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Southern Utah, the Colorado Plateau Desert; of all the world this place is unique. Here the desert is a maze. Canyons and gulches dissect the plateau into a great network, a labyrinth of lost alcoves and secret glens which one could spend a lifetime exploring without even scratching the surface. This is a land of colorful sandstone sculpture, carved by water as the artist.

Water can do incredible things when sandstone is its canvas. Given time, a tiny river here carves a grand canyon. The Grand Canyon itself is an example of what water has done to the Colorado Plateau, but in southern Utah, there are thousands of canyons sculpted from the rock by the Colorado River and its tributaries. Take a look at the mysterious Escalante River, you’ll likely agree the canyon it’s carved is equally as striking and similar to the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. The sandstone earth in Utah is bright and it is red. It’s so red the contrast of the blue sky begins to hurt your eyes. Viewing the river at the bottom of the great red canyon, it looks as only a swathe of green trees snaking through the land.

The Colorado Plateau isn’t truly a desert, it is borderline, receiving enough rain to be classified not as desert but as semi-arid or a steppe climate. All the water which falls here heads for the Colorado River, the main drainage for the area, by way of many smaller rivers like the Escalante. The Escalante etches the sandstone as it carries along, likewise, smaller streams which drain to the Escalante cut the sandstone as they travel through. An incredibly complicated maze is what we’re left with, and of course, the beauty is in the details.

I went one day with my brother to explore some of these details, in the vicinity of the remote and still pristine wilderness around the Escalante River. There are so many little niches of this river to explore, it’s hard to choose what to see if you only have a couple days. The country here will call me back for further exploration time and time again. The hike we did took only a couple hours, and is actually quite far from the river itself. Peekaboo Gulch and adjacent Spooky Gulch have been carved by the rapid drainage of water during floods, carved somehow into such narrow channels through malleable stone. These are slot canyons.
Hiking Peekaboo Gulch and Spooky Gulch
We arrived at the Dry Fork Trailhead early in the morning and it was a springtime drizzle. My brother donned his hiking boots but his feet were chewed up. We had been having a week of extreme Utah adventure before this and now he had a blister on every toe and a festering sore on his heel. He decided he couldn’t walk and would spend the morning reading in the truck, waiting for me to do the hike. I went in Spooky Gulch. Most people will begin the loop in Peekaboo first but I had received a tip from a local to start in Spooky. I’d stand by this tip. To find Spooky, walk down from the first slick rock bench at the trailhead to come to the Dry Fork Gulch. There you will see a slot canyon entering the rock off to your left and one slightly to your right. The right hand one is Peekaboo. Walk past Peekaboo, follow the cairns leading up the wash and when you see Spooky, it will be obvious. Tentatively I walked in.

I quickly found myself in the slots. I pressed on, and they just keep going farther and farther back. Boom, I heard a sound echo through. Extreme tightness for a long ways in both directions, it’s a squeeze. Hopefully it’s not a flash flood up there. Confronted by such claustrophobia, panic ensues. I found myself full of adrenaline and racing through, get out of the slots! Time to climb out of Spooky, and spooky it is. You must navigate a boulder choked chute to exit.
All of a sudden I was free, the top of the spacious slick rock bench was exhilarating after coming out of the dark canyon depths. I decided it had been one of the best experiences of my life. I followed an excellent cairn trail to bring me across the plateau and to Peekaboo Gulch. Peekaboo Gulch was far less claustrophobic, just beautiful and serene, filled with artful rock formations, and had a few small obstacles to navigate.

I went back to the truck, having hurried, the hike took an hour and a half. I showed my brother these pictures, and now he was convinced. He had to put his shoes back on, suffer through the pain and come see this place. He was so glad he did. I was more than happy to do the hike a second time.
It was later in the day and other groups had showed up to do this fairly popular hike. You usually will have the world to yourself if you rise early in the morning. We found ourselves now stuck behind a family of 10 people and 2 dogs in Spooky Gulch. Finding it impossible to pass them, we just waited in the narrows and listened, laughing to hear them having a spooky time of their own navigating the slots.

