The particular hike I'm featuring in this post uses the Wall Street trail to descend below the plateau rim (Bryce's formation is not technically a canyon). Then you hike along connector trails to the Peekaboo Loop. This brings you back to the connector trail and you ascend the Navajo Trail. The whole loop is around 5 miles, with around 700' of elevation gained and lost over the course of the trip - so it's easy enough to do after a morning of horseback riding and field data collection, and just challenging enough for you to feel like you earned your pie at the Bryce Canyon Pines Cafe.
So, you start out down one of the coolest short trails ever: Wall Street. Begin at Sunset Point down the Navajo Trail, taking the turn for Wall Street when you see it. You'll start immediately down a set of very tightly engineered switchbacks sandwiched between cool rock formations.
The descent is steep, but the trail is smooth so it's not punishing, and at the bottom you get to a cool rock grotto.
There was a landslide down here in 2006 that closed the trail for more than a year, and you can still see some of the evidence of it.
Also at the bottom of this particular formation are a pair of beautiful Douglas Fir trees that have stretched up to get to the sun.
Then the trail daylights to a delightful streambed - usually dry - with fantastic views of some of those cool hoodoo formations you were oohing-and-ahing over at the rim (only now you get to see them from the bottom!)
After about 1.3 miles you come to a junction in a relatively level, park-like area. Here you grab a quick connector to the west which will take you across the Bryce Creek drainage and connect up with the Peekaboo Loop. This short connector is a very easy (maybe) half mile - but still very scenic.
Soon you'll come to a sign for the Peakaboo Loop. You can do the loop clockwise or counterclockwise - it doesn't matter much. The loop is about 3 miles total. Either way, the trail will rise and fall as it climbs in and out of the amazing formations...
...sometimes even through them.
This trail is shared by the trail ride concessioners, so be polite and step aside when the horses approach. Many of these riders aren't familiar with how to handle their animals, and spooking them off the edge would be poor trail etiquette.
About half way around, you'll come to another junction with the Bryce Point trail. Now, you'd like to think that you have options here, if you had the trail map they gave us at the gate. You could hike up to Bryce Point and take the shuttle back to Sunset (during the summer when the shuttle runs), shortening your hike by a little over a mile. You could hike up to Bryce Point and hike back to Sunset along the Rim Trail, adding .7 miles to your hike. Or, you could continue along the loop. However, as the map above shows, the Bryce Point trail has been closed. I guess my whining to Management (or more likely lots of folks whining to management) got the map changed. So, unless they find a way for the Bryce Point Trail to stop eroding into even more hoodoos, you continue on...
There is a toilet at a rest area along the back of the Peekaboo loop. It's there primarily for the use of the trail ride groups, which stop at this corral for their lunch. But if you're in a pinch, it sure beats digging a hole.
So, once you've completed Peakaboo, hike back along the connector to the Navajo Loop and snake your way back up to the rim. This trail is not as "grotto-esque" as Wall Street, but is more of a ridge-hike with fantastic sweeping views and lots of singular formations.
The hike could take you an hour and a half - it could take all day. It depends on how much memory is on your digital camera card and how in-love you are with the contrast of those red hodoos against the crystal clear blue sky. Bryce is a noted Dark-Sky park, which translates during the day to some remarkably azure backgrounds that make your polarizer seem like overkill.
And please. Don't feed the squirrels.
1 comment:
Feed the squirrels? Never! evil vermin.
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