Peekaboo Loop Trail (Bryce Canyon NP)

Peekaboo Loop Trail at Bryce Canyon NP

I'm going to give the Peekaboo Loop Trail in Bryce Canyon my first review since I'm using a photo I took along that trail as the banner for this blog.  Simply put, the Peekaboo Loop Trail is absolutely my favorite trail in Bryce Canyon, and probably ranks in my top 3 overall.  This is a trail that I had wanted to hike for several years, yet due to one circumstance or another, it had eluded me each time I made the visit to Bryce Canyon.

That changed in May of 2012 when I spent the week at Ruby's Inn for the annual UGIC (Utah Geographic Information Council) Conference.  On a Wednesday afternoon, I managed to sneak in a solitary hike, and it was fabulous.  

The trail starts at Sunset Point, the most crowded and popular point in the entire park.  I had trouble finding a spot to park, and finally managed to squeeze into a small spot that nobody else wanted to try and fit into.  The area was crowded, even for mid-May, but that was soon to change once I hit the trail.  

As you can tell from the map above, the Peekaboo Loop trail is shaped like a big figure 8.  From Sunset Point, the trail follows the heavily-traveled Navajo Loop trail for the first .7 or .8 miles (depending on which half of the loop you take).  

Thor's Hammer

I took the eastern side of the loop down into the canyon.  The trail quickly switchbacks its way down, and you lose several hundred feet in a very short distance.  However, this is a very popular part of the park for a reason--some of the most amazing features in the park can be found along the 1 1/2 mile Navajo Trail Loop.  

Among the hoodoos (that's what they call all of the rock spires you find in Bryce Canyon) along the Navajo loop is perhaps the most famous of them all - Thor's Hammer.  The Hammer sits silently just 200 vertical feet or so below the trailhead, and many people who never venture beyond the overlook above miss out on this amazing formation.  The photo to the left simply doesn't do it justice -- it is amazing to see how such a fragile pinnacle made of sandstone continues to endure.  This is one of those features (along with Landscape Arch in Arches NP) that, whenever I see it, I always wonder if it will still be there the next time I visit.

After dropping down more steep switchbacks into the bottom of the canyon, you can either follow the other side of the Navajo loop back up to Sunset Point or continue south and take the trail less traveled.  If you do, the crowds quickly disappear and you  

Looking Back toward Sunset Point

soon find yourself crossing the bottom of Bryce Canyon proper and making your way toward the hill to the south.  As I started up this hill, I came to the second split that began the lower half of the "figure 8".  I again took the east half of the loop and worked my way up the steep hill. As I neared the top, I looked back to see Sunset Point off in the distance.

Dropping down off the north side of the hill, the trail passes the "fairy castle" (the photo I used for the banner of this website) and slowly winds in and out of canyons and hoodoos until it comes to the bottom of the figure 8.  At this point, you have the choice to continue on the with the loop, or take the trail straight south up to Bryce Point and catch a shuttle back to your car.  

I love the picture to the right.  Bryce point is the tiny lookout on top of the cliffs you can see high above in the background of the photo.  1 mile to Bryce Point, and about 1000 feet straight up!  Good luck with that.  To be fair, I had probably dropped about 800-900 feet coming off of  Sunset Point, but the trek back up to Sunset just didn't seem as daunting.

After continuing on to the west side of the loop, I quickly arrived at one of the most scenic areas of the hike: the "Wall of Windows".

The Wall of Windows

The Wall of Windows is a thousand foot-high fin of sandstone rock that has worn thin enough in places to have several "windows" open up.  They are really just fancy arches, but they are incredible, they are really big, and they are really high up there.  Once again, photos don't do them justice.  As I stood and looked at these majestic formations, I was all alone, it was completely silent -- just me and nature.  I tried to hear the sound of anything else -- another human, a car, but nothing.  It was pretty amazing.

Ponderosa Pines and Douglas Firs in the Canyon

 Once past the wall, the trail winds up and down over a couple more hills, and then begins to ascend toward the high point of the trail's west side.

