Hike | Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park | United States
Hike the Wildcat Trail in Monument Valley + Scenic Drive
Text | Anninka Kraus
Photography | Tobias Kraus
US Arizona
Straddling the Utah-Arizona border, Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park is one of several beautiful worlds of bright reddish-orange sandstone on the Colorado Plateau. While Bryce National Park resembles a fairytale castle composed of thousands of bulbous pinkish-red hoodoos more beautiful than any created by man and Arches National Park boasts the greatest concentration of delicate natural arches anywhere in the world, Monument Valley is home to a magical scenery of reddish sandstone cliffs in earlier stages of erosion than hoodoos and arches.
Table-shaped mesas and towering buttes up to 1000 ft (300 m) tall have been sculpted by the erosive might of wind, water, and ice and rising from the vast valley floor shape a spectacular scenery – one that provided the iconic backdrop of movies like Forrest Gump, Mission Impossible 2, or the series Westworld.
Monument Valley is a tribal park within the Navajo Nation Reservation and is owned and operated by the Navajo Nation. Your national parks pass, if you have one, is therefore not valid in this park, and you need to pay an entrance fee as you drive into the park.
Most visitors either join a guided tour or explore the 17-mile (27 km) Scenic Drive around Rain God Mesa themselves, which is the only part of the park visitors can explore on their own. The Scenic Drive is a lovely experience, but also dusty and extremely busy. Since most visitors blatantly exceeded the speed limit (begging the question of why one takes a scenic drive if the sole purpose is to get it over with as quickly as possible), the gravel road was always enveloped in a giant cloud of dust.
Allow around 2 hours to complete the scenic loop road, but if it’s the views more than the fun of driving around mesas and buttes that you’re looking for and you’re not planning on doing the hike, I would skip the park altogether, to be honest.
The views are equally spectacular from Highway 163, heading northeast towards Moab, where you might recognize the famous road running scene from Forest Gump of a dead straight road running towards the famous collection of bright red buttes in your rearview mirror. There are some pullouts along the road towards the top of a small hill where you can safely stop.
related.
Your Visitor Guide to Grand Canyon National Park: Park information & trail details for our favourite hikes in the park: The South Kaibab-Tonto-Bright Angel Loop Trail and Grandview – Tonto – Hance Creek Loop Trail
Bryce Canyon National Park – everything you need to know before your visit: Park information & trail details for our favourite hikes in Bryce Canyon National Park
The famous collection of bright red buttes in Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park on the Colorado Plateau.
what to expect.
location & park information.
Where & getting there: Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park is located in the Navajo Nation Reservation on the Utah-Arizona border (in the Mountain Time Zone and observes Daylight Saving Time unlike the rest of Arizona), a 3-hour drive south of Moab.
When to go: late autumn to early spring; note that the scenic drive can become impassable after heavy rains
Plan your visit: Opening hours are 6 am-7 pm in summer (May-Sept) and 8 am-5 pm in winter (Oct-April). The park remains closed on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day, and when flash floods occur between June and August.
The entry fee is $20/day for a vehicle with up to 4 passengers and $8 for every additional person. If you plan to go hiking, go early morning or later in the afternoon, and wear closed shoes because the trail is mostly sand and can get extremely hot.
Camping in Monument Valley: There’s only one campground in the park, The View Campground, which, in peak season (late autumn to early spring), is often booked out months in advance. Make reservations early or look for accommodation at Gouldings Lodge (hotel and campground) just outside the park boundaries.
The iconic backdrop of many Western movies
Hiking the Wildcat Trail in Monument Valley
Hiking in Monument Valley, on the other hand, was a great experience even though there was only one self-guided trail open at the time that didn’t require a backcountry permit – the Wildcat Trail that circles around the West Mitten Butte and runs past the East Mitten Butte and the Merrick Butte, the iconic triangle featured in many Western movies.
Some accounts online mention two other trails, the Lee Cly Trail and the Mesa Rim Trail, but according to the staff at the information desk, these trails are closed.
The Wildcat Trail starts at the Visitor Center, is well-marked, mostly flat and almost entirely on red desert sand. Walking along the valley floor and gazing up at the towering sandstone buttes was a wonderful experience, and although the park was very busy, we met only a handful of people on our walk. We had the impression that, unlike Bryce or Arches National Parks, few people come to Monument Valley specifically to hike, when we actually enjoyed the hike far more than the drive.
We also passed by a traditional Navajo Hogan, an igloo-shaped home made of wood, bark, and sand that is covered in red mud. These homes are mainly used for ceremonial purposes nowadays, but they blend into the landscape much better than the modern trailer homes right next to them. Their shape, colour and structure reminded me of our visit to a Himba village in northern Namibia, and I would have loved to peek inside.
Try to avoid peak heat and go early morning or late in the afternoon as there is no shade along this trail, and take enough water.
Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park | Arizona
Hike | Loop trail | 1.5 hours
track details.
Start/End: at the northwest corner of the visitor center parking area
Distance: 7km
Time: 1.5 hours
Elevation: 130 meters (+/-) (lowest point: 1575m / highest point: 1710m)
Difficulty: easy
Permits: you don’t need a backcountry hiking permit to walk the Wildcat Trail, but of course pay the park entry fee
Further information: Navajo Nation Parks & Rec website
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