Hiking the World's Longest Slot Canyon!

Check out our not-so-exciting-but-pretty video of hiking through Buckskin Gulch!

Allegedly, Buckskin Gulch is the world's longest continuous slot canyon. So of course we had to hike through it!

To get to Buckskin Gulch, you need to drive to Kanab, UT and then go east from there about 45 miles to the White House Trailhead. Drive in and leave a shuttle car (or a shuttle motorcycle!) and then go back toward Kanab and turn down another dirt road to Wire Pass Trailhead. This is where you will leave your vehicle and start your hike. There are a few shuttle operations as well, if you don't want to deal with the hassle of shuttling a vehicle. This website was very helpful, giving detailed information and directions.

We wore our hiking backpacks, complete with tent, sleeping bags, and stove because we wanted to prepare for our longer, 160 mile hike around Lake Tahoe this coming August. A fit person could fairly easily do the 21+ mile hike in one day. We took two days, but the second day we only hiked for an hour before we were back at the White House trailhead.

We hiked for about 11 hours, with plenty of sight-seeing stops, on the first day, covering roughly 18 miles. There is really no elevation gain or loss to speak of, making this the flattest hike I think we've ever done! Most of the trail is deep sand, or sand with rocks, so wear old hiking shoes or trail running shoes and plan on washing your socks two or three times to get all the sand out when you're done.

Don't let the website scare you-this is a very accessible slot canyon, not technical, and has no elevation gain or loss to speak of. Now, we were there last week, in the first part of June, and it was hot, but not overly so, and most of the water that makes the hike harder was evaporated. There were only two knee deep pools, and plenty of places to collect muddy water from. If it were raining, or there was a flash flood, then it would be an entirely different, dangerous situation.

Here are some pics from our journey: