Adventures In Utah: Bryce Canyon National Park - Queens Garden/Navajo Trail Loop & Peekaboo Loop

Adventures In Utah: Bryce Canyon National Park - Queens Garden/Navajo Trail Loop
 & Peekaboo Loop – 8 Miles – 4/14/21

Still buzzing from yesterday’s Fairyland Loop hike in Bryce Canyon National Park, we were ready for more adventures amongst the hoodoos. The trails we hiked today are the most popular ones in the park and the people were out in droves, but when you’re in Paris you visit the Eiffel Tower along with everyone else, don’tcha?

The combination of Queens Garden/Navajo Trail/Peekaboo Loop Trail/Rim Trails is a figure 8, two loops with a short connector in between.

We started the hike at Sunrise Point on the Rim Trail, feeling the chill above 8,000 feet elevation in mid-April. After a short distance on the rim, we turned left onto Queens Garden Trail and descended via switchbacks about half a mile. There were blind corners, mysterious doorways, and broad vistas, surprises all around.

Walls, fins and hoodoos – a great explanation and illustrations here

Gradations of tan/pink/orange/rust sandstone pinnacles like drip sandcastles at the beach

Walking out onto a fin for a photo op, every hiker patiently taking a photo for the next in line

Cathy going through a doorway

Approaching the Queen’s Garden, her Castle rising high on the left horizon

A short spur trail leads to Queen Victoria admiring her garden…
like the Tower Bridge yesterday, squint and use your imagination

Past the spur trail to see the Queen, the trail continues another .7 miles down to the base of the canyon where Bryce Creek flows through the forest. We turned left onto the connector trail leading to Peekaboo Loop, then turned right to hike the loop clockwise, where more blind curves and enticing doorways led us on.

This trail has some short, steep up-and-downs and is considered more strenuous than the Queens Garden and Navajo Trails – maybe because of its length (3 miles) combined with the trails to reach it? The main access point for the Peekaboo is from Bryce Point, and from there it's a 5.2-mile hike. It is well worth the effort to include this trail in your hike plan – after all, when are you coming back?

Two detailed descriptions of the Peekaboo Loop Trail are here and here.

The Cathedral

Looking over my right shoulder to Sunset Point –
we’ll be hiking up through that cleft to reach the rim

Wall of Windows on the Peekaboo Loop Trail

About halfway around the loop is the junction with the Under The Rim Trail. From here the trail turned northward and descended into Peekaboo Canyon, passing through majestic bristlecone pines.

At the completion of the loop, we retraced our steps on the connector trail back to the Queens Garden/Navajo Loop Trail junction. The west side of the Navajo Loop, which features the Wall Street slot canyon, was still closed (typically for the freeze-thaw cycles from November through April that cause falling rocks) so our only option was the east side, called Two Bridges - equally awesome!

A pretty bad photo of one of the Two Bridges

Looking up to where we're going. Did I mention that the east side of Navajo Loop is a series of
 tight switchbacks rising 500 feet in half a mile?

Looking back down from whence we came

What is the most iconic hoodoo in Bryce Canyon National Park?

Thor’s Hammer – a reason to stop and rest on the climb to the rim

Thor’s Hammer and the Three Gossips

At Sunset Point, the junction with the Rim Trail, we joined the throngs to look down where we had spent the day wandering, then hiked the last half-mile back to Sunrise Point to complete the journey.

Looking down on the Rim Trail from Sunset Point

Another view of the Rim Trail, Boat Mesa in the distance

Silent City

Bristlecone Point mesa

On the way back to our Airbnb, we stopped at nearby Tod’s convenience store. As the four of us entered, the man behind the cash register (owner Tod) hollered, “If you’re wearing a mask, I’ll charge you ten dollars!” Of course we were all wearing masks. Hmmm…

I just wasn’t sure if this was a challenge or a joke. I pulled down my mask and said, “How’s this?” and he laughed. We started a conversation and saw that Tod was a fun fellow not unlike my dad, who teased unmercifully until you called him on it. Turns out Tod had COVID in April 2020 “real bad” and it took him 8 months to recover his energy. He showed me his bruise where he’d just gotten his first vaccination. We agreed that we needed to get the shot.

Tomorrow we will visit Zion National Park (a difficult park to plan for, in my opinion). Zion Canyon Scenic Drive is closed to private vehicles, so the shuttle is the only option to trailheads for Angels Landing, the Narrows, and other popular trails. Shuttle tickets are very cheap but tricky for timing. Some were available to reserve months ago and the rest were available beginning at 5pm the day before your visit. Early shuttle times are most desirable to get ahead of the masses. I wasted some brain cells worrying about all this. Do we even want to go? (Yes.)

Back at the cabin wifi, I was able to score 9am shuttle tickets for tomorrow, so the plan is to tackle Angels Landing. The crowds are legendary and we all agreed that when we reach the junction to the summit, any or all of us may decide to skip it and continue hiking the West Rim Trail.

Our turn to cook dinner tonight, so Jim and I whipped up a chicken and vegetable stir fry. It must have been good because it disappeared!

Looking at the map of Bryce Canyon National Park, seeing how much we did not get to explore makes me yearn for a return visit. Imagine what an overnight backpack experience would be like…

“In every walk with nature
 one receives far more than he seeks.” 
 ~John Muir

Adventures In Utah: Bryce Canyon National Park - Fairyland Loop

Adventures In Utah: Bryce Canyon National Park - Fairyland Loop – 4/13/21 – 8.6 miles

How many hoodoos does it take to make Bryce Canyon National Park? A whole lot! You’ve seen two-dimensional photos, but they don’t prepare you for the reality in 3D. And you get to walk all around in it!

