Land of the Hoodoos: Bryce Canyon

A place for contemplation

We’d hiked the Grand Canyon, and marveled.  We’d clamored over Zion’s red sandstone, and were amazed (and scared).  What could beat that?

Fascinated by Fairyland

Hoodoos.  Hoodoos could beat that. 

What are hoodoos, and where did they come from?

We drove into Bryce Canyon as it was beginning to snow.  SNOW???  We’d just been slathering on sunscreen so as not to burn up.  But Bryce Canyon (not really a canyon, but a cliff structure known as an amphitheater) is another 3000 feet above Zion’s river basin, and suddenly it was cold again at 7700 feet of altitude.

Window arch to the Escalante Grand Staircase

Dramatic formations

We got there in the evening, with the snow sputtering on and off.   We had just enough light to walk from Sunset to Sunrise point—and there were the hoodoos.  Thousands of them, all silently looking down into the canyon, in pinks and reds and beiges, a whole city of them.

Hoodoo city

The Paiute legend says that there was a city here once.  The people started behaving badly, and Coyote was very unhappy.  To teach them a lesson, he changed them all to stone, whatever they were doing—walking, standing, talking, sitting.  The stone city remains.

Hoodoos as far as the eye can see

Hoodoo is a perfect name for these rock formations.  The origin of the name varies, but most agree that it comes from a word that means something like “scary.”  And they are certainly mysterious, their forms appearing around the bends of trails winding through the various amphitheaters of this ancient fault-and cliff-line. 

Hoodoos watching over you

A hoodoo is a spire or pinnacle that is topped by a harder stone.  Formed not from water erosion but more a combination of freezing and thawing, the softer stone underneath the capstone layer cracks and layers, first into fins, then hoodoos, then spires, and finally succumbing to complete collapse. 

Hoodoos before a storm

The landscape is quite active; every year some hoodoos collapse, and others are formed, in the thousands that lurk in these magical places.

Hoodoos on the upslope

With rain threatening to pour down out of a dark sky, my family turned back to the RV, while I continued on a trail through a part of the hoodoos dubbed “Fairyland.” 

Splitting up--they turned back, I went on the 6-mile hike

The magic is impossible to capture in pictures, although I tried.  I stopped and gaped around just about every turn at the impossibly beautiful colors and formations.  The sky blackened and threatened to destroy my iPhone, but the rain held off until I pulled into the RV campground on my bike.

The winding Fairyland trail

The next day we drove to Rainbow Point, where we walked through lingering snow to see the 1500-year-old Bristlecone pines.  It snowed through the sunshine intermittently, and the 9000-foot elevation felt brisk.  I was sorry we didn’t have time to walk the Under The Rim trail to see the hoodoos from a different vantage point.  But—the leitmotif of our trip—we had to move on.

A Bristlecone Pine barely hangs on--for centuries!

The amphitheater is full of stone people

On our way north to Arches and Canyonlands we drove through Capitol Reef National Park, a beautiful 100-mile-long waterpocket fold whose name derives from a huge sandstone formation resembling the nation’s capitol building, and the “reefs” or barriers encountered by early settlers which were created by this split-valley formation.  

It sorta does look like the Capitol Building, in a sandstone kind of way

Driving into the campground, only to find no vacancy

We again didn’t have enough time to enjoy the beautiful fruit orchards and cottonwood shade of the valley settled by Mormon homesteaders of early last century, and we drove past the huge formations, auto-touring the park.  We had to move on.  The last two big parks, Arches and Canyonlands, were calling to us. 

Bye bye, Capitol Reef  We'll have to plan better next time!