The mother screamed at the kids, the dogs barked, the sounds of shuffling, scrambling, and panic echoed back to us, we saw fur clinging to the canyon walls. Yes, hilarious traffic jams are a common occurrence on this dazzling and fun filled Utah slot canyon loop hike. Definitely put this hike on your list, it’s an experience of a lifetime.
Need to Know
Information
If you plan to stay overnight, you can fill out a permit at the trailhead, no permit is required for a day hike. Still a good idea to check in with the BLM at the interagency visitor’s center in Escalante. The rangers there will be able to give you any advice or directions you want about the hike as well as current weather information. Rain anywhere the area can cause flash floods in the canyons.
Getting There
Head to the remote town of Escalante, Utah, along scenic Highway 12. Take the famous turn for Hole in the Rock Road, a well graded, 2 wheel drive gravel road. From my experience it’s a comfortable ride for about the first 17 miles. After that it gets a bit rougher, the left turn you’re looking for is 26.3 miles in, look for a sign for Dry Fork Trailhead. Take this road for .7 miles and then bear to the left, where you will see a sign “high clearance only”, the trailhead is .9 miles further. If you don’t have a high clearance vehicle, consider walking the extra mile to the trailhead, if you do have the clearance, prepare for a crazy ride! The road was terribly washed out so one side of my truck was much lower than the other side, threatening constantly to tip over. Turn a corner and suddenly you’re flipping over on the opposite side. It was a roller coaster ride, and in the end we decided, a lot of fun!
Best Time to Go
The best seasons of the year to be here will be spring or fall. Summer can be ok too, just go in the morning before the heat begins and bring lots of water. In mid-July through mid-September especially, mind the weather, that’s typically monsoon season in the canyon country. Assuming the road is open, a winter hike here could potentially be quite enjoyable, but more challenging if the slick rock is icy or if there’s snow on the ground. Check the conditions at the ranger’s station before plunging in.
Books
Utah’s Favorite Hiking Trails, by David Day. A comprehensive guide to 77 excellent trails in Utah including the Peekboo/ Spooky loop hike. The guide touches base on all aspects of the dynamic state of Utah, which can be divided into 3 regions: The Rocky Mountains, The Great Basin Desert and the Colorado Plateau Desert. These three totally different environments are sparsely populated and in fact 63% of the state is federally owned land, protected as wilderness. This book guides you through many of the endless hiking opportunities in Utah’s 5 national parks, 7 national monuments, 2 national recreation areas and 6 national forests. The author also includes 250 photos in color and black and white, as well as 80 detailed trail maps.
100 Hikes in Utah, by Steve Mann & Rhett Olson. Another great option, this book is packed with information for 100 hikes in all corners of Utah. The maps are detailed and read easily, and the book contains many photos mostly in black and white.
Maps
National Geographic, Canyons of the Escalante. The map I used, a beautiful edition to any map collection. This map will not replace a 7.5 minute topo map for a trip requiring extended route finding. It is, however, a useful tool for exploring the various sights off Escalante’s Hole in the Rock Road.
Editor's Note: This article by contributor Michael Swanbeck originally appeared in Issue 24 of TrailGroove Magazine. You can read the original article here for additional photos and content.

“Half of Colorado is beautiful and half of it is ugly, and the same is true for Oklahoma. But people only talk about the beautiful half of Colorado and the ugly half of Oklahoma.”
Our friend, Steve, said this as we dined together in downtown Aspen, and he is a man who knows, as a fellow native of Oklahoma and longtime resident of Aspen, Colorado. While I think calling any of it ugly is harsh (although, understandably, if you live in Aspen everything pales by comparison), Steve has a point about the way folks view the two states. There’s no need to repeat all the good press Colorado deservedly receives for its scenery. And it may be a similar restatement of the obvious to note that Oklahoma hasn’t shaken its Dust Bowl image in spite of its diverse, well watered terrain.

