The slot canyons near Kanab.

This is the serious one that anybody reasonably fit can do. Wire Pass narrows within the first mile and delivers you into Buckskin Gulch, the longest hikeable slot canyon anywhere, where the walls close over your head and the light turns amber and reflected. It is the trip I send most first-time visitors on, because it delivers the real thing without asking for a rope or a route-finding day.

You buy an inexpensive day use permit, priced per person and per dog, either ahead of time or right at the trailhead. The last stretch of House Rock Valley Road is dirt and gets slick and impassable when it is wet, so a high-clearance vehicle is the honest recommendation and a rainstorm can strand you. How far you push into the gulch is up to you; there is no obligation to do the whole thing, and most day hikers walk in until it stops being fun and then walk back out. The deeper permit picture, and where Wire Pass sits inside it, is laid out on the permits and lotteries page.

This is the one on the postcards: tall red walls, Moqui steps cut into the rock, moss where the water sits. Locals call it the Kanab Peekaboo, and it is also signed as Red Canyon. Do not confuse it with the Peek-a-boo up near Escalante, which is a different canyon entirely and a long drive the other way. The Kanab one sits in Red Canyon just north of town, near the landmark called Diana's Throne, and the canyon itself is short, under a mile in and back, and beautiful in a way photographs have not managed to exhaust.

The difficulty is entirely in the approach. The access road runs a couple of miles through deep, downhill sand, and all wheel drive simply does not get through it. Realistically you want a true high-clearance four wheel drive with the tires aired down, a rented side by side, or a guided Peekaboo tour out of Kanab, several of which launch from the Diana's Throne area and hand you the driving or do it for you. In winter, when the sand is frozen firm, it occasionally goes without any of that, but that is luck, not a plan.

Beyond the day hiking there is a harder tier, and it is worth knowing it exists even if you never do it. Buckskin Gulch walked in full, usually with a night down in Paria Canyon, runs on a separate overnight permit system with far fewer spots, and it means committing to a canyon that is hard to leave partway. Deep cold water, log jams and route finding are all normal parts of it, not surprises.

Coyote Buttes South belongs in the same conversation, even though it is a permit area rather than a slot, because the deep access sand on that side turns back more trips than the terrain ever does. Both of these are trips to build up to rather than start with, and both live on the same lottery and permit system covered in full on the permits and lotteries page.