Bryce Canyon: Several Trails Closed After a Weather Event
At Bryce Canyon, four trails including Wall Street and the Peekaboo Loop are closed until further notice after a recent bout of weather.
By Jocelyn Pion,
If you're planning a hike in Bryce Canyon, know that several of the park's headline trails are closed right now. A recent weather event left the ground unstable, and the park has shut off access to four routes until further notice. It's a safety call first and foremost. In a landscape of rock spires, soggy ground or falling rock can turn a walk into a real hazard in a hurry.
Here's what's affected. Wall Street, the narrow, much-photographed corridor that drops between two walls, is off limits. The famous Peekaboo Loop is closed too, along with the Bryce Connector Trail that usually gets you there. Rounding out the list is the Tropic Trail. In short, a good chunk of the most dramatic descents into the amphitheater is out of commission.
What should you do if your visit is coming up? First, don't count on these four routes for your day's plans. The park hasn't announced a reopening date, so treat the situation as fluid and check trail conditions the morning of, at the visitor center or on the information boards. These post-weather closures sometimes lift fast, sometimes not. It all comes down to the damage crews find on the trail.
The good news is that Bryce is a lot more than these descents. The viewpoints along the rim of the amphitheater are still your best way in when the lower trails are closed, and they already deliver the heart of the hoodoo panorama. To put together a solid backup plan and figure out which overlooks to hit first, lean on our Bryce Canyon park guide, which we keep up to date.
Finally, if Bryce is just one stop on a bigger Western trip, these closures are a chance to tweak your timing without upending everything. You can shift a hiking day to another site and come back later, an approach we lay out in our road trip itinerary that runs through the park.