Spring 2025 Utah, 4.16.25 - 5.14.25, Part 7, Natural Bridges National Monument
As much as we loved Capitol Reef National Park, after eight days there we were ready to move on to our next adventure. On May 1st, we left Fruita and drove east on US 24 to Hanksville. We’ve been to Hanksville several times but had never driven south on US 95. I was very excited to do this drive as a couple of people had told me of its scenic value. The first stretch was fairly featureless, although it was cool driving down past the Henry Mountains. After a bit, we began to drop into a canyon and things ramped up tenfold. As the red walls closed up we drove past a series of beautiful slot canyons known as the Irish slots due to their names. We would be coming back to explore one of these later in the following week. The Irish slots were just the beginning of miles of stunning scenery. As the canyon (I think it is called North Wash) spilled into the Colorado River, we now had views near and far. The road curved around and crossed the Dirty Devil River which feeds into the Colorado. This area in particular was chock full of slickrock side canyons and just begged to be explored further. Put it on the list! Next we came to the Colorado River and crossed on the beautiful Hite bridge. Passing several landmarks such as Jacob’s Chair and The Cheesebox, we turned onto 275 which led us to Natural Bridges National Monument. We had never been here before and for that matter everything over the next three days would be a brand new experience for us. I had reserved a campsite in the small park campground. It’s a really nice campground situated amongst juniper and pinyon pine at 6,500’. It very much reminded us of the campground in Colorado National Monument outside Grand Junction, Colorado.
Natural Bridges is not a large park and for the most part can be seen in a day or two. It is located in southeastern Utah only fifty miles from Four Corners. It is adjacent to the Bears Ears National Monument, although while Natural Bridges is managed by the National Park Service, the Bears Ears are managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Bears Ears National Monument has been the victim of recent political battles so it has fluctuated in size during the last four presidential terms. There are plenty of back roads around the park so you could easily extend that several more days and drive some of these roads to great vistas and lots of ancestral Puebloan ruins.
We arrived fairly early so once we had the Navibahn situated we took the Jeep to go see the park. The general layout of Natural Bridges is an eight mile loop road. It drives past trailheads for three main natural bridges. There are trails at each of these bridges to get up close and personal with them or you can hike a a twelve mile full loop trail that goes to all three bridges and more. We were splitting up our time so we decided to see the bridges individually. Our first stop was at the Sipapu Bridge Trailhead. This is the largest of the three bridges with a height of 220’ and a span of 268’. It’s huge! The trail to get down underneath the bridge is only 1.4 miles round trip and you descend 436’ on a steep trail that includes several ladders. We both loved the trail. It was easy but had spunk. About halfway down, a short shelf led to a great full on view of the bridge. We hiked to the bottom, took some photos and then worked our way back up.
Looking down into White Canyon from the top of the Sipapu Bridge trail
Bridgit descending one of the death-defying ladders on the trail to Sipapu Bridge
Sipapu Bridge
Sipapu Bridge
Are we having fun yet?
Can you spot Bridgit on the ladder? Gives a sense of scale.
Underneath Sipapu Bridge
Sun peeking out from Sipapu Bridge
Once we got back to the Jeep we continued on the loop drive to a 1.2 mile round trip hike to an overlook of Horse Collar Ruin.
Horse Collar Ruin
Horse Collar Ruin
Horse Collar Ruin
Next up was Owachomo Bridge. This was a very majestic bridge with a long flat top. It is 106’ high and has a span of 180’ which is pretty amazing considering it is only nine feet thick at its thinnest point.
Majestic Owachomo Bridge
Below Owachomo Bridge with Bridgit for scale
As we continued around the loop drive, we passed on Kachina Bridge. It is a similar hike to Sipapu Bridge and I had the impression it was the least impressive of the three bridges so we just drove around back to our site and started packing the Jeep for another jamping excursion that would start the next day.