Horseshoe Bend

Last month I took a trip in large part to kayak Horseshoe Bend. If you haven’t heard of it, you probably have seen pictures of it as it’s one of the most iconic places in the desert southwest. Some “Welcome to Arizona” signs feature a picture of it.

To be honest with you, for years I thought Horseshoe Bend was in the Grand Canyon. However, it’s slightly upstream of it, located between the Glen Canyon dam and the east side of the Grand Canyon.

The way the vast majority of tourists see Horseshoe Bend is from the overlook. The trailhead is 1.5 miles from the intersection of highways 89 and 98 in Page, AZ. It’s hard to miss, as there is good signage and lots of cars and busses in the parking lot. There was a $10 fee to park, paid to the state of Arizona (so a National Park Pass doesn’t help). From the parking lot, it is an easy ½ mile hike to the overlook.

Once at the end of the trail you will enjoy spectacular views of Horseshoe Bend. The main viewing platform is rather crowded. I would recommend hiking away from it a bit in either direction along the rim.

After this photo shoot,our group drove to Lees Ferry, which is a staging point for trips in both directions on the Colorado River. Upstream takes you through Horseshoe Bend up to the Glen Canyon Dam. Downstream takes you to the Grand Canyon. I recommend a walk across the Navajo Bridge on the way. There are actually two bridges, one for cars and one for pedestrians. This is the last point to cross the Colorado River going west until the Hoover Dam.

The main plan of the trip was to kayak Horseshoe Bend. To prepare, an Internet search led me to Kayak Horseshoe Bend. They offer a backhaul service, where they take you on a boat ride upstream on the Colorado River and drop you off to kayak back to the starting point. Kayak and standup paddle board rentals are also available. The cost of the backhawl service is $80 per person and kayak rentals are $35 per day.

I would recommend booking at least two weeks in advance. I also highly recommend doing this as a camping trip, as opposed to a day trip. There are about four camping spots along the river, which our boat driver pointed out on the way upstream. Overnight campgrounds have outhouses and fire rings. I was told that the spots with fire rings are often all taken,so to try to make camp early. No permits are required (at least as of this writing in April, 2024).

When you show up at Lee’s Ferry, be sure to know what time it is in Arizona. While Arizona is in the mountain time zone, they do not observe daylight savings time. That means that during daylight savings time they will be on Pacific time. I made the mistake of forgetting this bit of information and showed up much too early. To be honest, this is not the first time I’ve made this mistake in Arizona. While I admit it’s my fault, I submit to the Grand Canyon State that they get with it and be on the same time as the rest of the mountain time zone.

In the case of our trip, we chose the two-day camping option. The boat driver warned us the following day would be windy and to try to cover as much ground by kayak as possible that day. This conflicted with her advice on getting a campsite early. However, not getting stranded due to the wind was a higher priority than a campsite with a fire ring. Of the 15 miles between where we were dropped off near the Glen Canyon dam and Lees Ferry, we decided to do 9 miles that day and stay at the “mile 6 campground.” We were also advised to get an early start the next day, before the wind kicked in. This would prove to be good advice.

That paddle the first day was enjoyable, although we felt rushed to do nine miles. It was also mildly windy, with the wind in our face much of the time. We did our best to find a balance between enjoying the trip and going as fast as we comfortably could. It was also not obvious when we were actually in the Horseshoe Bend section of the 15-mile trip. The best way to tell was you could see lots of people standing on the rim, where we had been earlier that day.

The boat driver strongly encouraged us to stop at a day-use only beach with petroglyphs on a nearby wall. We followed her advice and were not disappointed. There was a well-marked trail from the beach to the wall.

After that visit, we arrived at our Mile 6 beach at about 5:00. Fortunately, there was still one fire ring left. The day was still fairly young, so we drank wine at the beach and made our way up to the campsite when the sun set.

After a relaxing evening,we woke up the next morning to pleasantly no wind. However, I speak with some experience that in the desert the wind often kicks up around 11 AM, which is also what the boat driver warned of.

We enjoyed very pleasant weather our last six miles back to Lees Ferry. However, we still felt rushed to arrive before the predicted wind kicked in. In the end, we arrived back at the boat launch site about three hours later. Our time was perfect as shortly after the wind suddenly picked up.

A few miles up the road from Lees Ferry we stopped at the “Balanced Rock,” which I highly recommend if you’re in the area.

If traveling to Horseshoe Bend from Las Vegas, activities you can consider doing on the way are the Grand Canyon, Coral Pink Sand Dunes and the Sand Cave. If your route takes you through Kanab UT, I would like to put in a good word for the Iron Horse Restaurant. Great food, service and atmosphere.

To conclude, I highly recommend kayaking Horseshoe Bend. If you don’t have time or it’s not the right season, at least do the hike to the overlook if you find yourself in Page, AZ.