trip to Utah. Nevertheless, if you’re an avid hiker and you live nearby, I can assure you that you’ll still be amply rewarded by the hike descriptions and supplemental material provided herein.
Once you arrive at one of the parks, you’ll want more than a drive-by experience. You’ll be looking for family-friendly, easy-to-manage trails with bragging rights and photo ops included. All of these trails are hiker-tested, measured, and mapped.
Don’t worry about running out of breathtaking scenery to explore. It will take you years to travel all these trails and unravel their mysteries. Petrified sand dunes, slot canyons, hoodoos (rock columns), and brilliant sandstone will fascinate you at every turn in the trail. Prairie dogs, prickly cacti, trickling springs, and star-studded skies will add even more to your adventure.
Each Utah national park has a distinct personality, profile, and palette. The more trails you try, the more you will understand why these areas are protected as national parks. Towering cliffs of brilliant orange, deep rust, mustard yellow, chocolate brown, creamy white, and muted green create an ever-shifting scenery above you and underfoot. The colors change even further with the help of clouds, rain, snow, or the setting sun.
In spite of their topographic differences, a single powerful force has shaped all five desert treasures: erosion. Eons of water, ice, and wind have created a kaleidoscope of geological features with Mother Nature’s recipes. Each trail has been selected to help you see these geologic features up close.
I’ve tromped down every one of these trails, and dozens more, to identify the very best for you. Nature demands patience and curiosity to get the most from an outdoor experience. With 50 Best Short Hikes: Utah’s National Parks, you’ll find what you’re looking for—and so much more.
DRIVING IN THE NATIONAL PARKS
Most of the trailheads within this book, which are mainly front-country trails, are on paved and widely traveled roads in the more popular and widely accessed areas of the parks. But some trails in this book are found at the end of rocky, rutted, and occasionally impassable dirt roads. Some of these notably remote hikes include Tower Arch, Horseshoe Canyon, Elephant Hill, Golden Throne, Grand Wash, and Cable Mountain.
If your planned hike takes you to a trailhead on a dirt road, check first with the park’s visitor center for current road conditions and a weather forecast. Recognize that even though a dirt road may be passable when you enter, conditions could change dramatically with rain or snow. Dirt roads in the desert could become muddy and slippery, and a flash flood could leave your return route washed out or strewn with rocks and debris.
If your trip involves one of the remote trailheads, always start the day with a full tank of gas and emergency provisions such as extra water, food, and clothing. Experienced desert travelers know that utility items in the trunk of the car, such as a shovel, towline, jack, and spare tire, can be lifesavers when your car is stuck or disabled.
HIKING SEASONS
Utah’s five national parks are open year-round, though the availability of some services, such as shuttles, visitor centers, ranger-led programs, and campgrounds, will vary by season and from one park to another. Most of the hikes in this book are accessible and hikeable year-round. Even Bryce Canyon, with its high elevations and snowpack, can be enjoyed in winter on cross-country skis or snowshoes. In the arid desert of southern Utah, spring and fall often offer some of the most favorable hiking conditions. Regardless of when you plan to visit, it’s important to plan carefully. National-park websites and visitor centers can provide planning information and weather forecasts, but your safety and enjoyment will depend on your own good judgment, preparation, and constant awareness.
PARK REGULATIONS
Visit nps.gov for additional rules.
Campfires are prohibited except in front-country campgrounds, and wood gathering is not allowed.
All vehicles, including mountain bikes, are restricted to designated vehicle routes; off-route travel is not permitted.
Pets are not allowed on hiking trails.
Hunting is prohibited.
Do not use soap in or near water sources.
Watch wildlife from a distance, and never feed wild animals.
Swimming in potholes is not allowed unless the pothole is continually recharged by flowing water.
The destruction, defacement, disturbance, or removal of natural or historical objects is prohibited.
USING THIS BOOK
When you think of Utah, theme parks don’t generally come to mind. But Utah is home to five national parks—distinct parks with one common theme. That underlying and unifying theme is erosion. Each of Utah’s national parks—Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, and Zion—is a geologically themed wonderland where the subject is what happens to the earth’s surface as a result of wind and water and time. Those results are the fantastic canyons, arches, hoodoos (rock columns), sandstone fins, and spires that decorate these parks.
Utah’s national parks lie within a geographic region of the United States known as the Colorado Plateau, which spreads across 130,000 square miles of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. It’s an arid, high-elevation expanse that conspires against human settlement and showcases some of the most beautiful red-rock scenery and natural earth forms in the world. Ninety percent of the Colorado Plateau is drained by the Colorado River and its tributaries, and it has the highest concentration of National Park Service units in the country—10 national parks and 17 national monuments. Other national parks within the Colorado Plateau, though not in Utah, are the Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and Petrified Forest National Parks, as well as Chaco Culture National Historical Park.
To understand the geology of the Colorado Plateau, all you need to know are three basic steps:
The area was thrust upward by forces within the earth.
Tectonic plates collided, causing layers of earth to crinkle and tilt.
Water cut and shaped the stone into canyons.
Simplified, yes, but everything you see in Utah’s national parks indicates these three steps. And the desert climate, with its attendant lack of vegetation, makes the geology so much more visible and accessible. Think about it: If the Colorado Plateau were as forested as the Pacific Northwest, these national parks wouldn’t exist because you would never notice the arches, hoodoos, slickrock, or magnificent sandstone monuments. So be thankful for the desert, which exposes this beautiful terrain and makes it so accessible for hikers.
As you visit Utah’s national parks and immerse yourself in their wonders, you’ll find new ways of looking at the land and uncover new ideas. Edward Abbey, that ever-quotable environmentalist of the Colorado Plateau, put it this way: “The land here is like a great book or a great symphony; it invites approaches toward comprehension on many levels, from all directions.” Like Abbey, you’ll find that each hike in this book offers something to learn, something new to ponder, or some riddle to answer. To enhance the learning and to make that knowledge accessible, I’ve included dozens of sidebars, photos, and interpretive aids—an added bonus, if you will—to bring the story of the land to life. These include information about the geology, history, flora, and fauna of the Colorado Plateau—facets that are
