Red Canyon and Cedar Break

2025-09-11
Red Canyon and Cedar Break, UT

As I left Bryce Canyon, I stopped at Red Canyon. It's close and could have been done as a side trip from Bryce, but I did it as a stop on the way out. It's a nice canyon although typical for the area, and as usual I took a lot of pictures. I combined up several of the suggested short hikes to get something that was two miles long and gave me a chance to see what it was like.

It grew in a spiral I guess looking for a better view?

Next up was Cedar Breaks National Monument, which also could have been a day trip from Bryce as it's only a hour or so away. A "break" in this case refers to the geography; it just means a sudden change in slope. Bryce Canyon is a similar "amphitheater" shape and isn't really a canyon since there is no river running through it. But overall it doesn't really matter: A landscape by any other name is still really cool.

Cedar Breaks is at 10,000 feet, plus or minus a thousand feet depending on where you are. This means it's cooler there (about 50 today), and the wind was ripping almost as strongly as it does at my house. I'd guess the "feels like" temperature is close to freezing. So I dug out my cold weather gear, wearing the puffy jacket, hat, and ski gloves for the hike.

With the altitude, I was worried that I might have trouble on a long hike. Luckily for me there are only three hikes in the Monument, and all of them are roughly two miles. I chose Spectra Point because we're pretty much out of Alpine flowers for that loop and the other hike was paved and I was already wearing my hiking shoes.

Interesting sidebar: Bristlecone pines can live to be thousands of years old. One of their tactics is to compartmentalize and let parts of the tree die while saving the living bits. So, for example, once that root at the bottom is no longer in soil it will die and the branch it was supporting will die. Also the bark connecting the two will die and fall off. And that's how you get strips of bark running up these trees while the rest is bare wood. But the dead wood doesn't rot (or does so very slowly), and thus still helps to support the remaining live parts of the tree.

When you celebrate your 2000th birthday they don't light candles. Especially if you're made of wood.

After Cedar Breaks, there is a big descent into Cedar City at only 5843 feet. It's a university town with Southern Utah University (Go Thunderbirds!) located here. I'm staying on the outskirts. The original plan was to camp at Cedar Breaks, but I am not equipped for temperatures around freezing. Of course, down in the City I need AC.