But in my mind the less spectacular landscapes of eastern Colorado and western Oklahoma simply reflect the more subtle beauty of the Great Plains, half a million square miles of broad, flat grasslands reaching north into Canada and south to Mexico. Conventional wisdom says it’s a place to get across as fast as possible, but I’ve discovered on my travels west that it holds many surprises for the inquisitive traveler willing to slow down and sample some of those seemingly empty places on the map.
Colorado's Picture Canyon
Traveling from our home near Oklahoma City to Utah in early September, 2016, my husband Bill and I decided to route through the corner of southeastern Colorado to explore one of those little-known treasures. Barely north of the Oklahoma border, we left the highway and followed the Baca County roads west to Picture Canyon, a remote outpost of the U.S. Forest Service.
The landscape changed quickly as we approached the canyon, the long views of the prairie yielding to sandstone formations as the dirt road wound into a picnic area as devoid of people as the blank space on the map suggests. Picnic tables and a vault toilet are tucked against a bluff, the tables shaded by white-roofed pavilions against the heat of the sun, an unrelenting force here in July and August. Interpretive panels along a concrete path tell the story of the canyon, named for the rock art left by historic Plains Indians and their prehistoric predecessors.

Here the native people found shelter and spring water in this gentle sandstone canyon amid rolling hills and low buttes. We planned to hike the Arch Rock Trail to see the rock art but it was a warm afternoon and we decided first to explore in our truck. Miles of four-wheel drive roads wind through the yucca and juniper, up and down the canyon, through deep sand and over rocks. We stopped to examine a stone ruin left by homesteaders who settled the area in the late 1880s. The remaining walls of the structure were filled with gourd vines and probably a rattlesnake or two. The hope for living off this land was lost to farmers during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Now it’s part of a half-million acre preserve in southeastern Colorado called the Comanche National Grasslands.
Soon it was time to settle on a campsite. We would hike the next day, in the cool of the morning. Dispersed camping is allowed anywhere in the Grasslands and we found a perfect spot in a grove of cottonwoods. Gnats swarmed around my head as we set up camp but a good shot of Deep Woods Off alleviated my annoyance and my irritation faded altogether when, after dinner, we escaped to our truck-top tent. There we listened to heavy raindrops thumping on the roof as a thunderstorm passed through. When the storm dissipated, coyotes announced their presence and we fell asleep to their serenade.

The next morning we set out on Arch Rock Trail, a 4-mile loop. Along the canyon walls are alcoves housing pictographs (ancient drawings or paintings on rock walls) and petroglyphs (rock carvings). There was a tour group – four people on horseback – ahead of us on the trail and when we caught up with them the guide, Laneha Everett of Canyon Journeys, invited us to tag along. Some of the markings here have astronomical significance; in particular, those in Crack Cave are illuminated by the sun’s rays at dawn only during the spring and autumn equinox. The Chamber of Commerce in nearby Springfield, Colorado, sponsors equinox festivals and tours of the cave to celebrate the events.
Crack Cave is protected by locked metal gates, but another rock shelter I climbed into has markings that look much the same. Everett says that most people believe the inscriptions are of similar origin. “Traditional thinking has them down as calendrical markings for the passing of time. The non-traditional line of thinking says they are of the alphabet Ogam (an ancient Celtic system of writing) and could even potentially give a message such as 'water found below.’ The marks are often found with solar alignment sites throughout the Oklahoma Panhandle and southeastern Colorado.”

Everett adds that Picture Canyon is unusual in that it houses several sites with many other types of markings similar to other ancient languages. “The statistics of coincidence seems pretty high here,” she says. Some claim that five ancient languages are represented in the rock shelter I explored. “Picture Canyon offers interesting problems,” says Everett. “Either there are ancient languages, which in the case of Crack Cave were deciphered and the message then proven by the presence of an equinox solar alignment site, or the Native Americans were writing in unusual ways that were highly similar to ancient languages from other parts of the world.”
There are two other loop trails here – Homestead and Outlaw – with a combined distance of about 10 miles, including spur trails. The spurs lead to rock art, homestead ruins and Crack Cave, and a rock arch and rock molar. Forest roads accessible by vehicle – including some of those we explored in our truck – are also integrated into this trail system.
Camping at Carrizo Canyon
After our hike we continued our journey west but on our return from Utah a week later, we camped at nearby Carrizo Canyon. Arriving as the sun set, we sought a camp site right away. The area lacks the web of forest roads we enjoyed in Picture Canyon, but we found an out-of-the-way spot to camp in a cattle pasture. There on the edge of the canyon, perched on a slab of sandstone trimmed with prickly pear, we grilled steaks bought in the last town to celebrate our last night of camping.

