHV routes page publishes them.

Note that some are one-way and some are loops, so a 5.5-mile one-way route plus the ride back can be a real half-day. Difficulty ratings are not stated per route on the source page, so ask your rental counter which of these suit your experience before you set out.

The MVUM Rule

Motor vehicle travel on the Coconino National Forest is restricted to routes shown as open on the current year's Motor Vehicle Use Map, the MVUM. Driving off a designated, open route is prohibited. The map is reissued every year and it is free, so pick one up or download it before your rental starts rather than trusting a two-year-old blog route description.

Trails can also close temporarily after heavy rain because the surfaces turn difficult or hazardous, so check current conditions with the Forest Service or your rental counter on the morning you ride instead of assuming a route is open. This is the single rule that most often catches self-drive renters who follow an old route note into a closed drainage.

The Two Permit Roads: Soldier Pass and Casner Mountain

Two of the best-known roads have extra gates. Soldier Pass Road needs an individual Motorized Use Permit booked on Recreation.gov: there is a $6 non-refundable reservation fee, you can book up to 90 days ahead, one vehicle per permit, access runs 8am to 6pm, and only 12 permits are issued a day. The listing states explicitly that only individuals may apply, so businesses and organisations cannot, which means a guided commercial ATV tour or a rental company cannot legally put a group up Soldier Pass Road.

The permit also covers driving the road only, not parking at the trailhead, and the final mile needs a high-clearance 4x4. This is why operators route customers to Outlaw Trail, Diamondback Gulch and Schnebly Hill instead. Casner Mountain Road needs a separate free Forest Service permit capped at a limited number per year, and you get it by calling the Red Rock Ranger District at 928-203-2900.

And to answer the common question directly: Broken Arrow is a designated Forest Service OHV route, a 4-mile round trip, and its jeep-only reputation is marketing rather than a legal restriction.

Deposits and Check-In Fees

Most of the cards take a security deposit, and the amounts differ widely. The guided tour's $500 deposit per ATV is refundable when the machine comes back whole. The two-seat Talon rental holds $3,000 per vehicle, so make sure the card you present at check-in has that headroom.

The four-seat Talon takes a deposit too, and the full-day rental lists none, but neither card publishes an amount, so ask when booking. On the guided tour you also pay a trail stewardship fee, a fuel surcharge and a damage waiver at check-in, and none of these have published amounts. The honest advice is to budget for the listed price plus fuel, tax and fees, then treat any surplus as a bonus.

Fuel, Waivers and Insurance

Fuel is the biggest swing factor. The half-day Talon rentals add gas at check-in, while the full-day Cottonwood rental includes fuel, which is one reason its price sits closer to what you actually pay. Every operator we checked includes helmets in the price.

At Vortex ATV Rental, the company behind the full-day card, every rider including passengers signs a waiver, and a mandatory $15 general liability insurance charge with a $5,000 deductible applies per vehicle, collected on arrival. The booking card itself carries a 24-hour cancellation deadline. Sedona Off-Road Center and Arizona ATV Adventures do not publish a cancellation policy on their own homepages, so confirm the terms at booking rather than assuming.

The Arizona OHV Decal Question

Arizona law says an off-highway vehicle built for unimproved terrain and weighing 1,800 lb or less unloaded must display a valid Arizona OHV decal to run on public and state trust land, and the rule covers non-residents too. Here is the catch: no operator page we checked states whether the decal is included in the rental or the renter's responsibility, and no official source we could load confirms a rental company exemption for its fleet. We deliberately print no decal price because the current figure could not be verified from an official page.

The practical move is simple: ask the counter at booking whether the rental's decal is covered, and get the answer in your confirmation email. Related to this, Arizona now requires at least one registered owner per OHV to complete a free online safety course before buying or renewing a decal, which matters if you own a machine, not if you rent.

