Upper Cathedral Valley Overlook

From Highway 24, the trailhead is 27.4 road miles along Hartnet Road, followed by a dirt spur that runs 0.3 mile north. The full Cathedral Valley loop is about 58 miles and takes six to eight hours. The Hartnet approach has an unbridged Fremont River ford near the highway; don’t attempt it when the water is high. Plan on high clearance, with four-wheel drive sometimes necessary. Rain or snow can make the roads impassable even for high-clearance four-wheel-drive vehicles, so check current road conditions before leaving. Cell service is weak or absent in the district; bring enough water, food, fuel, clothing and emergency supplies.

The overlook sits above an open basin, with the aligned orange towers in front of broad, banded cliffs. Follow the line of monoliths from one end to the other, then look west toward the higher country beyond the valley. For a photo, keep some valley floor below the towers and a strip of the cliffs behind them; that gives the formations their scale.

These are sculpted sedimentary formations. Upper Cathedral Valley’s orange Entrada Sandstone and gray-green Curtis Formation were laid down in the Late Jurassic. More resistant caprock protects some towers while less protected formations keep eroding. Across Capitol Reef, nearly 10,000 feet of sedimentary layers record about 200 million years of deposition before the land was uplifted along the Waterpocket Fold.

There’s no potable water in Cathedral Valley and no food service at the overlook. Bring your supplies before leaving the paved roads; the primitive campground’s pit toilet is elsewhere in the district, not at this stop.