Bryce Canyon scenic drive: Rainbow Point to Sunrise Point

Welcome to the Bryce Canyon scenic drive. We're starting at the far end, Rainbow Point, at over nine thousand feet, and working our way back north. The park suggests it this way, so every overlook is on your right.

I'll tell you a story as you drive to each overlook, and another when you get there. Between them, enjoy the forest. Over this drive you'll drop about a thousand feet, through three different forests.

This is Rainbow Point, at nine thousand one hundred and fifteen feet, one of the two highest viewpoints in the park. Over about twenty million years, this land was lifted from near sea level to where you stand. The south end of the park sits about a thousand feet higher than the north.

Look out across the Paria valley at the Pink, Grey and White Cliffs. They're steps of the Grand Staircase, layers of rock stacked like stairs from here down to the Grand Canyon.

The short walk to Yovimpa Point leads to the Bristlecone Loop, where the park's oldest bristlecone pine is estimated at more than sixteen hundred years old. Its needles can last forty years. Up here, the trees think in centuries.

Black Birch Canyon is named for a tree that doesn't grow here. Black birch lives in the eastern United States. Early visitors probably mistook the pale trunks of quaking aspen for birch, and the name stuck.

The hoodoos below rise about a thousand feet above the forest floor. Across the valley is the Table Cliff Plateau, at around ten thousand feet. The step between here and there comes from the Paunsaugunt Fault, which has shifted the land by about two thousand feet.

A mislabeled canyon, a moving fault and a view that shows both. Not bad for a pullout.

Ponderosa Canyon is named for the ponderosa pines on the canyon floor below, some more than a hundred and fifty feet tall. But look at the trees around the parking area. You're standing in a different forest: Engelmann spruce, Douglas fir and white fir.

That's elevation at work. Cooler, wetter air up here suits spruce and fir, while ponderosas prefer the lower, drier ground. Drive a few hundred feet up or down in this park and the whole forest changes.

On a clear day, look for Navajo Mountain, more than eighty miles away, and the Henry Mountains beyond it.

At Agua Canyon, look for two standouts. The taller one on the left is called the Hunter. The one on the right is called the Rabbit, or by some, the Backpacker.

The park used to name many more hoodoos. It stopped, because so many of them fell. Bryce changes faster than its names can keep up.

So say hello to the Hunter and the Rabbit while they're here. Some future visitor will see a gap and never know who stood in it.

This is Natural Bridge, the park's largest and most accessible arch. And arch is the right word. A true natural bridge is cut by running water, and no stream made this. It was opened by ice: water seeping into cracks under a harder cap layer, freezing, expanding and prying the rock apart, night after night.

The gully below now sits more than a hundred and twenty-five feet beneath it. Someday the span will collapse and leave two hoodoos standing on either side. That's the life story of nearly every formation in Bryce.

You're seeing this one in the middle of its life.

Farview Point. On a clear day, the views from here stretch for an astonishing distance. Bryce has some of the cleanest air in the country; it's protected as a Class One air area, and on the very best days visibility approaches two hundred miles.

Look south and east for Navajo Mountain, more than eighty miles away. It's sometimes called a volcano that never quite happened: molten rock pushed up from below and swelled the ground like a blister, then cooled before it ever broke the surface.

If you have a few minutes, the flat walk to Piracy Point is less than a fifth of a mile from here.

Swamp Canyon is about as close to a wetland as this country gets. Two small creeks and a spring keep it damp all year, and that water supports willows, wild iris and even tiger salamanders.

This is also where the landscape starts to change. To the south, you've seen cliffs and buttes. To the north, the true hoodoo amphitheater begins. The next few stops are the ones that made Bryce famous.

This is Bryce Point, with the whole amphitheater spread out below: the Silent City, the Wall of Windows and Boat Mesa. The town of Tropic sits nearly three thousand feet below.

The Southern Paiute knew this place long before anyone named it after a Mormon pioneer. In their tradition, Coyote turned the Legend People to stone, and here they stand, row on row.

The name on the map belongs to Ebenezer Bryce, who settled in the valley in the 1870s and built a road up to the plateau for timber. He's remembered for one line about the amphitheater: it's a hell of a place to lose a cow.

Inspiration Point looks straight into the Silent City: dense rows of hoodoo walls just south of Sunset Point.

Look closely at the rock. There are two layers. The lower, reddish Pink Member gets its color from iron. Above it, the purer White Member forms fewer hoodoos. Most of what you're looking at was carved from the pink layer by frost and rain over a very long time.

Try the upper level if you have the legs for it. The altitude makes every step count, but the view rewards it.

Sunset Point. Almost directly below is Thor's Hammer, the park's most famous hoodoo: a slim column with a block balanced on top. The rock is Claron limestone, laid down in a lake about fifty million years ago. Iron oxide gives it the reds and oranges, and manganese adds the pinks and purples.

This is also where the Two Bridges trail drops into the hoodoos, if you'd like to walk among them.

Sunrise Point, at eight thousand one hundred feet. It and Sunset Point were named to draw early lodge guests out at both ends of the day.

The lodge you passed was built by the Union Pacific Railroad and opened in 1925, after the railroad bought out Ruby Syrett's tent camp and lodge. Bryce became a national monument in 1923 and a national park in 1928. Private contractors finished the road you've just driven to Rainbow Point by 1934.

And don't leave without the night. Bryce is a Gold Tier International Dark Sky Park. On a moonless night you can see about seven thousand five hundred stars from up here. Thanks for driving with me.