Zebra Slot Canyon Guide

Zebra Slot Canyon is a short slot canyon in Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Noted for the stripes in its sandstone, it’s located about 10.0 mi / 16.1 km SE from the town of Escalante off of Hole-in-the-Rock Road. Access is an easy hike from the trailhead.

Essential Facts

• Distance: 5.0 mi / 8.0 km
• Elevation: ~200 ft / 61 m
• Difficulty: easy, but be careful with wayfinding
• Time: ~3 hours

Why Go

It’s a pretty slot with an easy hike — perfect for folks starting out exploring slot canyons.

When To Go

Fall or spring. In the summer there’s a chance of flash floods and that hike is going to be hot. Winter can be cold and have very cold water in the slot.

It can get crowded, so go early.

Map & Route

Getting to Zebra Slot Canyon

• Trailhead: (view in Google Maps)
• Parking: It’s just a large dirt area, so plenty of cars could fit somehow.
• Fees: No
• Bathrooms: No
• Road: Hole-in-the-Rock Road isn’t difficult, but it’s has washboards and ruts. Don’t expect to go fast. If it’s rained, drive a 4WD or wait a day or two for the mud to dry out.

Details

Slot Canyon Info

For all the quiet beauty you can find in slot canyons, these things can be serious business. So there’s a few things you should know before entering.

Flash Flood Danger. People die in slot canyons. If a storm drops rain — maybe miles away — and it goes through the slot, do not count on surviving. These canyons are very, very narrow and it doesn’t take a lot of flash flood water to fill them up. So before going, check the forecast. Before entering, check the sky. And go in the spring or fall when the chance of storms are lower.

Wayfinding. Once you’re in the slot, there’s not many choices. But on the hike to get there you can get lost. It’s easy to get turned-around in canyon country because the landscape inside canyons can look all the same. Bring a map and a navigation device or app.

Cold Water, Deep Water. Any slot can have standing water in it, and that water will be cold. So be prepared to take off your boots. Maybe bring neoprene socks. The water in the easier slots probably won’t be very deep, but always go slowly and feel your way through.

Bring Water. You don’t want to have to drink that old, nasty slot canyon water if something goes wrong. And Utah’s probably drier than you expect. Always bring along water. And not one of those half-liter bottles, make it at least one or two full liters for a half day and four liters for a full day.

Free Gear? No, that hiking equipment at the start of the slot canyon means that someone’s already there. It’s a tight fit in there and no room to pass. You probably don’t know them, so just hang back and give them their space until they’re out.

It’s a pretty straightforward hike to get to Zebra Slot. From the trailhead cross the road and follow the well-marked path which leads you into Halfway Hollow, a tributary of Harris Wash. Soon the path ends and you’ll just be walking mostly in the sandy bottom of the canyon. When you come to the main part of Harris Wash, go left and continue for just 0.1 mi / 0.2 km. Then bear right into the Zebra Slot Canyon drainage. The canyon will narrow and lead you to the slot.

Trip Report & Photos

We were on our way down Hole-in-the-Rock Road to find a campsite and hike Coyote Gulch the next day. So after a picnic lunch at nearby Devils Garden, we stopped here before continuing south. Since we’d done Spooky and Peek-a-Book Slot Canyons previously, the next one up was Zebra slot canyon.

The first part was the usual canyon country hike. The overland trail dropped us eventually into Halfway Hollowwhich led us to Harris Wash. And the cairns lead us to an unassuming end of a side canyon.

But as we went forward, the walls closed in and revealed the most beautiful patterns in the sandstone.

Throughout the Escalante area you can find Moqui marbles, small balls of a black-brown combination of sandstone and iron oxide. The word Moqui, or Moki, is the old Spanish term for the Hopi tribe. These round stones were formed when iron precipitated from groundwater flowing through the sandstone. You can usually find these iron concretions in the wash bottoms throughout the region. But in Zebra slot, you can see them still within the sandstone. The Utah Geological Survey has more info on Moqui marbles.

The slot is only around 300 ft / 91 m long, but it’s one of the prettiest.

We spent about 30 minutes inside exploring the slot. And soon it was time to get on our way, so we retraced our steps back to the car and kept on or way down Hole-in-the-Rock Road

Hiked on 29 Sep 2008