Stealing Adventure in the Stripes — Hiking Zebra Canyon (Escalante, UT)
The beauty of the desert slot canyon hikes
The road is long, dry, and repetative
There are hikes that entertain you… and then there are hikes that change your rhythm. Zebra Canyon — tucked deep in Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument — falls squarely in the latter category.
A few miles of sandy trail through dusty desert brush leads you into a narrow slot of pink, white, and red sandstone stripes — stripes so surreal they don’t feel quite real until you stand between them. For a day of relatively modest mileage, this trail delivers on scale, texture, challenge, and quiet wonder.
This isn’t just a hike — it’s a step deeper into the stories etched in rock and water over millennia.
Crack of Dawn, on the road.
You can camp in the “parking lot” of the trail head to access this quiet gem and we pulled in around midnight and set up a tent. We woke up and hit the trail early — the sun hadn’t yet cooked the sand or baked the slickrock — and that first mile was honest desert hiking: sandy drainages, sagebrush, juniper, and distant ridgelines that looked like they’d been peeled off a dream.
The trail itself is mostly obvious until it isn’t. You’ll weave back and forth across sandy washes, and if you stray too far into loose desert routes, you’ll notice it quick enough — because those false trails just lead you in wide loops back to the real line – look for cairns along the way.
There’s beauty even here, though. The rock walls along the wash start subtle: soft reds, layers of horizontal bedding, and light that shifts across curves and shadow like a desert paintbrush.
Sandy Paths
The walls of Zebra are narrow, but fun
Entering the Stripes: Zebra Canyon
After a couple of miles of undulating trail and sandy wash crossings, you finally see it:
Zebra Canyon itself.
Unlike longer, dramatic slot canyons elsewhere in Utah, Zebra’s hallway is compact — but intensely beautiful. The walls pinch in, streaked in alternating bands of cream and rose that glow as the sun moves overhead. It’s instantly clear why it’s called Zebra Canyon.
And then there’s the water.
Depending on recent rain, snowmelt, or storms, pool depths in the slot vary wildly. We’ve been told that the water is sometimes only ankle deep, but both times we’ve hiked it, it has been to our waist.
We slid off backpacks at the entrance — leaving packs back where they wouldn’t get soaked — and stepped into the cool, muddy water. The walls felt close enough to touch both at once in places. Penned sunlight danced where the stripes met shadow. It was just us and the stone.
The canyon doesn’t go on forever — just a few hundred feet — but it fills every second with delight:
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Squeezes where the slot narrows to less than shoulder-width.
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Water pools that force you into awkward wades and playful splashes
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Soft slickrock where you step sideways, rock-hop, and find footing that feels almost alive.
There’s a tiny dryfall near the back that tempts the curious — a place where some turn around, and others get creative climbing higher into the walls.
Either way, once you reach your comfortable limit, you turn back and let the canyon drip its way back into your memory.
Leaving the narrow stripes for the open wash feels like surfacing from a dive. Sun, wind, and wide sky greet you again, and you retrace your steps back through sandy crossovers, washes, and brush.
The hike out is honest and dry. There isn’t shade. There isn’t water except what you brought. But that’s part of the rhythm: you go in, you sweat for it, and you earn the canyon reward.
Enjoy the trek – it’s worth it!