The best way to explore Utah’s iconic canyons might surprise you

The forces of millions of years surround visitors to Utah’s canyons. Photo / Getty Images
Whether you’re exploring on foot, with two wheels or even dangling from a rope, the spectacular canyons of southern Utah look good from every angle, writes Alexis Buston-Collins
For some 15 million years, powerful rivers swollen with snowmelt have carved ever-deepening channels through the soft, multicoloured sandstone of the American southwest. The paths they’ve left behind range from slot canyons so narrow you can touch both walls with outstretched hands, to vast chasms that are hundreds of metres deep and kilometres across. The greatest concentration of these spectacular landmarks lies in southern Utah, and no matter your preferred mode of transport (and adventure), there’s a canyon waiting for you.
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You could spend years exploring southern Utah and still only scratch the surface of the hiking opportunities, but few trails are more iconic than The Narrows in Zion National Park. This hike follows a canyon so, ahem, narrow that there’s no path – walkers simply follow the Virgin River between walls that squeeze in until they’re only 7m apart despite towering 450m above the water on either side. It means that precious little sunlight penetrates the lower regions, and while the strikingly moody colour palette has inspired a thousand postcards, they miss out on the soundtrack of rushing water and chirping swallows that provides a peaceful counterpoint to the dramatic scenery.
Head east from Zion and you’ll find the surreal cityscape of Bryce Canyon National Park, where a broad valley is filled with thousands upon thousands of limestone spires decorated with stripes of vermilion, coral and ivory. Known as hoodoos, these friable pillars have been sculpted into an array of fabulous shapes by the elements – one even resembles a statue of Queen Victoria. The colours are even more spectacular at Kodachrome Basin State Park, where a vast amphitheatre of ghostly white rock contrasts with rows of vertical red spires that reach skyward like a giant picket fence, while Snow Canyon State Park adds another colour into the mix with glistening black lava flows snaking their way between the bright red slopes.
An eerie Martian landscape covered in the legendary Slickrock has turned Moab – in the state’s southwest – into a mountain biking Mecca. But you don’t need to be a daredevil to enjoy Utah on two wheels. One of the best ways to explore Zion is on a rental e-bike from E-Bikes Zion. Not only does the motor help to make even the steepest hills a breeze, these bikes allow you to skip the queues for the shuttles in Zion Canyon, which is closed to private vehicles from March to September.
Even better, the leisurely ride up the Zion Canyon Scenic Drive provides panoramic views for its entire 10km length. With needle-like spires of red stone erupting from the valley floor on either side and sheer walls of rock leading up to improbably thin ridges crowned with hardy pines, following this winding road feels like entering an IMAX movie. Keep an eye out and you’ll see hikers tackling the trails to either side of the road, and if you’re lucky you might even spot bighorn sheep scrambling over the slopes.
Tucked hard against the Arizona border, the spectacular scenery around Kanab was once so popular with Western film directors that the town used to be known as Little Hollywood. Few people know the landscape as well as Hal Johnson, a seventh-generation local with a reality TV smile and biceps large enough to benchpress one of the UTVs (Utility Terrain Vehicles) he uses to explore the region. These four-seater vehicles are designed for off-road use on sandy and rocky terrain, and Roam Outdoor lets you decide whether to hop behind the wheel or leave it to the guides.
“There’s a lot of ground to cover,” Johnson tells me before we head into Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. “So I love to look back and see lots of dust and a big row of smiling teeth.” Minutes later we’re throwing up curtains of sand as I follow him along a winding track that leads to a sea of golden dunes surrounded by red cliffs coated with a layer of smooth desert varnish. But this is just a warm-up for the highlight of the Peek A Boo Slot Canyon UTV tour.
To get there, we drive between walls of red rock that slowly converge until they form an apparent dead end. The playfully named Peek A Boo canyon is so narrow that the entrance is invisible unless approached from the right angle, and once I’ve entered this twisting maze I’m treated to new views with every second step. Both sides are striped with wave-like ripples of red and gold, in some places the layers so fine they look like pages of a book, and the indirect sunlight that filters down gives them a soft orange glow. Deeper in the canyon, large overhangs blot out the small sliver of sky overhead and turn the walls a chilly blue. Seeing me shiver as a cold wind whistles past us, Johnson points to a series of handholds carved into the rock. They are around a thousand years old, he tells me, and were carved by the Ancestral Pueblans who once lived here. “That ledge above us was a food storage area; this was their refrigerator.”
One of the guides with East Zion Adventures, Keziah is helping me tackle a formidable canyon that lies on the eastern side of Kanab. “There are no shopping malls or bowling alleys nearby, so this is what we do for fun around here,” she explains as we walk up a slope dotted with gnarled juniper trees, clumps of desiccated sagebrush and proud ponderosa pines that emit a sweet butterscotch scent through their deeply cracked bark.
When we reach the upper entrance to the canyon known as The Huntress, my guide points out the lines of cross-bedding in the 190 million-year-old stone where the former ocean floor has been compressed into neat layers of Navajo sandstone. “The wind coming up the canyon brings grains of sand that have sandblasted the wall to create those smooth surfaces,” she adds. But Keziah is not here merely to impart knowledge; I’m also trusting her to help me rappel down several sections of this narrow gorge. And despite going over all the instructions several times, my heart is unsurprisingly lodged in my mouth when I first lean back over a sheer 20m drop. So I’m thankful for her calm guidance as I slowly inch my way down the rock face before breathing a sigh of relief when I’m finally vertical again.
More rappels follow, each one slightly more comfortable than the last, until we finish with a 15m descent around a rock face that glows red in the soft afternoon sunlight. In the lower portion of The Huntress, the base closes to less than 10cm across at its narrowest, and even the non-technical portions require some scrambling over trees and boulders that litter the canyon floor. But it’s worth it for our reward, a series of gorgeous twisting narrows decorated with a dizzying array of whorls and swirls that descend alongside us like a river frozen in time. “We have now entered my favourite part of the descent,” says Keziah as I marvel at the delicate patterns. But when I ask if it’s her favourite canyon, she pauses politely. “There are a lot of canyons in Utah,” she says with a polite laugh. “A lot!”
GETTING THERE
Fly from Auckland to Salt Lake City International Airport with one stopover with Air NZ and United.
DETAILS
visitutah.com