We were disappointed by the road closure in Bryce Canyon National Park which made the south end of the park, beyond Farview Point, inaccessible. Originally all of the hiking we had planned to do was in this section. The hikes that we ended up doing were right in the main canyon (Bryce Canyon) area instead.

We had never done the Fairyland Loop hike before and this turned out to be very nice. The trails in the main canyon tend to get pretty crowded during the day but we avoided much of this by starting early. We saw maybe a dozen people on the trail during the day and most of those were during the hike out. The trails in Bryce are much clearer and easy to follow than those in Zion or Grand Canyon and the altitude change is considerably less as well. This makes hiking there very easy and much more like a walk in the park than a hiking trip. The only really difficult part is the hike out from the canyon floor back up to the rim but even this is nothing compared to Zion and Grand Canyon, maybe a 400-500 foot climb. Before you know it it's over.

We started the Fairyland Loop at Fairyland Point and did the loop in the clockwise direction. The trail descended to the floor of Fairyland Canyon at a very moderate pace. Boat Mesa, to our south rose higher and higher as we descended and this was to be the most dominant feature throughout the hike. The lower we got in the canyon the more bizarre the rock formations became. Just before we reached the bottom of Fairyland Canyon the trail began to climb again and then altered its course to head more or less to the south west, around Boat Mesa. There were lots of ups and downs in this section as the trail crossed drainages coming down off of the mesa. At the end of all this the trail descends to the floor of Campbell Creek from where you can pick up the side trail that leads to Tower Bridge.

Beyond Tower Bridge the trail climbs out on the other side of Campbell Canyon and heads past the Chinese Wall. I still don't know why it's named this. Beyond the Chinese Wall it climbs along a ridge line back out to the rim. The trip to this point is about 5 miles and it's still another 3 miles north along the rim to get back to Fairyland Point.

Queens Garden, Peek-A-Boo Loop, Navajo Loop

We had done most of these trails on past trips to Bryce but this time linked them all together for a really long hike.

We descended from Sunrise Point along the Queen's Garden trail, so named for the feature near the bottom which is named after Queen Victoria. This is not a loop trail and if it is all you want to do you have to climb back out the way you came in. You can also link up with the Navajo Loop trail and come out via either of its two routes to Sunset Point, 1 mile away from where you started. The Navajo Loop also links up with the Peek-A-Boo Loop trail, which is the route we took.

The Peek-A-Boo Loop trail is so named because many of the formations along which the route passes contain holes, or bridges, or arches. It is a very nice trail but is constantly going up and down and hence involves more climbing than the other trails in the main canyon area. At the other end of the Peek-A-Boo Loop you can normally access the trail to Bryce Point and exit that way or you can return along the other route in the Peek-A-Boo Loop, which will return you to the Navajo Loop. Since the trail to Bryce Point was closed when we were there (due to construction) we had to do the full loop.

When we finally returned to the Navajo Loop we opted to ascend along the southern route. This route is slightly longer than the northern route but is a more gradual climb and much more scenic. I would estimate hiking distances along this hike at about 2.5 miles for the Queen's Garden section, 5.5 miles for the Peek-A-Boo Loop section, and 1 mile for the ascent on the Navajo Loop. Allowing maybe another mile or so to account for some of the linkages between the trails it was probably about 10 miles in total.