Length: 11.73 miles
Elev. gain: 528 ft
The hike:
https://www.alltrails.com/explore/recording/buckskin-gulch-to-wire-pass-trail-afa299a
At approximately 15 miles long, Buckskin Gulch is one of the longest slot canyons in the world. It had been a long time wish of mine to hike at least part of it. I was finally able to do it on the second day of our three-day Utah trip.
I made the mistake, however, to start the hike from the wrong trailhead. Instead of the Wire Pass trailhead, which is the closest to Buckskin Gulch, I followed the wrong trail map and started from the Buckskin trailhead, which led us on a long and somewhat miserable hike.
The trail itself was flat. But it was all sand. Hiking in sand was extremely tiring, especially when it was hot. The temperature was in the 90s that day and there was practically no shade. To make things worse, I didn’t even bring water with me as I thought it was a short hike and didn’t realize it was going to be this hot (My sister did bring water and shared with me).
And then, we got lost. For some reason the GPS wasn’t very accurate in that area and somehow we couldn’t find the trail even though the map showed that we were right on the trail.
After going back and forth multiple times, we finally found it. But by the time we arrived at the canyon entrance, we were already very exhausted.
Finally, Buckskin Gulch!
After a short hike through Buckskin Gulch, we took the Wire Pass trail at the junction.
Wire Pass trail seemed to be more interesting, at least compared to the short section of the Buckskin Gulch trail that we hiked. Part of it was very narrow.
Since we were so exhausted, we decided not to go all the way to Wire Pass trailhead and turned around where the canyon opened up a little bit.
Back to the junction.
Once we got out of the canyon, we followed the long sandy trail back to the trailhead, regretting starting from the wrong trailhead all the way 😂.