About Bryce Canyon

When you go on a hiking adventure in Bryce Canyon National Park, you can let your imagination run wild. A 1929 promotional pamphlet for the Union Pacific Railroad's Grand Circle Tour said it was easy to find castles, cathedrals, organs, pyramids, suspension bridges, leaning towers, flying buttresses, and colonnades among Bryce Canyon National Park's series of natural amphitheaters. These hoodoos, colorful pinnacles and spires of all shapes and sizes, are comprised of soft sedimentary rock and topped by harder stone that erodes less easily, which protects the columns from the elements.

On the Navajo Trail, which begins at Sunset Point, you will see Thor's Hammer, one of the most most-photographed hoodoos along Bryce Canyon hiking trails. After meandering past Thor's Hammer, you will descend a series of switchbacks into Wall Street, a narrow canyon named for the locale of the same name in New York. The Navajo Trail connects to the Peek-a-boo Loop Trail, which leads through the main amphitheater up to Bryce Point, one of the most breathtaking top-down views of Bryce Canyon's main amphitheater. The Navajo Trail forms a loop with the Queen's Garden Trail, whose main attraction is Queen Victoria, which resembles many of the statues of Queen Victoria found in Europe. If your hiking trip includes the Navajo Trail/Queen's Garden Trail loop, you will end your hike at Sunrise Point, which, as its name implies, is an excellent place to view the rising sun. From Sunrise Point, you can walk the paved portion of the Rim Trail, taking in panoramic vistas of the Bryce Amphitheater's hoodoos, to Sunset Point to form a complete loop.

Hiking trips to Bryce Canyon National Park are not just a spectacle of natural rock formations, but also a showcase of biodiversity. Sitting atop the Paunsaugunt Plateau, Bryce Canyon encompasses 2,000 feet worth of elevation covering three distinct climatic zones, spruce and fir forests at its highest reaches, Ponderosa Pine forests in the middle portions and pinion pine and juniper forests in its lower climes. In Bryce Canyon, you will find more than 1,000 plant species, over 100 species of birds and dozens of mammals.