The secondary forest formed by natural restoration after the large-scale logging of primary conifer forests has become one of the dominant forest types in a subalpine region of western Sichuan, and plays an important role in water conservation in the forests of southwestern China. However, less attention was paid to the water conservation function of subalpine natural secondary forest. Therefore, by using the method of replacing space with time, four typical vegetation types of shrub (dominated by Salix cupularis), broad-leavedforest (dominated by Betula spp.), mixed coniferous and broad-leaved forest (dominated by Abies faxoniana and Betula spp.), and old-growth conifer forest (dominated by A.faxoniana) along natural restoration with different stand ages in Miyaluo of western Sichuan were selected to measure soil bulk density, porosity and water holding capacity. The aim of this study was to quantify the changes of soil physical properties and water-holding capacity. The results indicated as follows:(1) The soil bulk density decreased with the vegetation restoration and increased with the depth, and the trend was subalpine conifer mature forest < mixed coniferous and broad-leaved forest < broad-leaved forest < shrub. (2) There were significant differences in soil porosity along natural restoration. The mixed coniferous and broad-leaved forest had the maximum total porosity (64.39%) and capillary porosity (50.49%) in the 0-30 cm soil layer, and shrub had the minimum total porosity (41.25%) and capillary porosity (33.70%). However, the soil non-capillary porosity was the highest in conifer forest (14.27%), and the soil porosity showed a decreasing trend with the soil depth. (3) The soil maximum water-holding capacity along the natural restoration varied nonlinearly with the increasing stand age, from 1 172.07 t/hm² for the shrub stage to 1 815.02 t/hm² for the mixed coniferous and broad-leaved forest, and to 1 659.88 t/hm² for the conifer forest. The mixed conifer and broad-leaved forest has the maximum soil capillary water holding capacity (1 369.72 t/hm²), while conifer forest has the maximum non-capillary water holding capacity (534.95 t/hm²), which indicated that the former needs more available water storage capacity for vegetation growth, and the latter has strong soil water regulation ability and permeability ability. It is concluded from this study that attention should be paid to the construction of conifer and broad-leaf mixed forest structure in the alpine forest restoration in western Sichuan for the improvement of water conservation function.