May 18 – Fairyland Trail

The weather was backwards from yesterday. In the morning it was cloudy, which meant cooler and good for hiking but bad for pictures. In the afternoon we got some blue sky but it didn’t get too hot.

I decided that we you do at least part of the Fairyland Loop Trail in the national park today. It is in a less crowded section of the park so it was good for a weekend.

We were only going to do an out and back on part of the trail but everything was so interesting we just kept going. The total loop is 13.5 km which is the longest we have done this year. If you take into account all the ups and downs the total elevation change is about 1700 feet. We were very glad to see the car at the end.

We started at Fairland Point and descended steeply into Bryce Canyon. We went up and down a bit and then did a killer uphill to Sunrise Point, where we had visited on our first day here. This section is about 9.5 km. We then took the Rim Trail from Sunrise back to Fairyland Point. We had been told that this section was relatively flat. It was not.

The park magazine said it should take 4-5 hours. We took 6. We left the car at 10:30 and got back at 4:30.

Here is the view at Fairyland Point in the afternoon when the light was brighter.

Down we go.

 

 

I thought I would try this moving gif file. It’s not very good but it seems to give a bit of sense of depth.

As the chart shows there were not a lot of flat spots.

There were a few narrow sections just to keep Jennie on her toes.

Looking down on a section of the trail that we had been on.

Looking down on where the trail was taking us next.

Some flowers from along the way.

Another small bridge.

At around 1 pm we stopped for lunch on this point.

Looking down on Tower Bridge, center below, named because it looks like the one in London.

We took the short side trail to get closer.

There was even a tiny waterfall here.

From here we started the almost 3 km steady climb up to Sunrise Point.

These two were RUNNING the trail.

A panorama so scroll right.

I think this is called the Chinese Wall for some reason.

We climbed up through this gap in the wall.

Looking back down on the gap.

Ever upwards.

We still had to climb even after we saw Sunrise Point in the distance.

When we finally got there we went to the store at the campground and treated ourselves to fudgicles and a rest.

The initial climbing on the Rim Trail was disheartening because we had been told it was flat but at least the rest of it was gently downhill.

It went very close to the edge in some spots.

We crossed the top of the plateau for a while.

We could see some of our climb to Sunrise Point, starting at the gap in the wall.

By now we were very tired.

When we first saw our destination, I just saw the trail and thought we had to go farther. Jennie recognized what it was, to a huge sigh of relief.

There was a bus tour at the point.

We decided on no cooking tonight so we went out for a pizza and then a nap.