The photo to the left shows the trail I had just come up.  Notice the trees growing in the narrow pass.  One of the amazing things about Bryce Canyon that many who haven't visited it don't realize is that the park has an elevation of 7000'-9000' above sea level.  Geologically speaking, Bryce Canyon is situated at the very top of the Grand Staircase in the Pink Cliffs of the Claron formation.  The Paunsaugunt Plateau that makes up the part of the park above the canyon rim is thickly forested with Douglas Firs and Ponderosa Pines, something that people often don't associate with the "deserts" of southern Utah.

Heading into the Tunnel

Another thing that I really enjoy about the canyons of southern Utah, and particularly about Bryce Canyon, is the contrast of the  red rock against the green vegetation and the blue sky.  There are few other places in the World that resemble these canyons, and I feel lucky each time I get to see them.

At the top of the narrow switchbacks, a small platform has been built out of sandstone bricks to flatten the path out into a tunnel that goes directly through the wall of the canyon.

The tunnel itself is about six feet wide, ten feet high, and about fifteen or twenty feet long.  There are several tunnels like this on various trails throughout Bryce Canyon, but this is one of the longer ones that I have found.

Once inside, the exit to the tunnel frames the formations to the north, including "Boat Mesa", the large plateau that you can see off in the distance to the right of the tree in the photo below.

Once out of the tunnel, the trail drops and ascends one more time, again taking you through amazing formations on both sides.

Another unique feature of the Peekaboo trail is that it is a shared hiking/horseback trail; really the only one in the park that allows both foot traffic and horseback tours.  They even have a horse corral near the split-off to Bryce Point.  Near this tunnel there were several people coming through on a horse tour and I had to wait while they passed me by.  It was interesting, because I think I saw more people on horses than on foot while on this trail.  The solitude you experience here is one of the best parts of the Peekaboo Loop.

Looking through the Tunnel

Peekaboo Canyon

At the top of the next rise is a narrow crack through the next fin that serves as the namesake for this trail -- Peekaboo Canyon.  It's only about 30 feet long, but it's about as narrow as the tunnel I passed through earlier.  I think the reason they call it "Peekaboo Canyon" is because as you exit it the "Silent City" formation suddenly appears in front of you off in the distance.  The "Silent City" is probably the most famous formation in all of Bryce Canyon.  This is the scene that can be scene from the Inspiration Point overlook -- high above to the North-- and is often printed all over Bryce Canyon posters and postcards.

Above the Silent City is Sunset Point, which comes into view again for the first time since passing the Fairy Castle area on the east side of the loop.  You can see the point where the trail both started and ends off in the distance.  The next stretch of trail is a long, gradual descent back into the bottom of Bryce Canyon proper which marks the middle section of the big figure 8.  Near the bottom of the descent, the trail comes back to meet the point where I had split off a little earlier, and I knew the bottom loop was complete.

Bristlecone Pine

Along the descent there was still plenty of great scenery.    In addition to the Silent City across the canyon, I passed several Bristlecone Pine trees on the way. Bristlecone Pines can live up to 5000 years, and they are currently the oldest living plants on the Earth (that have been discovered, anyway).  

This guy was just hanging out on the side of the hill all by himself -- it makes me wonder how long it's been around.  The tree had several branches that had dried out and died, and the gnarled roots have been exposed by erosion, yet it hangs on.  

After dropping into the bottom of the canyon, I came back to the point where I left the Navajo Loop trail.  The Navajo Loop trail is amazing on it's own, and I'll have to dig up some photos of it and post them at some point. From here, I took the western path in order to really complete the figure 8.  This route is called "Wall Street" because it takes you through narrow slot canyons before heading up more than a dozen very steep switchbacks up the the trailhead at Sunset Point.

A fairly strenuous hike, but absolutely worth it.  As I said at the beginning, the Peekaboo Loop remains the favorite of the trails that I have done so far in Bryce Canyon.  In May 2013, I'm hoping to return to Bryce and do the Fairyland Loop Trail in the north section of the Park.

Trail Stats:

Trail Type:                   Loop

Total Length:              4.8 miles

Total Vertical Feet:  2,590

Average Slope:            10%