Digging into Utah's Mighty Five

2/2/2024

LONG STORY SHORT
Utah's five national parks offer some of the best adventures in the west, and we manage to cross a few off our bucket list.

By Kristine McGowan

Utah might just be my favorite state.

One could argue—and I do—that its parks rival the crown jewels of the National Park System, even Yosemite and Yellowstone. (Don’t come at me until you’ve read this whole story, okay?) Each one offers big adventure among unique geological features that, frankly, make my brain implode. They’re incredible to look at—but when I consider the natural forces that worked together seamlessly to form these vast canyons, stunning arches, and sandstone cathedrals? It’s mindboggling.

We’ve visited all five of Utah’s national parks before—known as Utah’s Mighty Five—so when we headed into the state in November, we wanted to dig deep. Do everything we’d never managed to do in these parks before, either because we didn’t have the time or equipment, or we just showed up at the wrong time of year.

Here’s what we did in each park this autumn, in the order we did them. If they’re not on your bucket list, trust me—you should add them now.

Zion National Park

Hiking the Narrows
This hike has been at the top of our to-do list for years. We’d never done it before because we didn’t have the time or, more importantly, the experience. Because this hike doesn’t take you on a trail. It takes you up a river—or really, into it.

You can hike the Narrows in one of two routes: as a 16-mile through-hike from Chamberlain’s Ranch or as a 10-mile, out-and-back hike from the Temple of Sinawava. Both take you through the narrowest section of Zion Canyon, where thousand-foot walls tower over both sides of the river. But the out-and-back hike doesn’t require a wilderness permit, so we opted for that.

As you might imagine, this trek requires more preparation than your average day hike. Before we headed out, we checked the Virgin River’s flow rate and temperature (both are conveniently provided by Zion Outfitter, just outside the park). On the day of our hike, the flow rate hovered somewhere around 80 cubic feet per second (anything over 70 cf/s is considered challenging to walk in), while the water’s temperature was a toasty 46°F. So we rented dry bibs, canyoneering boots, neoprene socks, and wooden hiking sticks from Zion Outfitter to keep us warm and upright while wading through waist-deep water.

We didn’t do the full 10 miles—never even planned to, given how cold the water was—but we managed to cover about 4 miles. By the end of the day, those 4 miles became some of our favorite we’ve ever hiked.

Arches National Park

Hiking Devils Garden

Of all the times we’ve been to Utah, about 90% of our visits were in winter. So every time we’d visited Arches, the park was buried in snow.

And let me tell you—the Devils Garden trail is impossible to follow when it’s buried under snow. We tried. And we gave up about less than a mile in.

That said, without snow, this trail had all the elements of an awesome hike for us: rock-scrambling; route-finding; nooks and crannies we could crawl into; narrow rock walls with steep drops on either side of us; and countless scenic points, featuring eight arches and sweeping desert views.

If you like trails that make you feel like a kid again, Devils Garden is for you.

Canyonlands National Park

Hiking to Druid Arch
The great thing about visiting Utah during winter? The parks look absolutely gorgeous in snow.

The not-so-great thing? After a storm rolls through, it can take hours to plow the roads, and the park(s) stay closed the whole time.

That happened to us not once but twice during our visits to Canyonlands. So before this trip, we’d hardly seen anything in the most popular area of this park, the Island in the Sky district. Which meant we never even considered trekking out to The Needles district, nearly 80 miles southwest of Moab.

But this time around, we headed out that way—and ended up on a hike that took us to an arch even more mind-blowing than anything we’d seen in Arches National Park.

Like the Narrows, this 11-mile hike requires some preparation, and like Devils Garden, it also requires some route-finding and rock-scrambling. But it has the added bonus of winding through one of the most remote regions in Canyonlands, granting you plenty of room to breathe and wander.

Now, Druid Arch is yet another of our favorite hikes. Do you sense theme here?

Driving White Rim Road
Something that’s always been off-limits to us on our travels? 4x4 roads.

Our little Toyota Corolla took us on plenty of trips around the country, but our adventures usually stopped where the pavement ended. Fortunately, while our Corolla enjoys a quiet semi-retirement back home, we have a more powerful vehicle propelling us on the Big Trip: Steve, our trusty Ford F-150 with four-wheel drive.

Thanks to Steve, we got to explore parts of Canyonlands’ 100-mile White Rim Road, which snakes below the Island in the Sky mesa and takes you to otherwise inaccessible areas of the park. This was our first 4x4 experience in Steve, and—oh man. Let’s just say we’ll search for roads like this everywhere else we go.

Capitol Reef National Park

Driving the Cathedral Valley Loop
After Canyonlands, it didn’t take us long to find another 4x4 road. Gotta love Utah.

Cathedral Valley is home to the most unique parts of Capitol Reef National Park. To see it, you can drive the 58-mile, 4x4 Cathedral Valley Loop—but as always, you have to go prepared. The loop begins and ends at Highway 24, and one entry/exit point requires you to ford the Fremont River. If your vehicle can’t handle the crossing, you’ll have to start the loop from the other entry point, and either handle this drive as a 100-mile, out-and-back excursion or simply skip parts of the loop.

When we drove up to the river, the water was about a foot deep. It would have made our Corolla tremble, but Steve was up to the challenge.

And the payoff was huge. The loop took us right up to Cathedral Valley’s sandstone formations, which stand hundreds of feet tall with sides that resemble fluted walls and pinnacles sprouting from their tops. It’s no wonder how this place got its name. I couldn’t believe we’d come to Capitol Reef before without ever setting foot here.

Again—thank you, Steve.

Bryce Canyon National Park

Hiking Bristlecone Loop

All right. I have to admit here—by the time we got to Bryce, we were pooped. I mean, just look at everything else in this list. Altogether, our time in Utah involved back-to-back-to-back days of hiking and driving, not to mention many other miles of adventure that we haven’t listed here.

Fortunately, our remaining to-do list item in Bryce was a small one: hiking the 1-mile Bristlecone Loop. It took us through an area of the park we’d never seen before, because again, snow has a tendency to close roads out here.

As nice as the hike was, we still felt drawn to other areas of the park: trails we’d hiked on every other visit just because we loved them. So we set out on the Queens Garden and Navajo Loop. As tired as we were, we couldn’t bring ourselves to skip this loop.

I mean, just look at those photos. How could we not?

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