Squaw Flat and Big Spring Canyon Loop - March 2020

Summary

The Squaw Flat and Big Spring Canyon Loop trail is located in The Needles District of Canyonlands National Park. This trail offers vast views of terrain unlike any other place in the US. It also requires some scrambling and route finding, given portions of the trail are on rocks and cairns are the only means to direct hikers.

AllTrails- This trail closely resembles what we ended up hiking. We took a few detours from this loop.

Where

The Needles District is part of Canyonlands National Park which is located in Utah in the United States. The closest town to this trail is Moab.

Logistics

This hike was also part of our week-long National Parks vacation trip. We base camped at Dead Horse Point State Park near Moab, Utah, because we spent the majority of our time in the Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands, as well as, Arches National Park. The drive from Dead Horse Point State Park to the trailhead was LONG. You wouldn’t think it would take 2 hours to get from the state park to The Needles District, if you were to look at a map, but it is deceiving! Our hike started at the Squaw Flat Campground, as do many of the hikes in this area. We had originally intended on taking a different route, but given some of our miscalculations related to actual distance vs. out-and-back distance, decided we would need to improvise on this hike.

Hiking

Coming from Michigan, this area was incredibly unique and at times, unbelievable. Right from the beginning, we enjoyed vast views of the area and some scrambling. It was an exciting experience to constantly be weaving around giant rock structures, almost completely alone! We saw 1 person in the entire time we were on trail, which was a pleasant surprise given the popularity of other parks we had already visited.

Another major surprise in this area was just how quiet it can be in such a remote location. Given this area is mostly rock and sand, there was not a lot of water or wildlife. This resulted in a quiet that we had never before experienced. Taking in this solitude certainly added to the experience of this hike.

The final destination of this loop is a climb up to a very open view of many major rock formations in The Needles District. From afar, we could see Druid Arch, a very popular hiking destination. In addition to Druid Arch, nearby we were surrounded by red rock structures towering around us. In this section we ended up doing some exploring, because it was unlike anything we had seen before. We walked into a slot canyon and ended up having to jump from one rock formation to another.

Upon starting our return via the Squaw Canyon loop, we were excited to see things open up and flatten out again. It was a great way to end this hike as we were able to appreciate the magnitude of some of the canyons and rock structures we had seen throughout this trip.

Photos

All photos on this hike were taken with my Google Pixel 3.