The 8 best hikes in St. George.

Pioneer Park is red sandstone on the ridge above downtown, and it is less a trail than a playground made of rock. Routes wander around the Sugarloaf and the Dixie Rock formations, through small arches, into narrow slots and out onto ledges with the whole valley below you. Nothing is long and everything is scenic.

There is no signposted route, which is the appeal. Ten minutes from Main Street, free, no permit and open whenever you feel like going. It is the first place I take someone who says they do not really hike.

The Red Hills Parkway Trail runs the ridge above the north side of town for roughly four miles, tying the Pioneer Park end of the ridge to the Red Hills Desert Garden. On one side the city is laid out below you, on the other is sandstone, and the whole route sits above the traffic rather than in it.

It works as an out and back of whatever length you feel like, which is the real appeal. Half an hour before work, or the full distance on a cool Saturday, from the same trailhead. The Desert Garden near the middle is a free stop worth making on its own.

Snow Canyon holds roughly 38 miles of trail, and these two are the ones to do first. Jenny's Canyon is a short walk into a real slot in the sandstone, narrow enough to touch both walls, and it is over almost before it starts. The Petrified Dunes are the opposite: open, rolling waves of frozen sand you walk out across in whatever direction looks good.

Together they are under two miles and they show you what makes this park unusual. Jenny's Canyon closes for a stretch of the spring nesting season, which catches people out, so check before you drive. Snow Canyon charges a day use fee and its entry rules can change with the season, so the park page is worth a look first. The rest of the park, including the lava tubes and the paved Whiptail route, is on the Snow Canyon guide.

This is the signature St. George desert hike, and it starts from a signed lot with restrooms at the top of Bluff Street, just past the Snow Canyon Parkway light. The route links the Chuckwalla, Turtle Wall and Paradise Rim trails into a loop of about three and a half miles inside the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve.

You get slickrock, a couple of arches, black lava on the skyline and the city below you for most of it. There is no shade to speak of and no water, which is the whole reason this is a cool season hike. Go at first light in October and you will understand why people move here.

The trail the BLM calls Tempi'po'op, and many locals still call the Anasazi Valley Trail, climbs a low mesa above the Santa Clara River to panels of petroglyphs and the outlines of an ancestral Puebloan farmstead. It is roughly three and a half miles round trip on an old roadbed, mostly gentle, with a short pitch to gain the mesa.

The payoff is standing in front of rock art that has been there for something like a thousand years, with the river cottonwoods below you and nothing else around. Treat it like the archaeological site it is: look, photograph, touch nothing and leave the panels exactly as you found them. It sits on the Santa Clara and Ivins side of the valley, and it shows up on the Ivins hikes list too.

The BLM runs the Red Cliffs Recreation Area north of the city on the far side of I-15, and it is the one place on this list where water is part of the point. The Red Reef Trail follows a drainage up into the red sandstone with pools and small waterfalls along it, and a short scramble section turns it from a walk into something you have to think about.

How much water is running depends entirely on the season and the year, so this is a check first hike rather than a show up hike. Spring after a wet winter is the best version of it. The access road and the parking area are small, which keeps the crowds honest.

The hardest thing on this list is also the emptiest. The Red Cliffs Desert Reserve wraps the north edge of St. George and Washington City in a web of trails through red rock, slickrock and Mojave desert, and the Cottonwood and Grapevine corridors are where it stops being a city park and starts being real desert.

Longer distances, rougher footing, less signage and genuinely nobody out there on a weekday. Carry a map that works without signal, carry more water than the distance suggests and tell somebody where you went. Done right on a cold clear January morning, it is the best desert walking within twenty minutes of downtown St. George.