Coyote Gulch Day Hike

Coyote Gulch flows through the heart of the canyons of the Escalante in south-central Utah. Within its walls you’ll find a year-round stream, three huge arches, a natural bridge, and many waterfalls. It’s one of the more accessible canyons off the Escalante River, with four trailheads off of Hole-in-the-Rock Road, and it’s located within the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. A Coyote Gulch day hike can show you all the features of this shining gem in the canyons of Utah.

This guide primarily describes hiking Coyote Gulch in one day, not a backpack. As a day hike you won’t be able to have the leisurely pace of a backpacker, but you will see all the big geological sights, spend a whole day within the stunning canyon walls, and be able to be back in town for the night.

Why Go to Coyote Gulch

This really is one of the premiere canyon experiences in the US. It’s not huge like the Grand Canyon, or crazy dramatic like The Narrows in Zion, or steeped in history like Grand Gulch. But Coyote Gulch feels intimate enough for you to have a connection to it. It’s interesting enough — with features like arches & a natural bridge — that you’ll keep trying to peek beyond the next bend to anticipate your next new discovery. And all of this is enhanced by the always-flowing stream, which gives you lush greenery, waterfalls, and the actual hiking trail you follow. Although the trailheads sit relatively close to the canyon, this area still remains wild and remote.

Coyote Gulch Day Hike

If you’re short for time or simply don’t want to backpack, you can hike through the main sights of Coyote Gulch on a day hike. Neither way is easy, so make sure you’re in shape and are comfortable with desert hiking. Bring a map and a navigation app or device (you can find a gpx file below). The trails are cairned, but the desert is no place to rely on luck. There’s two trailheads from which you can see it all on a (long) day:

Fortymile Ridge: Crack-in-the-Wall TH

• Activity: Day Hike: Out-and-Back to Jacob Hamblin Arch
• Distance: 16.1 mi / 25.9 km
• Elevation: 925 ft / 282 m
• Difficulty: hard because of the distance, but not technical
• Time: 10 hours

This is the route we took so there’s plenty more information in the trip report below. This trailhead is also known as the generic-sounding Coyote Gulch Access Point and Fortymile Ridge TH. Read below for more details.

Fortymile Ridge: Water Tank TH

• Activity: Day Hike: Out-and-Back to the Escalante River
• Distance: 16.2 mi / 26.1 km
• Elevation: 1,100 ft / 335 m
• Difficulty: hard because of the distance, and a class 5 friction climb
• Time: ~10 hours

This route requires 150 ft / 46 m of class 5 friction climbing so you’ll need a rope. But it does not require 4WD vehicle as the deep sand is further down the road. The route from this trailhead has a number of names: Water Tank Trail, Moki Stairs, & Sneaker Route. This is also know as the Jacob Hamblin Arch trailhead. You can find out more details from trip reports from this route here, here, & here.

Coyote Gulch Overnight Backpack

You can also explore Coyote Gulch by an overnight backpack. We didn’t do this, so I’ll include only some general information.

Two trailheads that you can use for backpacking are both are off of Hole-in-the-Rock Road: Red Well TH which requires a 4WD because of sand (view in Google maps) and Hurricane Wash TH which doesn’t (view in Google maps). Another one, Chimney Rock TH (view in Google Maps), is down a longer road and also requires a 4WD because of sand.

You’re going to need a few things to backpack:

• Permit – they’re free, but you need one. Stop by the Escalante Interagency Visitor Center (view in Google Maps) in Escalante and pick one up.
• WAG bag for poop – a ranger will give you one when you pick up your permit.
• that whole backpacking setup

When To Go

Spring & fall, the canyon country usual. Although Coyote Gulch is not a slot canyon, you’ll still have to be aware of the risk of flash flooding. The potential heavy rain & thunderstorms in the summer makes it, maybe, the season to avoid. Always check weather conditions before starting out. And that water is going to be very cold in the winter, so neoprene socks would be a must if you go then.

Map & Route from Crack-in-the-Wall TH

Getting There

• Trailhead: Fortymile Ridge: Crack-in-the-Wall (view in Google Maps)
• Parking: maybe a dozen cars
• Fees: no
• Permits: day hike – no, overnight – yes
• Bathrooms: none
• Road: 4WD vehicle required because there’s deep sand in the last two miles of the road. If you’re driving the entire Hole-in-the-Wall Road in the morning before your hike, get an early start — like dark o’clock early. It will take you longer than you expect.

