The West Rim Trail: Zion From Above
Eleven miles from Lava Point down into Zion Canyon — the park's best backpacking route, and the trail whose last mile every Angels Landing hiker climbs.
The West Rim is the long way to see Zion National Park: a point-to-point route across the high country north of the canyon that descends into it from above. Most people meet its final mile without knowing it — the trail up from the Grotto to Scout Lookout, the one every Angels Landing hiker climbs, is the bottom of the West Rim.
Walked end to end it is roughly eleven miles, and the standard direction is downhill.
The route
The upper trailhead is on Kolob Terrace Road near Lava Point, high on the plateau. From there the trail runs about 6.5 miles across the rim — pine and open ledge country, entirely unlike the canyon floor — before the final 4.7 miles drop 2,500 feet into Zion Canyon and finish at the Grotto, shuttle stop 6.
Doing it in that direction means one long descent instead of one long climb, and it puts you at a shuttle stop rather than at a remote trailhead. The catch is transport: Lava Point is a long drive around from the canyon, so you need either two vehicles or a shuttle service.
Walked the other way, uphill from the Grotto, it is a serious climb and a considerably harder day.
Day hike or overnight
It goes as a long day hike for fit walkers traveling light, and no permit is needed to walk it. As an overnight it is one of Zion's best backpacking trips — the rim holds designated campsites, and staying at one is a permitted activity with a short reservation window that is worth understanding before you plan around it. The questions below cover how that works.
Water is the planning constraint
There is no reliable water on the rim, and this is what most often goes wrong. The park documents three springs and is candid about all of them:
- Cabin Spring (6,736 feet) usually has a small flow year-round. It is the one you can most nearly count on.
- Potato Hollow Spring (6,760 feet) is usually dry by mid to late summer, and is not a reliable source.
- Sawmill Springs (7,173 feet) is usually dry by early to mid summer, and is not a reliable source.
Plan to carry, treat what you find as a bonus, and check current spring conditions with the Wilderness Desk before you set out. Note that Zion's cyanobacteria advisories apply to streams rather than springs — the park's own guidance is to filter from a spring source rather than from flowing surface water.
Season
Best in late spring, summer and autumn. The plateau sits high enough to hold deep snow in winter, and Kolob Terrace Road itself is not a winter route to its upper reaches — a very different proposition from the canyon floor, which stays walkable year-round.
Summer on the rim is also markedly cooler than Zion Canyon, which makes this one of the few Zion routes that is more comfortable in July than the famous ones below it.
Why it is worth the logistics
The West Rim is where you see how Zion is put together. The canyon reads as a gorge from the bottom; from the rim it reads as one cut in a much larger plateau, with the drainages that feed it laid out in sequence. Very few people do it — the trailhead logistics see to that — so it offers something the canyon cannot: a full day in Zion largely alone.
If you want a shorter taste of the same trail, the climb from the Grotto to Scout Lookout is its last mile and a half, and needs no permit.
Frequently asked questions
How long is the West Rim Trail?
Roughly eleven miles from the Lava Point trailhead to the Grotto. The number understates it in one direction and overstates it in the other: walked northbound it is a 2,500-foot climb out of the canyon and a genuinely hard day, while walked southbound it is mostly descent and well within reach of a fit hiker in a single day. Fast walkers do it in six or seven hours; most people should plan for eight or more, and anyone carrying overnight gear should plan for two days. The plateau section is high, open and slow underfoot, so hikers used to judging a route by its mileage tend to arrive at the descent later than they expected.
Do you need a permit for the West Rim Trail?
Not to walk it in a day. Camping on it is a different matter: overnight stays are only allowed at designated sites and require a wilderness permit, issued the day before or the day of the trip from the Wilderness Desk during its hours of operation. Plan the overnight version around that window rather than assuming you can book it far ahead.
Is there water on the West Rim Trail?
Not dependably, and this is the mistake that spoils the trip. Only one of the three springs on the route — Cabin Spring — is described by the park as flowing year-round, and even that is a small flow; the other two are expected to be dry through much of the summer. The safe planning assumption is that you carry everything you need for the whole traverse and treat anything you find as a bonus. Ask the Wilderness Desk about current spring conditions before you start, especially for an overnight, and remember that the park's advice is to draw from a spring rather than from a stream because filters do not remove the cyanotoxins found in Zion's surface water.