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Bryce Canyon National Park |
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The surface of the earth can hold few weirder-looking spots than BRYCE CANYON . Named for Mormon settler Ebenezer Bryce, who memorably declared that it was "a helluva place to lose a cow," it is not in fact a canyon at all. Along a twenty-mile shelf on the eastern edge of the thickly forested Paunsaugunt Plateau , 8000ft above sea level, successive strata of dazzlingly colored rock - yellows, reds, whites and flaming oranges - have slipped and slid and washed away to leave a menagerie of multihued and contorted stone shapes . Like Cedar Breaks, the formations here have been eroded out of the muddy sandstone by a combination of icy winters (the temperature drops below freezing 200 nights out of the year) and summer rainstorms. The racks of top-heavy pinnacles known as " hoodoos " were formed when the harder upper layers of rock stayed firm as the lower levels were worn away beneath them. These hoodoos - Thor's Hammer , visible from Sunset Point, is the most alarmingly precarious - look down into technicolor ravines, all far more vivid than the Grand Canyon and much more human in scale. The whole place is at its most inspiring in winter, when the figures stand out from a blanket of snow. The park approach road runs south from Hwy-12 about twenty miles east of Panguitch. Between October and mid-June, the entrance fee to Bryce is $10 per vehicle, valid for a week. In summer, things get more complicated. Motorists have the choice of either paying $20 to take their own vehicles into the park, or parking at the highway junction and paying $15 to ride a shuttle bus system. The Blue bus line carries you as far as the visitor center, four miles in (April-Oct daily 8am-8pm; Nov-March daily 8am-4.30pm; tel 435/834-5322, ), from where the Red bus ferries you another couple of miles south to Bryce Amphitheater. If that's as far as you want to go - and for most people, even keen hikers, it's entirely sufficient - then there's no reason to use your own car. If you want to get as far as Rainbow Point, however, the Green bus to the end of the road runs only twice a day at most, so using your own car is preferable. Of the succession of scenic overlooks into Bryce Amphitheater , at the heart of the park, the two most popular are on either side of Bryce Canyon Lodge : the more northerly, Sunrise Point , is 350yd from the parking lot and so is slightly less crowded than Sunset Point , where most of the bus tours stop. A network of hiking trails also drop abruptly from the rim down into the amphitheater - bear in mind that you'll have to walk back up the same distance that you go down. One good three-mile trek switchbacks steeply from Sunset Point through the cool 200ft canyons of Wall Street , where a pair of 800-year-old fir trees stretch to reach daylight. It then cuts across the surreal landscape into the basin known as the Queen's Garden , where the stout and remarkable likeness of Queen Victoria sits in majestic condescension - pointed out by a brass plaque - before climbing back up to the rim at Sunrise Point. A dozen trails crisscross the amphitheater, but it's surprisingly easy to get lost, so don't stray from the marked routes. Sunrise and Sunset points notwithstanding, the best view at both sunset and dawn (which is the best time for taking pictures) is from Bryce Point , at the southern end of the amphitheater. From here, you can look down not only at the Bryce Canyon formations but also take in the grand sweep of the whole region, east to the Henry Mountains and north to the Escalante range. The park road then climbs another twenty miles south, by way of the intensely colored Natural Bridge , an 85ft rock arch spanning a steep gully, en route to its dead end at Rainbow Point .
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Bryce Canyon 