Who May Drive and Ride

On the guided ATV tour, drivers must be at least 15 and a half with a valid learner's permit or driver's licence, and under-17 drivers need a parent or guardian on the tour. Passengers must be at least 5 years old or 50 lb, which matters if you were planning to bring a toddler. For self-guided RZR rentals with Arizona ATV Adventures, the driver must be 21 or older with a valid licence.

The Talon and side-by-side booking cards do not state a minimum age or licence requirement, so ask the operator directly before you book rather than discovering the rule at the counter. A valid driver's licence is the safe assumption for anyone who plans to drive any rental machine.

Helmets and Paved Roads

Arizona law, A.R.S. 28-964, requires any ATV operator or passenger under 18 to wear a properly fastened DOT-rated helmet at all times on public or state land, and A.R.S. 28-1179 repeats the rule for off-highway vehicles generally. Helmets come with every rental and tour we checked, so this costs you nothing but a strap. On pavement, the rules tighten: an OHV that is not registered street-legal may only cross a paved, maintained road at roughly a 90-degree angle where visibility is clear, and local authorities set which maintained streets it may cross.

To actually drive on a paved road, not just cross it, the machine must be titled, fitted with on-highway equipment, carry a valid OHV decal and be driven by a licensed driver. Practical translation for renters: stay on the dirt routes and let your rental counter plan any road connection.

West Sedona's Operator Row

Three of the counters sit within a few hundred meters of each other on State Route 89A in West Sedona, so you can walk between them and compare machines. atvsedona.com, at 2740 W State Route 89A, rents Polaris RZRs and a Slingshot on named routes including Secret Canyon Escape, Diamondback Gulch, a Broken Arrow Adventure and a Devil's Bridge Ride-N-Hike, and it is open 7am to 6pm every day including holidays. It publishes no prices on its own site, with booking running through the Polaris platform, so the price you see is the one at booking. Red Rock ATV Rentals, at 3009 AZ-89A, rents new Polaris side-by-sides seating 2 to 6 for 2, 4 or 8 hours and names Honanki Heritage Site, Robbers Roost and Devil's Bridge as destinations.

It was advertising a 20 percent discount code on its own homepage, but treat any promo code as time-limited and confirm before relying on it. Neither operator publishes a cancellation policy on its homepage.

The Cottonwood Alternative

Two counters operate out of Cottonwood, roughly 20 minutes' drive from Sedona by the operators' own claims, and Northwoods pitches itself as the cheaper alternative. Northwoods Powersports Adventures, on West Blackhills Drive, rents Can-Am UTVs and argues that a family of four pays about $400 to rent a UTV for a route that would cost $600 to $900 on a comparable 4-hour guided jeep tour. Vortex ATV Rental, whose full-day card appears on this page, rents Yamaha UTVs seating 1 to 6 for 2, 4, 8 hours or multi-day, and its own-site rentals bundle fuel, helmets, goggles, maps, GPS tablets, coolers and ice packs.

The trade for the lower Cottonwood price is the drive: you spend about 40 minutes round trip getting to and from Sedona's trail areas, so run the numbers before you assume the cheaper base wins.

March through May and September through November are Sedona's peak seasons for outdoor activity, with the mildest temperatures, and they are also when machines book out first, so reserve 2 to 3 weeks ahead for weekends and holidays. June through August regularly exceeds 90°F, which turns an open-machine ride into a heat-management exercise, and the monsoon brings afternoon thunderstorms from mid-July through September. Those storms can trigger flash flooding and temporary trail closures, and the Forest Service can close OHV trails after heavy rain because the surfaces become hazardous.

The pattern within a monsoon day is predictable: mornings are typically calm and clear, with clouds building through early afternoon and storms arriving later. Locals and operators therefore recommend a morning tour or rental slot in that window, and the same advice holds for summer heat generally. December through February is coolest, roughly 50 to 60°F in the daytime with occasional light snow, and the machines usually run fine.

Whatever the season, check current trail conditions the morning you ride rather than assuming a route is open, and if you want the wider weather picture, see our guide to the best time to visit Sedona. Once the season is settled, a comparison of the best tours in Sedona is the next step toward picking a guided ride that fits your trail plans.