Hikers generally don’t sleep in because we know that morning is the best time to experience the natural world before those pesky (other) humans show up – and in a desert setting it’s best to hike before the temperatures rise. We had our sights set on the Fairyland Loop and its trailhead one mile north of the park’s official entrance. We’d heard that the parking lot fills up quickly in the morning, and if you miss out then you have to park elsewhere and catch a shuttle, making a later start on the trail. 

Note: You can also start this hike from Sunset Point, which has a larger parking area, but you have to pass through the Park entrance where everyone else is trying to enter.

So our foursome was out the door very early and circling for a spot. Most folks park, walk out to Fairyland Point, take that selfie, and go back to their cars. Don’t roll your eyes, we’ve all done that in some places and probably will again. Everyone has priorities. All we needed to do was wait just a few minutes. A car departed, we happily parked, grabbed our packs and poles and hit the trail.

But first…we stood at Fairyland Point and took that selfie

Note: The Fairyland Loop Trail starts on the rim of Fairyland Canyon. Hiking clockwise, it goes about 5.5 miles and intersects with the Rim Trail at Sunset Point, which continues another 2.5 miles to complete the loop. The entire hike is about 8 miles, longer if you add on the spur trail to Tower Bridge.

The tilted mesa in the center top of the photo is called the Sinking Ship

Cathy and Mike ahead of us

Boat Mesa dominates as the trail winds around and down

Every turn revealed a surreal landscape. It took us 5 hours to complete the loop as we gawked and exclaimed and turned around in circles to take it all in. For us flatlanders, going at a slow pace made the high elevation feel less taxing. [Starting elevation was 7,700 feet, down to 7,180 feet at Tower Bridge, up to the highest elevation (at Sunset Point) at 8,100 feet.]

What is a hoodoo? A tall, thin spire of soft rock protruding from the bottom of an arid drainage basin, usually topped by a cap of harder rock.

How does Mother Nature make a hoodoo? Weathering and erosion caused by ice and rain. Elevation in Bryce Canyon varies from 6,600 to 9,100 feet and gets above freezing temperatures and below freezing temperatures more than 170 nights during a year.

Boat Mesa from a different angle: head-on

Somewhere in the first couple of miles we met a group of women about my age, all smiles, on an annual group trip. One saw Jim’s VT hat and said GO HOKIES, demonstrating once again that Virginia Tech folks are everywhere.

Around the same time we passed a young man wearing only shorts and cowboy boots, carrying a very large wooden hiking stick. He had one prosthetic leg and his gait was awkward, but his face bore an expression of intense focus. I had the sense of a profound challenge being met. A young woman accompanied him, neither of them speaking as we passed going in the opposite direction. 

Boat Mesa

The trail descends into Campbell Canyon. At about 4 miles, we turned left onto a .2-mile spur trail to Tower Bridge [a bit of a stretch to imagine a resemblance to the iconic bridge in London, England, but, IMHO, so was Fred Flintstone yesterday at Kodachrome Basin]. 

Cathy and I found a patch of snow in the shadows of the canyon

Clouds were moving in as we returned to the Fairyland Loop Trail and began a significant (hard) climb back up to the canyon rim (nearly 1,000 feet elevation gain in 1.5 miles).  This required increasing our pace, breathing harder, and continuing to marvel at the unfolding scenery.

Yeah, we did that!

Break time near the intersection with the Rim Trail

The China Wall is another uh-MAZ-ing feature on the Fairyland Loop Trail that photos fail to capture. The name refers to its ridges that remind viewers of the Great Wall of China.
Notice snow in the crevices at the base of the hoodoos.

A window in the China Wall

As we passed the short spur trail to the North Campground on the canyon rim, we crossed paths again with the young man in cowboy boots, looking as though walking was now painful but no less determined to reach the goal he envisioned. I hope he was successful in whatever way was meaningful for him.

The Rim Trail was overflowing with people checking out Sunset Point, and we skirted through as quickly as we could. Still more than two miles to go from there as the Rim Trail passed along the top edge of the Pink Cliffs (remember we saw these from Panorama Point in Kodachrome Basin yesterday?) 

After the hike we entered the Park to check out the Visitor Center and store.  Staff members were doing their best to limit the number of patrons inside and enforce social distancing. I felt empathetic and appreciative of people whose jobs required them to work with the public during the uncertainties of the pandemic. Was I putting them at risk or helping them to maintain a paycheck? As I write this a year later, very few conclusions.

As I efficiently stamped my National Parks Passport and bought my souvenir patches, I wondered…
will my kids throw my patch collection away when I’m gone?

We headed back to our Airbnb, cleaned ourselves up, and drove further up Highway 14 to Duck Creek Village for dinner. There wasn’t much open at this time of year. I’d thought the Village would be a more sophisticated resort than it was but, nonetheless, Aunt Sue’s Chalet welcomed us as its only customers. They had red and white house wines and beer, including Polygamy Porter by Utah’s own Wasatch Brewery. “When you want more than one!”

The service was fantastic, of course, and the food was very good, especially the blueberry pie.

Jim’s hot roast beef sandwich supper

“Water, water, water....There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount, a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide, free, open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.” ~Edward Abbey