Cross the road from the parking area, and pay your $5 trail use fee at the sign. The trail avoids the wash bottom, saving slogging through gravel, but can be tricky to follow. When in doubt, just follow the wash. After a mile or so you will enter the first narrows. The second and third narrows follow rapidly, where the walls are only 2-feet wide! Most people have to turn sideways and take off their backpack to negotiate it!
Just beyond this constriction, Wire Pass Narrows intersect Buckskin Gulch at a vast sandstone arch where, if you look closely, you can make out Indian petroglyphs of sheep and goats. There is an incredibly smooth wall of sandstone here that looks man-made.
From this intersection, deep within Buckskin Gulch, you can turn left to explore the upstream narrows toward the Buckskin Trailhead, or you can turn right and explore downstream toward the Paria River which is 13 miles distant.
***The trail conditions for this hike change each year with the floods!*** Sometimes it is an easy flat walk all the way to Buckskin. More often, however, there are boulder drops to negotiate, sometimes up to 15-feet high. Packs must be lowered with a rope or dropped, and difficult climb-downs must be negotiated. ALWAYS REMEMBER that what goes down must come up! The only way out is back up the climbs. Do not exceed your ability!
Take plenty of water, as there will be none in the canyon!
Some masochists dayhike the entire 28 miles from the Wire Pass Trailhead, through Buckskin, to the Paria River and back. Please note that this is NOT 28 miles of flat trail. This is 28 miles of climbs, deep gravel and puddles and mud. For extremely strong and fast hikers with rock climbing experience, this hike will take a minimum of 12 hours, probably more.
Please also be aware that distant rains can fill the narrows with whitewater even if you see clear sky above you. If this happens, you will die. Watch the weather patterns and call the Bureau of Land Management the day before you hike.
Phone: (435) 688-3246