Hoodoo Magic
I had big plans for a lot of miles on this day. I'd picked out three loops, two of which were connected, and thankfully decided to do the longest one first in case it took longer than anticipated. Smart move, self. The day AllTrials and I planned was the Fairyland loop (8 miles, 4 hours), and adding the Peekaboo loop (5 miles, 3 hours) onto the Navajo loop and Queens Garden Trail (3 miles, 1.5 hours). I'm a fast hiker- I could do it before night fall. The snow had other plans, and thankfully I had a hiking buddy that day to witness me falling into thigh deep snow drifts every other step.
Fairyland Loop
The main trail head to this hike is on a closed section of road in the winter, but you can access it from the Sunrise Point parking lot via the Rim Trail. This loop starts at the top, overlooking hoodoos below and views spanning the canyons for hundreds of miles beyond that. This was stunning to experience, as the drive into the park was very unassuming. And, the loop dives down so you can walk among the rocks, then back up to finish overlooking them all again. It gains 1500ft of elevation, and it's well spread out over the 8 miles, for the most part. The snow was absolutely beautiful, but also lead to the slowest hike of my life and it took almost 7 hours, by which time I was hangry because I left my sandwich in the car because I could not have imagined it taking *that* long. I had other snacks and plenty of water, but definitely did not plan for that level of time commitment, and was glad I was not by myself for this one, as I could have seen myself getting discouraged with the amount of trudging through the snow with no sandwich that was involved. We saw no other humans on the trail, and if I had the option to go back and do it all over again, I absolutely would! It was a surreal experience, and I only wish I could have been the one watching me fall into snow drifts.
We then drove to the other view points along the main road in the park to let our legs have a break, which really were incredible. We got a look at Wall Street as the sun went down. The other two loops, presumably if they were like the small part of the trail we were on, would have had much better snow pack and would have been easier and faster to hike. While I now have to plan another trip back to see them to their fullest (bummer, right?), I'm really glad we started with the longer, more difficult loop as I'm stubborn and could have easily gotten in over my head after dark by starting the big loop any later in the day than we did, thinking it was going to actually be a 4 hour hike. All is well that ends well, and I'd say that day was pretty great, even though it wasn't exactly what I planned.
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