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| Hiking | 3.93 Miles |
456 AEG |
| | Hiking | 3.93 Miles | 1 Hour 55 Mns | | 2.38 mph |
| 456 ft AEG | 16 Mns Break | | | |
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| partners | | We were looking for a short hike on the drive from Kanab back to Phoenix after a multi-day trip, and this fit the bill nicely. Blue Pools Slot Canyon looked interesting but is a technical canyoneering route, but we saw a triplog from a few years ago with a route to the arch nearby. We parked at a small, unsigned pullout off Highway 89 and picked up the trail on the west side of the highway that led down into the dry wash and followed that past a variety of spires and hoodoos.
The trail leaves the wash just under a mile from the highway, but we stayed in the wash a little longer to explore one of the canyons. It narrowed to a dead-end pretty quickly, and we weren't going to take the time to try to climb up through the narrow passage, so we returned to the trail and followed that up to the top of the mesa. The trail faded up there, and we explored the big open area on top. We didn't initially see the arch, but we spotted it as we made our way over to a point along the cliff at 4235 with views of Lake Powell and Lone Rock.
We then backtracked to the arch, which had a big cairn on top. The scenery is similar to Skylight Arch--not surprising given the proximity--but Blue Pools Arch is a smaller. The gap between the arch and the ground behind it is small enough that it's hard to get pictures where the arch really stands out from the background, so it probably looks more impressive viewed from the bottom of the cliffs looking up. The area offered great views of the surrounding white/light gray canyons and cliffs north of Page--lots of interesting colors and formations out there. We took the same route back down into the wash and followed that to the highway. We didn't see the actual Blue Pools Slot Canyon, which I believe is a little further south along Highway 89 from where we started, but this was a nice short, uncrowded hike to break up a day of driving. |
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There's a few 10-20ft drop that are either tricky down climbs or easy rappels depending on your preference and availability of anchoring options. I rappelled one of them from an embedded old engine block, another had a handline tucked under the pile of rocks that made up the chockstone, and the other two I just dropped into the sand below. The 45ft drop was pretty sweet and I setup my 100ft rope since that's much safer than doing that as a handline. 
With so much red sandstone canyons in the area, it was nice to hop in a white crumbly Entrada Sandstone canyon. Once the canyon opens up, I veered left and scrambled up the cliffs and hiked cross country back to the highway while trying not to destroy too much cryptobiotic soil by walking in washed whenever possible. 
