Black Birch Canyon

Black Birch Canyon is a paved roadside overlook at mile 16.5 of Bryce Canyon’s 18-mile Southern Scenic Drive, one of nine viewpoints on the route. It looks into the southern amphitheater and works best as a quick view stop; no trails leave this pullout. The paved, relatively level approach is listed as wheelchair accessible. For an easier route through the pullouts, drive first to Rainbow and Yovimpa Points at the end of the road, then stop here on the way back, when it is on your right.

Leashed dogs can join you on paved surfaces, but not on unpaved viewpoints or trails.

The southern view looks into a bowl-shaped amphitheater shared with Rainbow Point. Hoodoos erode from the Paunsaugunt Plateau’s edge, with a pine-and-fir forest about 1,000 feet below. Eastward, the view crosses Paria Valley to the upper steps of the Grand Staircase and Table Cliff Plateau. Include some of the forest below the rim in a photo; it gives the rock spires a sense of scale.

On clear-air days, the Henry Mountains are about 86 miles away, and Navajo Mountain rises more than 80 miles to the southeast.

Table Cliff Plateau across the valley is made of the same Claron Formation, or Pink Cliffs, that forms Bryce’s hoodoos. The Paunsaugunt fault runs along the park’s eastern edge, and the uplifted plateaus leave a difference of nearly 2,000 feet in the landscape. The view gives you a look across that geologic step, with the Grand Staircase’s colored layers stretching beyond it.

Navajo Mountain and the Henry Mountains are laccoliths: molten rock pushed older layers upward, then cooled underground without breaking through as volcanoes. Erosion has stripped the cover from the Henry Mountains and exposed their hard igneous cores. These distant peaks make the broad horizon more than a backdrop when the air is clear.

True black birch is an eastern tree. The National Park Service says quaking aspens were probably mistaken for birches here: birch bark peels in papery layers, while aspen bark does not, and the leaves differ in shape. The likely mix-up is a small local name story set against a landscape known for its very different trees and rock formations.