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Fairyland
Canyon, located one mile north of the National Park entrance station,
offers an opportunity to hoodoos at an "eye-to-eye" level. These hoodoos
have inspired imaginations for years, and visitors today are bound to be
as enchanted as were the Paiute Indians, who saw the hoodoos as ancient
peoples turned to stone. Geology
Located in the north end of the park, the structures that fill Fairyland
Canyon are younger (erosionally speaking) than those further to the south
in the main amphitheater, and will be developed more fully as the
erosional processes continue to wear away the land in a north and westward
direction. By contrast, immediately to the south is Campbell Canyon, here
you can hike through a "hoodoo graveyard." In this region, all the hoodoos
have eroded away leaving multicolored clay mounds, which like tombstones,
mark their passing. Campbell Canyon can only be reached by hiking the
Fairyland Loop Trail.
Nature
Here the canyon rim is covered in Ponderosa Pine forest where deer, jays,
turkey, and chipmunks and squirrels make their homes. As you hike into the
canyon below, you make your way though a mix of habitats including little
patches of Douglas-fir forest, large groves of pinyon and juniper trees,
and clay slopes bare of vegetation. Hiking here offers the best chance of
any place in the park to see our more rare and secretive creatures such as
Mountain
Lions, fox, bobcat, and even
Great Basin
Rattlesnakes.
Following the Rim Trail to the south offers you
the best opportunity to see the diversity of
wildflowers
that grow in Bryce Canyon National Park including the
Wyoming
Paintbrush,
Blue Flax,
Showy
Stoneseed, and
Southwestern
Stoneseed.
Trails
The trailhead for the Fairyland Loop is located at this viewpoint and
descends into the midst of the Fairyland, around boat mesa, eventually
ascending to meet the Rim Trail at Sunrise Point. Following the Rim Trail
back north to Fairyland Canyon overlook completes this 8-mile long and
strenuous hike. This trail is also one of the more quiet hikes in the park
receiving little use from other visitors. Also from Fairyland Canyon
overlook the Rim Trail continues south past 3 other overlooks eventually
arriving at Bryce Point, 5.5 miles later.
Services
None
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