Bryce Canyon

The several days that we spent in Zion National Park were amazing, but we needed to check out some more terrain, so we headed out to St George in hopes of climbing at several of their crags. We managed to get in a couple of days of relatively laid back climbing until we got completely rained out. With sandstone, the rock can be sketchy and unsafe to climb for several days after a hard rain. So when our plans got trumped, we decided maybe it was time to start our slow roll back towards Moab. The first place on our list was Bryce Canyon National Park.

We only had part of the day to check it out, so we chose to do a 5 mile hike through the heart of the park by joining the Navajo and Peekaboo loop trails. There were several people up at the lookout and trailhead, but after about a quarter mile of hiking, we were all by ourselves on the trail.

Although the trail was by no means strenuous, it was also certainly not flat. We rolled up and down in elevation on gentle slopes, exposing us to all levels and perspectives of the hoodoos for which the park is famous.

Really we were only there for a few hours, but even that was enough time to reveal how magical the landscape is. The towering spires of rock that have been melting away for thousands of years are magnificent and commanding structures, but the more we looked around, more hidden features appeared.

While I am typically more inclined to be fascinated with geologic features (go figure), I was thrilled by the vegetation within the canyon. Along with the usual suspects of desert plant life, I was surprised and delighted to see plenty of lodgepole, pinyon, and ponderosa pines, as well as Douglas firs (my spirit tree) thriving between the tall stands of sandstone.

 

We ended our hike at dusk and stayed at Sunset View Point long enough to watch the hoodoo shadows stretch longer and longer until the light disappeared.