Next morning, fresh Colorado peaches added sweetness to our breakfast before we hiked the 1-mile loop trail along the east fork of Carrizo Creek. At the trailhead, we greeted a young couple also preparing for the hike. In the high grass of late summer, the trail was difficult to follow and we ended up bushwhacking through a labyrinth of cottonwoods clogged with flood debris, agreeing that winter would be a better time to explore.

We waved to two working cowboys as we left Carrizo Canyon, then turned southeast toward home. On back roads we skirted Oklahoma’s high point – not quite 5,000 feet elevation at Black Mesa, just south of the Colorado border in what was once “No Man’s Land,” now the Oklahoma Panhandle. This is what Steve calls the “ugly half” of Oklahoma and, while these buttes are not the 10,000-foot, aspen-covered, snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains, they do have their charm. Lucky for us, these natural treasures of the southern plains will remain obscure as long as most people consider the area less than appealing, and perhaps it’s better not to dispel that notion. We saw a total of eight people in our visits to the two canyons – six of them on horseback. Solitude is one of the benefits of slow travel through the Great Plains and I suspect there is little danger of that changing.
Need to Know
Information
Canyon Journeys, based in Pritchett, Colorado, offers tours of Baca County heritage sites, educating people through interpretation and excursions into and of local legends, historical and pre-historical sites, wildlife, plant life, geology, and astronomy. Their goal is to foster the desire to preserve, support and love the area and its western culture. Springfield, Colorado and Boise City, Oklahoma are the closest towns with dining and lodging. More information can also be found in this Forest Service document.
Best Time to Go
It’s best to visit in fall or spring, and even winter can be pleasant for hiking here at times. Summers are usually quite hot.
Getting There
To reach Picture Canyon travel to Campo, Colorado (20 miles south of Springfield, Colorado and about 28 miles north of Boise City, Oklahoma) on Highway 287 and turn west on County Road J. Continue for 10 miles, then turn left (south) at County Road 18 for 5 miles. Turn right (south) at the Picture Canyon sign and continue for 1 mile to the parking lot.
To reach Carrizo Canyon, from Springfield, Colorado drive south on Highway 287 for 17 miles. At County Road M Turn right (west) and continue for 22 miles, then turn left (south) at Forest Service Road 539 for 1.9 miles to parking lot.
Books and Maps
Hiking Colorado: A Guide to the State’s Greatest Hiking Adventures (Falcon Guide) and a good gazetteer is always helpful. We used the Colorado Road and Recreation Atlas by Benchmark Maps.
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in Issue 35 of TrailGroove Magazine. You can read the original article here for additional photos and content.

A staple technique used in pre-packaged backpacking meals, freeze-drying is a process by which food (typically already cooked or a product that could be eaten raw) is frozen and the pressure in a chamber lowered. As a result moisture in the product is almost completely removed and foods that are freeze-dried can last years or even decades without refrigeration.

A commercially available freeze-dried meal prior to rehydration.
Freeze-Dried Pros and Cons
Compared to at-home or commercial air dehydration, which uses heat, freeze-dried products retain more nutrients, taste, and original textures when rehydrated compared to a dehydrated product. Of course this does come with a couple drawbacks – freeze-drying at home is typically out of reach for the home backpacking chef, and freeze-dried foods are noticeably more expensive.
More Freeze-Dried and Backpacking Meal Resources
See our Top Ten Freeze Dried Backpacking Meals article for more on some of our favorite freeze-dried meals, and for a wide selection of freeze-dried meals on the market, you can see this page at REI Co-op. See our guide to Dehydrating Your Own Backpacking Meals at Home for some quick tips on creating your own meals prior to a trip.
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Issue 54 of TrailGroove Magazine. You can read the original article here.

