Planning Antelope Canyon and Rainbow Bridge

Two places account for most of the photographs that bring people to this corner of the map: the corkscrewing sandstone of Antelope Canyon, and Rainbow Bridge standing in a side canyon off the lake. They are close to each other in a straight line and almost nothing else about them is similar.

Both share one thing worth stating plainly at the top: you cannot simply turn up at either. One requires an authorized Navajo guide. The other requires a boat, a long backcountry hike with a tribal permit, or a commercial tour. Trips get wrecked by people who assume otherwise and find out on the day.

Antelope Canyon

What and where

Antelope Canyon is a slot canyon on Navajo Nation land east of Page, Arizona. It is usually split into two sections, which are separate visits with separate tickets: Upper Antelope Canyon (Tsé bighánílíní) and Lower Antelope Canyon (Hazdistazí). Several other slot canyons in the same area are open to tours under their own names, and they are often less crowded than the two famous ones.

You cannot go in alone

Entry is only with an authorized Navajo guide on a booked tour. There is no trailhead, no self-guided option, no permit you can buy that lets you walk in on your own, and no talking your way past the gate. The canyons are on tribal land and access is managed by the Navajo Nation and its licensed operators. Anyone offering to take you in outside that system is not authorized to do so.

This is not a formality to route around. It is the reason the canyon is still in the condition you have seen in photographs.

Upper or Lower

Upper is entered at ground level and walked on a flat sandy floor. It is wider, it is the one where the famous shafts of light drop through the slot around the middle of the day in summer, and it is generally the busier and pricier of the two. If anyone in your group has limited mobility, this is the one to look at.

Lower is entered by descending a series of steep metal stairs and ladders into a narrower, more twisting slot. It is more physical and more enclosed. Many people find it the more interesting walk. It is a poor choice for anyone unhappy with heights, tight spaces, or steep steps.

Neither is a hike in any real sense. Both are short, guided walks. Plan an hour or two including the shuttle and the queue, not an afternoon.

Book early, and confirm the details with the operator

Peak-season tours, and especially the midday light-beam slots at Upper, are booked out weeks to months ahead. Each operator runs its own bookings; there is no single central ticket office.

Two things change often enough that you should ask the operator directly rather than trusting any article, this one included:

• Photography rules. What is permitted regarding tripods, camera bags, dedicated photography tours and commercial use has been revised repeatedly over the years. Ask when you book.
• Which clock your tour time is on. Arizona does not observe daylight saving time; the Navajo Nation does. For part of the year that puts Navajo Nation time an hour ahead of Page time. Confirm in writing which one your booking uses. People miss tours over this every season.

Flash floods, and why a tour can be cancelled on a sunny day

A slot canyon is a drain. Antelope Canyon collects runoff from a large area of slickrock upstream, and water moving through a slot has nowhere to spread out — it goes up instead. A thunderstorm you cannot see, miles away, can send a flood through the canyon under an open blue sky above you.

This is not theoretical. In 1997 a flash flood in Lower Antelope Canyon killed eleven people. The guiding requirement, the weather monitoring and the willingness to cancel at short notice all descend from that.

The practical consequence: during monsoon season, roughly mid-July into September, tours can be closed with little warning, sometimes on a day that looks perfect from the parking lot. If it happens to you, the system is working. Build a spare day into a monsoon-season trip and keep the tour toward the start of your stay so a cancellation has somewhere to go. When to visit Lake Powell covers the monsoon pattern and the rest of the seasonal trade-offs.

While you are in the area

Horseshoe Bend, the much-photographed loop of the Colorado River, is a short drive south of Page and a walk of well under a mile each way from its parking area, with no shade and a sheer unfenced rim. Glen Canyon Dam and its visitor center are on the north side of town.

Rainbow Bridge

What it is

Rainbow Bridge is one of the largest natural bridges in the world, standing in a side canyon off the main channel of Lake Powell, roughly fifty miles by water up-lake from the Wahweap end and a comparable run down-lake from the Bullfrog and Halls Crossing area. It is a national monument administered by the National Park Service within Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

It is also sacred to several tribes with long-standing ties to this landscape, including the Navajo, Hopi, San Juan Southern Paiute, Zuni and White Mesa Ute. That matters to how you behave there, and it is covered below.

Three ways to get there

By your own or a rented boat. This is how most visitors arrive, and it is a serious run. In a houseboat it is a multi-day proposition rather than an outing; most parties do it in a faster boat. Plan fuel deliberately — do not assume that a fuel stop partway up the lake will be operating, because whether the intermediate service points are open has varied. Check before you leave the marina, not when your gauge is low.

On a commercial boat tour, when one is running from a marina. This is by far the easiest option if it is available for your dates. Availability has come and gone, so check with the park concessioner rather than assuming.

On foot, via one of two long backcountry trails that cross Navajo Nation land to reach the bridge. These are multi-day desert routes for experienced, self-sufficient hikers — not a day hike, not a shortcut, and not something to attempt in summer heat without real preparation. They require a permit from the Navajo Nation, arranged in advance through Navajo Parks and Recreation.

The walk from the dock changes

Boats tie up at a courtesy dock in the side canyon and you walk from there to the bridge. How far that walk is depends entirely on where the lake is sitting. The dock moves as the water does, and the distance has ranged from a short stroll to a substantial walk on uneven ground with no shade.

Do not plan around a specific distance you read somewhere. Ask the Park Service or your marina what the walk currently is, and go prepared for considerably more of it than you expect: water, sun protection, proper shoes, and a realistic view of how the heat will affect the slowest member of your party on the way back.

There are no visitor facilities to speak of at the monument, and no camping at the bridge itself.

How to behave there

The Park Service asks visitors not to walk under or approach directly beneath the bridge, out of respect for its significance to the tribes connected to it, and to keep noise down. There is a viewing area from which the bridge is entirely visible and, for what it is worth, better photographed.

This is a request rather than a fee or a fence. Honor it. It costs you nothing and it is the whole of what is being asked in exchange for access to somewhere that means a great deal to people who were here first.

Fitting both into one trip

The two sit conveniently at the same end of the lake if you base yourself near Page. A pattern that works: take a land day at the start or end of your boat trip for the canyon tour and Horseshoe Bend, and give Rainbow Bridge a full dedicated day on the water with an early start.

If you have not yet decided where to launch from, note that Rainbow Bridge is reachable from both ends of the lake but from neither casually — choosing between Wahweap, Antelope Point, Bullfrog and Halls Crossing weighs that up alongside everything else each access point is near. And if you are renting a houseboat, read the rental guide first: the boat's cruising speed, more than anything else, determines whether the bridge is realistically on your itinerary at all.

Before you finalize anything, check current conditions, closures, permits and fees on the National Park Service's Glen Canyon National Recreation Area site, and tribal permit requirements with Navajo Parks and Recreation.