Climbing Beta: Snow Canyon State Park, UT

If you’re in Southern Utah, it’s not to be missed.

Snow Canyon Park doesn’t get as many climbers’ attention as the nearby Moe’s Valley or St. George climbing, but it’s a gorgeous camping destination with an easy drive to all climbing crags. It’s a 5-star camping location, in the top 5 camping locations we’ve ever been.

Cost

Camping runs around $15-$20/night, sometimes plus entrance fees to put it at $30 a night, so it’s not cheap, but we like supporting state and federal parks.

Camping

The campsites are impeccable, each far enough away from each other that you really do feel isolated with your own private back yard. Each site backs up against the side of the canyon walls.

There’s very clean bathrooms and showers–like the rest of Utah, Snow Canyon was incredibly clean and well-maintained.

Hiking

The canyon starts off with the iconic sandstone red rock found in the area. Canyon walls range from near vertical, darkened patina rock to rolling red marshmallows you can scramble across. There’s sand dunes, slot canyons, lava tube caves, red and white rock, and climbing in the park.

There’s day hikes for days–you can drive up the canyon and stop to hike along the rolling canyons and even hike down into lava tubes. It’s spectacular and gorgeous.

Honestly, Moe’s Valley and Chuckawalla aren’t the most scenic climbing areas. There’s no comparison to Snow Canyon in terms of beauty and hiking, and if you’re in the area to climb, you should camp or spend a day hiking in Snow Canyon Park.

Climbing in Snow Canyon State Park

There’s no shortage of climbing in the canyon, and the ranger’s station has far more resources than you’ll find online. There’s a couple hundred established routes, about equally split sport vs trad, and quite a few bolted multipitch.

Much of the rock is soft sandstone like the St. George area, covered by black patina. The movement on rock is great, but prepare to break holds or have some sandy smears.

The Richness of it All 5.12a Bolted Multipitch

• Pitch 1: 5.2 ramp
• Pitch 2: 5.11a.  There was one move at the beginning that was V4/11.d-ish if you’re under 5’5”.
• Pitch 3: 5.12a.  Big flake broken off with a bail biner. V6/12d-ish moves for a bolt. Would be difficult to pull through in the middle of the pitch. Techy to figure out.
• Pitch 4: 5.11c
• Pitch 5: 5.11c spiraling arete. Absolutely amazing and worth the whole climb. Midway you do a mantle onto a point with nothing but 400 feet of air below you. But I did pull out an 18”x6” rock.

While the climbing isn’t world-class itself, the views area, and sometimes you just need to climb and enjoy the views.