Vermilion Cliffs National Monument is a vast plateau in north central Arizona and adjoining southern Utah. The 280,000-acre (roughly 20 miles east-west by 20 miles north-south) monument includes the rugged and beautiful Paria Plateau and Coyote Buttes North and South. The plateau is also known as the Sand Hills. Many hikers and photographers visit The Wave, Paw Hole, Cottonwood Cove, and White Pocket. All those are worthy destinations, but going beyond yields even more impressive hikes, views, and experiences.

The plateau towers nearly 3,000 feet above the plains to the east, and is bounded by Highway 89A and Marble Canyon on the east, Highway 89A on the south, House Rock Road on the west, and Buckskin Gulch and the Paria River on the north. Everywhere on the mesa are Navajo sandstone outcrops and loose sand. The sandstone originated as a huge wind-blown sand dune field, which was subsequently compacted and cemented into rock and is now eroding into a plethora of bizarre and unique shapes to see and photograph. The dune remnants are visible as striated layers, towers of sandstone, hoodoos, “brain rocks,” and strange twisted layers. Driving in the monument is time-consuming even with a high clearance four-wheel drive vehicle, and impossible for a typical passenger vehicle. Hiking in these areas is not easy either, as there are few established trails. Exploring the plateau is a “look and explore” type of experience. Give yourself plenty of time to wander, backtrack, and take pictures. And then take more pictures! One could easily spend several weeks visiting all the amazing locations in this area and still need more weeks to see the areas you missed the first time!
A Vermilion Cliffs & Grand Staircase Trip Begins
In September 2021, my usual hiking buddy Ward and I took a week-long trip to visit the plateau and to see more of it than we had been able to in past trips. This was our fourth trip to the monument, and by far the most extensive and inclusive. On previous trips, we had visited Coyote Buttes North (The Wave) and Coyote Buttes South (Paw Hole and Cottonwood Cove) as well as White Pocket (see TrailGroove Issue 33). For several years we had been wanting to camp on the “edge of the Vermilions,” and this was our chance!

Peppermint Wave in Arizona's Vermilion Cliffs
Arizona's Vermilion Cliffs
Our trip started with a long day of highway driving, ending at Tuba City, AZ where we stayed at the beautiful Moenkopi Inn. Continuing the next morning, we arrived at the plateau after crossing Marble Canyon on Highway 89A and entering the national monument from the southern end of House Rock Road. We headed onto the plateau by the best road into the interior of the monument – BLM 1017. Once we reached Pine Tree Pockets, the real fun began. With my sister’s borrowed 4Runner, we were able to travel on the plateau over miles and miles of single-lane tracks, often with deep sand. This first day, we crossed the nearly 20-mile-wide plateau from west to east on a variety of tracks, passing through a herd of cattle in Pinnacle Valley, and stopping at several places on the way, including The Beehives.
We arrived at the end of the track at the Soap Creek Tank area and parked. In the area near the end of the road is a good stand of scattered mature ponderosa pines and plenty of beautiful exposed sandstone. Lots to see even if you don’t go much farther, but we had a destination – the edge of the cliff! Backpacks on, we hiked in an easterly direction, knowing that it was just over a mile (as the California Condor flies) to the edge of the plateau. Between our parking spot and the cliff, however, was a ridge that was a couple hundred feet above us, and then about 300 feet back down to the level of the plateau’s edge.

Much of the area was easy hiking once we found our way up and down the sometimes steep sides of the ridge. Up and down and across Soap Creek Pasture we went until we got to the eastern edge, then we wandered a bit to find the ideal camping spot. It was a beautiful area, with great views that were somewhat hindered due to smoke from a fire somewhere nearby on the north rim of the Grand Canyon. From the edge of the plateau the cars on the thin gray line that is Highway 89A appeared to be about a pixel wide. Beyond the highway is Marble Canyon, through which the Colorado River flows between Lee’s Ferry and the confluence with the Little Colorado River on its way to the Grand Canyon. One of the highlights that evening was spotting a couple of California Condors, one directly overhead!
The next morning we hiked back to our parking spot (about 1.3 miles), then drove back west and north to stop at Joe’s Ranch. This is one of several old ranches on the plateau. Beginning in the 1880s and through several other owners until the 2000s, the ranchers raised sheep, Angora goats, and cattle. Joe’s cabin, some outbuildings, and fences are still present on the site. The area around the ranch is now owned by the Grand Canyon Trust. We parked and hiked around Joe’s, then drove farther west and then north through Cathedral Valley. We drove, stopped, and hiked numerous times most of the rest of the day, with many photos shot. Included in these stops, we saw the Cowboy Hat, Flame Wave, Pink Sink, as well as several unnamed areas (many of the names of these barely-known places came from a hiker named Dave Coppedge, who has explored much more of the plateau than I ever will). We encountered just one section of road that was too steep/too sandy, so we had to turn back – the only time on the whole trip! Our camping destination for the night was White Pocket, a place we had visited several years ago.

