Wall Street

Bryce is not a true canyon. The National Park Service and Wikipedia both describe a series of natural amphitheaters carved into the edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau by headward erosion. The largest, Bryce Amphitheater, is about 12 miles long, 3 miles wide and 800 feet deep. Its walls are the soft, pink and orange Claron Formation, which frost weathering and stream erosion have sculpted into hoodoos, freestanding spires that can reach roughly 200 feet. Vertical joints created when the plateau was uplifted eroded faster than the surrounding rock, which helps explain the dense forest of spires you look down on from the rim. The park itself was proclaimed a national monument on June 8, 1923, and became a national park on February 25, 1928. Rim elevations run roughly 8,000 to 9,000 feet, so even a short descent into the amphitheater is a real change of climate and light.

Local Paiute tradition explains the hoodoos in a story, retold in park materials, in which the trickster Coyote turned the wicked Legend People into stone. That is a legend, not geology, but it is part of how the place has been understood for generations. The canyon itself takes its name from Ebenezer Bryce, a Scottish immigrant sent by the Latter-day Saint church to settle the Paria Valley; he homesteaded below the amphitheater in 1874 and his family left for Arizona in 1880.

The NPS describes the Navajo Loop as a trail that begins and ends at Sunset Point and whose switchbacks pass between narrow walls of colorful limestone, with views of Douglas-fir trees and the hoodoo known as Thor's Hammer. The park lists the loop at 1.3 miles with an elevation change of about 550 feet on one NPS page and 515 feet of gain on another, a moderate hike of roughly one to two hours; other guides round it to 1.4 miles, so treat the figures as approximate. The typical grade is about 14 percent and the steepest pitch about 30 percent, and the park does not consider the trail accessible because of its natural terrain.

At the bottom of the switchbacks the walls close in and the trail straightens into the corridor nicknamed Wall Street, a reference to the canyons of lower Manhattan. The NPS describes the towering Douglas-fir trees along the loop; they rise to an impressive height from the cool, shady floor of the rift, so tall that they are often mistaken for ponderosa pines or even redwoods until you look at the cones on the ground. Tourism sources give their age as more than 750 years, but the NPS describes them only as centuries old, so that exact figure is best treated as an estimate.

Two Bridges, the other side of the loop, is open year-round, while the Wall Street side is closed in winter, tied to months when precipitation combines with freezing overnight temperatures. In summer the park recommends hiking the loop counter-clockwise. Check the NPS for current trail conditions, section closures and shuttle arrangements before you go. Pets are not allowed on the trail, though service animals are.

The loop can be linked with the Queen's Garden Trail for a 2.9-mile round trip, and the NPS also describes longer combinations with the Peekaboo Loop.

A private vehicle and driver with door-to-door pickup lets your group start at whatever pace suits it rather than building the day around a shuttle timetable. Wear sturdy shoes, bring water, and remember the climb back to the rim is the harder half. Check the NPS for current trail status, shuttle operations and any access restrictions.