Details

Footwear: For the out-and-back to Jacob Hamblin Arch from Crack-in-the-Wall TH you’ll encounter dry sand and ankle-deep water. So your footwear will need to accommodate that. You could do a boot-sandal combination, wearing the boots until the creek then switch to sandals, or just sandals. We wore sandals only.

Water: Since there’s both a stream and seeps, you can bring a filter and top up your water supply inside the canyon.

What can’t you do?:

• Bring a furry friend – no dogs or llamas (or other pack animals)
• Leave you poop — no poo left behind, bring a WAG bag
• Warn yourself by the fire – no campfires

Backpack or day hike: After our day hike, I personally didn’t feel like we missed a whole lot by not backpacking. We hit all the sights. What we missed, of course, is the slower pace and the whole nighttime experience. So it really up to what your personal priorities are as to which way is best for you.

Trip Report & Photos

No one makes good time driving on Hole-in-the-Rock Road. It’s really not in bad shape for a dirt & gravel backcountry road — you could drive most of it in a 2WD. But the trailhead for this hike, Crack-in-the-Wall, is a hair under 50.0 mi / 80.5 km from the nearest town of Escalante. And the road’s ruts and washboards prevent you from any speed. So we drove down the day before, hitting Zebra Slot Canyon on our way in before camping nearby to get an early start. We had great sunset views of a distant storm.

The morning light & shadows showed off both the Straight Cliffs and the petrified sand dunes of the Navajo sandstone in spectacular fashion. Plentiful cairns marked the route over the sandstone.

Once we got to the edge of the canyon we could see all the way down to the Escalante. From above, Stevens Arch just had more sandstone behind it and we couldn’t spot it. Further down the sky came into the opening and we could finally see where it was — hiding in plain sight all the time.

The Crack-in-the-Wall lives up to its name — a space between two large sandstone walls barely wide enough for a person to pass. We carried our daypacks through but if you had a backpack, a 10 ft / 3 m length of rope would help you lift your pack around the narrow bit.

After the Crack-in-the-Wall the canyon really opened up and you could see into both the Escalante and the Coyote Gulch canyons. We went down the 700 ft / 213 m slope of sand and stayed to the left of a large thumb-like monument.

Reaching the canyon bottom, the feel of the hike took on an entirely different tone. Above we walked through a harsh, dry, shadeless, and hard desert world with shades of brown and red. The green world we found at the bottom, however, was lush, shady, soft, and watery. Coyote Gulch is unique among the Utah canyons that we’ve explored because it has water in it all the time.

Much if not most of the route inside Coyote Gulch is the creek itself, so that’s where we walked. Worn paths would take you around the many waterfalls, but no single proper trail leads you upstream.

At 1.8 mi / 2.9 km from getting to the bottom of the gulch, Cliff Arch comes into view with its enormous span springing up from the canyon floor like a giant flying buttress to hold up the surrounding wall.

Next we encountered Coyote Gulch Natural Bridge at 4.0 mi / 6.4 km from getting into the creek. And an encounter it is! Both the creek and hikers pass right through it.

And finally at 5.6 mi / 9.0 km from where we entered the bottom of Coyote Gulch, we found the stout Jacob Hamblin Arch.

Back when we hiked this, there wasn’t a lot of information about this area. I’d read that here at Jacob Hamblin Arch there was a route to climb out. We searched for what we were hoping to be a shortcut back up to make it a loop, but nope. (It’s totally doable if you come down this way and leave a rope for the return, btw.) But I planned for this possibility, which is why I built in enough time for an out-and-back. So we took a deep breath and started following our previous steps to experience the canyon in reverse.

It was all great a second time, too — with one exception. That 700 ft / 213 m slope of sand! The two-steps-forward-and-one-step-back you get with climbing sand made for a tedious exit from the canyon.

We returned to the car and drove back out Hole-in-the-Rock Road, taking our time as the sun lowered to the Strait Cliffs in the west.

We made it back in our room in Boulder Mountain Lodge soon after dark.

Although it was a long day — 10 hours — we got to see some of the most important and impressive sights within the canyons of the Escalante. If you can’t backpack, or just don’t want to, a Coyote Gulch day hike delivers a big experience for a big effort.

Photos from 28 Sept 2008