Location: Bryce Canyon National Park
Start Elevation: 7,958 ft.
Bottom Elevation: 7,413 ft.
Elevation Gain/Loss 545 ft.
Round-trip Mileage: 3.7 mi.
Trip Report
In the visitor center at Bryce I was curious as to what hikes this unique park had to offer. With the time I had alloted the Queens Gardens/Navajo Combination Loop stood out to me. It was quoted as the "World's best 3-mile hike". Sounded good to me.I started hiking from our camp along the rim to Sunrise Point where I picked up the trail to Queen's Garden. I was taking quite a few pictures on the Nikon D50 camera when the batteries ran out. I was stuck taking pics on my Omnia phone the rest of the way. The 1-mile hike to Queen's Garden had some great views. I saw the Queen Victoria formation at the end of this trail portion. From there is a forest hike to the Navajo Loop. I took the northern section of the loop. This brought me two a signed split in the trail which pointed right to the two bridges area. It was unclear if this was trail so I followed it up a gulley past the two bridges. I followed this to the top of the gulley where it dead ended at a 50 foot cliff. I turned around and went up the other split which was the real trail. The trail ends at Sunset Point where I took some more pictures. On the walk back to camp I stopped at the General Store and bought some Corona for supper at camp. It was a cold night down in the 30's up at 8000 feet.
VIDEOS:
Here are a pair of videos I took along the hike. The first is towards the eastern end of the loop, near the beginning of the hike. The second is towards the western end of the loop near the very end of the hike at Sunset Point.TRACK:
I took a KML track file from this hike showing the full extent of the loop. Because of poor GPS reception in the canyon on the way up some of the track is a bit messed up. The rest is great!My Track
PHOTOS:
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