Just to the northeast of White Pocket, there are a series of mesas that the aforementioned Dave has explored. We decided to hike between the two nearest mesas, going northeastward on the east side of Spur Mesa, then across the valley to hike southwestward in the afternoon on the west side of Caterpillar Mesa. We ended up hiking around 5 miles over 5 hours, with over 600 feet of descent and ascent. During all this, we saw absolutely no sign of any other hikers having ever been in the area, although surely there have been a few (including Dave). Along the way we saw Peppermint Wave and the Paria Puppets (Dave’s names) and the Stacked Pancakes (my name). It wasn’t an easy hike, with many ups and downs and no trail at all – just sand, junipers, low brush, and what I called “those dang yellow flowers” which were everywhere, about 3 to 4 feet tall and stiff-stemmed. Definitely not an easy hike, but very scenic!
We got back to our campsite at White Pocket in mid-afternoon, and after a bit of rest I decided that since we were there, I would wander a bit and take a few pictures. Mid-afternoon is not the best time for photography, but still…I could not resist! Once I arrived back at the vehicle, we packed up and headed toward town (Page, AZ in this case). Having driven about 50 miles of sandy tracks over three days (and not getting stuck once!). I handed the keys over to Ward at Pine Tree Pockets for the drive to Page where we got a room for the night (and showers!) and had dinner at The Dam Bar and Grill.

Sidestep Canyon in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
For some added off the beaten track hiking, we next went to the southern part of the nearby Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM) to visit Sidestep Canyon. Sidestep is the next canyon west of the better known Wahweap Hoodoos. I’ve had this canyon on my wish list for years, and it did not disappoint! Our hike started at White Rocks Trailhead and went northeast following a dry (at least this time) creek bed for the first mile or so, until we came to a concrete dam blocking further travel. From that point we had to climb up about 300 feet to the top of the mesa and then followed a fairly well travelled path to the edge of the canyon. We saw the upper part of Colorful Canyon (must return someday to see more!) just before we arrived at Sidestep Canyon.
The trail followed the southern edge of the canyon for a good distance before finally petering out at a side canyon. We could see a couple possible ways down into the canyon, all quite steep and sketchy-looking. There was one obvious better way down beyond the side canyon, but we opted to turn back at that point. We did get into the upper part of the canyon before heading back to the truck. This ended up being just over 7 miles of hiking with about 560 feet of climbing and descending.

That night we camped at White House Campground, saw a beautiful sunset, and had a good view of the Milky Way. The next morning, we packed up and headed north on Cottonwood Canyon Road in GSENM to visit The Box of the Paria River and Red Top. We had been to a nearby and better-known area called Yellow Rock years ago and I had noticed this large obvious red outcropping to the south and had wanted to return. Today was the day! We hiked from the truck for a short distance to the river and then were in and out of the meandering flow (it was less than 6 inches deep in most places) for the next mile and a half, at which point we climbed out on a steep slope, ascending about 400 feet in less than a half mile.
After the climb, things got even more interesting – scenic views in every direction and oh so much color! Red, beige, orange, yellow, tan, colors without names, more yellow, and the various greens of the vegetation. It was an up and down cross-country hike the rest of the way to Red Top, and by this time I realized that someday I am going to need to get my knee replaced. The hike ended up being about 5.3 miles with 690 feet of ascent/descent. I suffered most of the way back to the car, but it was worth it for the scenery we saw.

