This trail is near the West entrance of Capitol Reef. The parking lot is tiny and the trail is well-traveled. We hiked this trail on a chilly day (around 50 degrees) and the wind was blowing rather hard at the top of the butte. The trail is considered strenuous and that’s because the climb is all front-loaded. You’ll climb and climb, then when you finally get to the top, you’ll follow the trail into a loop until it meets up at a split and goes back down.
As you can see a wide trail leads from the parking lot to the start of a staircase.
This is the split-off sign. We followed it to the right.
We finally made it to the top and stopped to catch our breath.
From the top you can see where the trail continues forever.
The last image in this sequence is where the wind picked up. Fortunately, it was blowing toward the butte, otherwise, it would have been difficult to hold on.
The wind was blowing so hard that I had to take off my hat.
Eventually, you run into a sign. This is where you can go into the canyon and walk down the wash. It’s a downward slope for over 8 miles until it runs into the road again. We walked about 3.5 miles into the canyon and returned. The next set of photos shows the canyon. After that, it’s back on the loop trail.
As you can see there is a little bit of rock scrambling. Most of the hike is gravel or sand.
After we exited the canyon, we hopped back on the loop and continued until we ran into the sign where we had split off earlier. After that, it’s all downhill to the parking lot.
