I Escaped Zion’s Crushing Crowds at Red Cliffs, a Desert Dupe Just 45 Minutes Away
I just wanted one picture of my son without a sea of people in the background. We were hiking The Narrows in Zion National Park, a bucket-list adventure that has you wading for miles through knee-deep water in the belly of a canyon. It’s awesome. It’s also crowded. And getting a photo to commemorate the adventure without a bunch of strangers in it was proving to be difficult.
Crowds are simply a fact of life when it comes to visiting Zion, which has skyrocketed in popularity over the last 20 years, doubling its visitation rates from 2.5 million in 2005 to almost five million in 2025. That’s a lot of people to squeeze into Zion’s 146,597 acres, so you’re going to have company on your hike.
Fortunately, there’s an alternative nearby. Red Cliffs National Conservation Area is less than an hour west of Zion National Park with a desert landscape that’s just as stunning but only attracts a fraction of the crowds.
Red Cliffs National Conservation Area is about 45,000 acres, which is less than a third of the size of Zion. But the smaller size is a bonus here. Since you won’t have to navigate mandatory shuttles or shift your plans to avoid crowds, the compact size of the park allows you to knock out a variety of adventures in a short amount of time. And there is an amazing variety of adventures inside Red Cliffs, which is packed with sandstone cliffs, slot canyons, and miles of slickrock, all of which are traversed by more than 100 miles of developed trails. The area is managed by the Bureau of Land Management, so don’t expect visitor centers or rangers on hand. This is a raw desert landscape that’s set aside for you to explore on your own.
Once you get inside the conservation area, keep your eyes out for some unique wildlife, most notably Gila monsters and a rare species of desert tortoise. I spent two days exploring Red Cliffs with my son during a recent trip to southern Utah, and it made me want to go back for more.
Here’s a first-timer’s guide to exploring Red Cliffs National Conservation Area.
Hike Red Reef Trail
If you’re only going to do one trail in Red Cliffs, this is it. And I’m using the word “trail” loosely here. Sometimes called the Red Cliffs Nature Trail, Red Reef does in fact start out as a mild walk through a picnic area, but quickly gets interesting as it delivers you into the heart of a slot canyon. The three-mile out-and-back is more of a choose-your-own-adventure as you move across the sandy desert floor into a slickrock canyon that gets increasingly narrow as you move deeper into its belly. There’s some light scrambling involved, with one fixed rope that you’ll need to use to get around a small waterfall. And be prepared to get wet; there are a few pockets of deep water in the narrowest channels that were up to my chest. You can turn around if it gets too deep, though.
The rock outcroppings just outside of the canyon are also fun to scramble and explore after you’ve navigated to the end of the canyon. It’s an ideal slot canyon experience for first-time canyoners, and you’ll probably have it all to yourself once you climb past that first waterfall.
Mountain Bike the Church Rock and Dino Cliffs Loop
Moab is known as ground zero for slickrock, but the town doesn’t hold a monopoly on the grippy rock surface. This 7.5-mile loop is mostly slickrock with the occasional singletrack connector. The loop has steep climbs, the occasional sandy wash, and plenty of long-range views of the surrounding sandstone cliffs. Keep an eye out for prehistoric dinosaur tracks—along Dino Cliffs Trail you’ll find 17 well-preserved tracks left by meat-eating theropods during the Jurassic period.
Hike Snow Canyon
Snow Canyon State Park is its own pocket destination with 7,400 acres of cliffs, petrified dunes and black lava rock, located within the larger Red Cliffs Desert Reserve. The majority of the trails are short, making the park the perfect one-day adventure. You’re going to want to hit the Petrified Sand Dunes Trail, which traverses rolling humps of hardened sandstone. It’s a 1.2-mile out-and-back, but you can spend some time exploring this wild beach of petrified sand.
Just be sure you leave yourself enough time to explore the Lava Flow Trail, a one-mile out-and-back that traverses a black lava flow that cuts through the center of the park. You’ll get views of the surrounding tan cliffs as you hike, but the real joy of this trail is ducking into the three lava tubes, a couple of which you can scramble into and spend some time poking around beneath the surface of the desert floor (bring a headlamp).
Hike to Babylon Arch
Red Cliffs even has an arch. It’s not a particularly large arch—just 10 feet wide and eight feet tall—but it’s tucked into a beautiful expanse of sandstone outcroppings hovering above the Virgin River. Combine a series of trails from the Sand Cove trailhead for a 2.2-mile out-and-back that traverses sandy singletrack, slickrock, and a steep sand dune to reach the arch. There’s also a side trail that leads down to the Virgin River if you want to take a dip. Like most trails in Red Cliffs, it’s as much fun to explore the rock formations surrounding the path as it is to hike to the destination.
Get Way Out
Red Cliffs has portions of two federally designated Wilderness areas within its borders. The standout of the two is Red Mountain Wilderness, an 18,700-acre slice of desert that sits just north of Snow Canyon State Park. The Red Mountain Trail is a 12.8-mile out-and-back that traverses the wilderness with a trailhead that’s just off of Highway 18. No need to hike the full trail though; knock out the first 2.3 miles and you’ll climb from a sandy desert with sagebrush and pinyon pines into the sandstone outcroppings where Red Mountain Overlook delivers an amazing view of Snow Canyon and the St. George valley below.
Pitch a Tent
Red Cliffs has two campgrounds, the developed Red Cliffs Campground, which has 11 sites with shade structures that will put you within walking distance of the Red Reef Trail ($15 per night, reservations available six months in advance) and the tougher-to-reach Sand Cove Campground, a primitive, backcountry group campground with room for 20 people that’s only accessible by 4WD vehicle (free, but permit required).
If you camp at Sand Cove, you’ll have immediate access to the one-mile out-and-back Anasazi Valley Trail (or Tempi’po’op Trail), which leads to well-preserved ruins of the Puebloans that once called this area home.
Logistics
Entrance Fee: $5 daily fee per car
Beer: The town of St. George is just 15 minutes away so post-adventure beers and food are readily available. Silver Reef Brewing Co. is known for its barrel-aged beers, which might not be what you’re looking for after a day in the desert, but they have great lagers too, as well as a kitchen pumping out pizzas and wings.
Best Season: Fall through spring for mild temperatures.
Graham Averill is Outside magazine’s national parks columnist. He doesn’t mind a crowd, but understands the value of standing in the middle of the desert all alone.
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