The Vermilion Cliffs National Monument and nearby parts of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument offer a stunning variety of scenery and hiking opportunities. In Vermilion Cliffs, we drove about 50 miles and barely scratched the surface, passing by many scenic outcrops that beg to be explored. In Grand Staircase we merely explored the edge of a monument that covers over 1.8 million acres. If you need to get away from civilization, these are the places for you! During the hikes we took on this trip, we did not encounter a single hiker, with the exception of my short time at White Pocket. The scenery was just as dramatic, and even more so in spots, and the photographic possibilities were endless. There is so much to see in both monuments that I am already planning my next trip to explore even more seldom-seen spots.
Need to Know
Information
General information on Vermilion Cliffs National Monument can be found here. These areas are isolated with no services. The roads are difficult to drive on. You can check conditions before driving – the park service has three nearby ranger stations: The Paria Contact Station, the Big Water Visitor Center, and the Kanab Visitor Center. Cell phone coverage is spotty. We took extra water, extra food, spare tires, and supplies to help get our vehicle unstuck.
Best Time to Go
Spring and fall offer temperatures that are more moderate and comfortable than summer. Summers can be brutally hot (my first trip to the Wave many years ago was on July 4th when it was nearly 100 degrees). Winters can be cold, with occasional snow. I have not yet visited in the winter, but have seen photos of the area with snow, and it looks amazing!
Getting There
From Page, AZ go west on Highway 89 approximately 36 miles, or from Kanab, UT go east approximately 39 miles on Highway 89, then turn south on House Rock Road. Drive approximately 20 miles to Pine Tree Road which heads east onto the plateau (there is a corral on the west side of the road at the intersection). House Rock Road is usually passable by any vehicle, but can become impassable after rain or snow. If you are coming from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, go north to Highway 89a at Jacob Lake, then turn right onto 89a, drive about 14 miles to House Rock Road then turn left and go north to Pine Tree Road.
Maps and Books
National Geographic Trails Illustrated Map #859 (Paria Canyon, Kanab) and Trails Illustrated Map #714 (Grand Staircase Paunsaugunt Plateau) cover all the areas driven and hiked in this article. Individual USGS topographic maps are also available: For the parts of the Paria Plateau that we travelled on this trip: Poverty Flat, Wrather Arch, One Toe Ridge, and The Big Sink. For Sidestep Canyon: Nipple Butte and Lower Coyote Springs. For help planning your trip to and from the trailhead as well as exploring other destinations in the area, the Delorme Arizona Atlas & Gazetteer and the Utah Road & Recreation Atlas from Benchmark Maps can be useful.
For Red Top: Calico Peak and Fivemile Valley. The Paria Plateau is discussed in depth in Hiking and Exploring the Paria River by Michael R. Kelsey and is a great source of information, including the roads, the sights, and the history of Vermilion Cliffs National Monument. Also included in the book are areas from Bryce Canyon to the south through the western parts of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in Issue 52 of TrailGroove Magazine. You can read the original article here for additional photos and content.

In mountainous areas most live in the valleys and often hike in the mountains – normally a colder environment as you gain elevation. However in winter, often a surface temperature inversion will form in these areas as cold air, in contrast to the norm of temperature decreasing several degrees for every 1000 feet gained, remains trapped in the valleys, and often along with the any air pollution that may exist.

Inversions are likely to happen during periods with long winter nights, calm winds, and clear skies. The long clear nights create a scenario where the ground and air closest to the surface is allowed to cool the its greatest extent, is not mixed into warmer air higher in the atmosphere by wind, and the resulting cold air naturally settles in lowest spots and is overrun with warm air.
Typical Winter Hiking / Inversion Considerations
This is in contrast to typical weather patterns where the sun warms the air closest to the ground, with that air gradually losing heat as it rises. While those below sub-zero winter hikes and backpacking trips can be quite rewarding, taking advantage of an inversion may find you leaving your house in near arctic conditions to find chilly, but pleasant hiking weather higher in the hills. As such, inversions can at times, be a winter hiker’s delight.
To learn more about weather patterns and phenomenon Peterson’s Field Guide to Weather is a good resource. See our Winter Backpacking Guide for more on winter backpacking considerations.
Editor’s Note: This Jargon installment originally appeared in Issue 32 of TrailGroove Magazine. You can read the original article here.