I will always provide a free route map, but you can also download a hike/drive GPX to assist you and to help support my site. Before sharing my GPX tracks with others, please remember my site is a free resource and I'm charging nominal fees to offset my substantial costs.
GPX track added to your cart.
Oct 03, 2017 — Snow Canyon State Park can easily be overlooked because of its proximity to Zion National Park, but it's a great little pocket of sandstone glory near Saint George UT. There is a popular scenic drive running through the canyon, as well as a web of marked trails. While this hike utilizes sections these trails to form a loop, its majority is an off-trail outing that wraps around much of Snow Canyon's perimeter, tacking on a couple of summits and some fun scrambling. The highlight of this hike is the slickrock wonderland located a mile or so south of Snow Benchmark, and if you're looking to just reach that section you are likely better off starting at the Red Mountain Trailhead to the north of Snow Canyon and using that maintained trail and thereby cutting off significant effort, but we were interested in seeing as much of the rim as we could. We hiked this loop counter-clockwise, but I'd highly recommend doing it in the opposite direction for a couple of reasons. First, our descent ridge is the most difficult part of the hike and probably should be done first rather than at the end of the day, and second, it would be much more fun scrambling as an ascent. Below describes the route how we did it, though. I'll also note that the photos below toggle between the two times I did this hike, the first with Mike in 2017, and the second with Amanda in 2023 where I snapped more photos to make the trip report more cohesive.
After paying the entrance fee to enter Snow Canyon State Park, you could start at one of many trailheads along the scenic drive since this loop passes a handful of them. We chose the Upper Galoot Trailhead because there's a pit toilet. We thought we were being sneaky by parking at one of the pull-offs along UT-18 in order to skip paying, but there are signs saying a fee is required everywhere. Happy to have a Snow Canyon State Park official map brochure with us because of the complex and segmented trails, we left our trailhead and took the Petrified Dunes Trail to the Butterfly Trail. This continued to the Lava Flow and then Whiterocks Trails. Along the way the views toward the rim we'd be on later in the day are really gorgeous. The red and orange sandstone cliffs tower above and the slickrock that has been lovingly named "petrified dunes" serve as a nice foreground. Ancient lava flows mix into the landscape, its black color serving as a neat contrast.
The sandy trail system led us up to the Whiterocks Amphitheater, a whitewashed natual slickrock bowl. The official trail ended here, so we scrambled north up a sandy slope to a short Class 3 set of moves to gain higher ground. It's a pretty straightforward slope with multiple route options. A few hundred feet of Class 2/3 on chunky sandstone led to a false summit, and a short walk along a pretty ridge led to our first minor summit, White Rock Peak. Heading north, we continued along the rim and its various minor obstacles to unnamed Peak 5024. While still beautiful, the terrain was a bit brushy and there was a fair amount of cryptobiotic soil we had to avoid stepping on as we continued north from Peak 5024. The lumpy landscape left the rim for a short time, so we hurried though this less-interesting section. Along the way we passed a spectacular gash in the side of Snow Canyon that drops abruptly, a really fantastic thing to stumble upon. Shortly after, we found a horse trail that led us casually north and up to a junction with the Red Mountain Trail.
On my attached map you can see two purple lines, short sections of the Red Mountain Trail that makes the hike easier. On my first time doing this loop, we kept to the rim using animal trails and light bushwhacking and th views were outstanding. On a second visit, we stayed on the trail as much as possible. The experience along the rim was definitely superior. In either case, if you're looking to summit Snow Benchmark, at a certain point leaving the trail is necessary for a short time. A short detour led up an unremarkable shrubby slope to the summit. It's not a memorable peak, but the views into Snow Canyon in the distance are nice. We backtracked to the Red Mountain Trail, following it only briefly since it actually leads away from the most amazing scenery of the hike. Seemed like a pretty poor oversight to us.
Leaving the Red Mountain Trail, we headed south through sandy terrain with a mixture of slickrock until reaching the west rim of Snow Canyon. Holy moly, were we surprised. I recommend following the rim as closely as you can at this point, enjoying the bright slickrock and incredible sheer face of the west rim. We spent some time frolicking, including to a wonderful overlook on a protruding section of the rim. Continuing south, the slickrock faded away. You might want to head west and pick up the Red Mountain Trail for a bit, but we decided to just rough it through sandy and lumpy terrain with obstacles like small sand dunes and minor drainages. We were happy with the slightly annoyances when we ultimately reached more slickrock and gorgeous views.
As we neared the southern part of our route and would need to start searching for our descent ridge, the terrain became a bit more tricky. We hiked around sand dunes and up red slickrock slopes, then wrapped around the west side of a large and obvious lump at around 5000'. We looked down into a minor slickrock bowl and followed a minor ridge until we located a short, Class 2 slope to descend into it. Various small cliffs formed by chasms in the sandstone meant a bit of route-finding to navigate through the beautiful bright slickrock. Our chosen descent ridge didn't seem obvious until we were basically directly next to it since it blends into the surrounding steep terrain. The slickrock bowl cliffs out shortly, so we traversed over to the descent ridge and scrambled up to it. Once along the ridge, we just followed its crest all the way down. A few easy Class 3 moves along the way were the only tricky obstacles, but the vast majority of it included some variety of Class 2. It's a pretty incredible descent, even considering the sheer drops we had been seeing all day. Definitely be careful here, since many of the large sandstone chunks pop off easily. I was reminded that any scrambling is no joke when I stepped on a human-sized rock that rolled me in front of it and had me sliding down the ridge before I got out of its way just in time. Seriously terrifying.
After we reached the bottom of the ridge, we picked up the sandy wash that led southeast, the Red Sands Trail. We took the Red Sands Trail to the Petrified Dunes Trail to get back to the car.
Please consider helping me out if you find my site useful. I'm not sponsored, so all site fees are out-of-pocket and my time preparing these trip reports is unpaid. You can also hire me as a web developer. I really appreciate it!
If you find my site helpful, please help me replace my many broken cameras, fund my website fees (hosting, APIs, security), or just support my countless hours of work. I pay for all expenses myself, and all trip reports I post are unpaid and unsponsored, so any support is really appreciated!
If using PayPal, please select their option for "Sending to a friend" so they don't take out fees, thank you.
My site is free to use, but consider sending me a few bucks to help keep it running. Thanks in advance!