Rock Canyon, open in every month there is

At the end of North Temple Drive on the east bench of Provo, where the residential street runs uphill and stops against the mountain. Provo City maintains the trailhead and Rock Canyon Park sits directly below it, sharing the approach. The parking lot at the top is small, it fills by about eight in the morning on a summer weekend, and the overflow is curbside parking in the surrounding neighborhood.

As long as you want, which is why the answer confuses people. The paved section reaches a footbridge in about a mile and roughly fifteen minutes, which is where most visits end. A moderate outing is about three miles return. The popular out and back runs close to six miles round trip with well over a thousand feet of gain. The full trail keeps going to Rock Canyon Campground, which Provo City lists at 6.2 miles from the trailhead on Squaw Peak Road, with the Forest Service maintaining everything above the city's trailhead.

Yes, and it is the only east side approach in Provo with no seasonal gate on it at all. The paved lower section stays walkable through the winter and the park below it becomes one of the better sledding slopes in the city. The thing to plan for is ice rather than snow: north facing sections and the ground near the creek crossings hold it long after the valley floor has thawed, and traction devices are the sensible call from about December to March.

It is one of the reasons climbers know Provo. The lower walls are quartzite and the rock higher up turns to gray limestone, and the canyon carries well over two hundred established routes on the most conservative published count, with climbing databases listing considerably more. The main wall near the first footbridge holds the bolted sport lines most walkers see in use. Route counts and grades vary between sources, and Utah crags run recurring seasonal raptor closures on some walls in spring and early summer, so take current route and closure information from a climbing specific source before you travel to climb here.

Yes, on leash, the full length of the trail. That is worth knowing because it is not true of every trailhead on this stretch of bench, and it is one of the reasons this canyon carries the volume of local traffic it does. The paved lower section in particular is the default dog walk for a large part of northeast Provo, which is also why the small parking lot empties of spaces so early on a weekend.

Yes, at the top of the canyon on Squaw Peak Road, operating seasonally from about late May to late September on advance reservation. Provo City lists the trail distance to Rock Canyon Campground at 6.2 miles from the trailhead, so from this direction it is a long day on foot rather than a short walk, though the campground can also be reached by car up Squaw Peak Road. Reservations are handled through the federal recreation booking system rather than by the city.

No, and this is the most commonly repeated wrong thing about hiking in Utah County. The Bonneville Shoreline Trail here runs in fragments separated by private land and undeveloped gaps, and there is no connection between the Provo Canyon section and the Provo bench section. The bench link south toward the Y Mountain trailhead is real and rideable. A county length through route is not, whatever a mapping app draws.

The first mile is not hard at all, which is unusual for a canyon trail: it is paved, close to flat and manageable with a stroller. Everything above the footbridge is a different question, climbing steadily on unpaved ground to well over a thousand feet of gain on the popular out and back. The honest read is that this is two trails sharing a name, and knowing which one you have signed up for before you leave the car is most of the planning.

Rock Canyon Park at the foot of it, and it does more than a trailhead parking lot normally does. There is a large covered pavilion seating around fifty that books through Provo City's reservation system, a bouldering wall with soft flooring under it, an amphitheater, and open slopes that turn into a sledding hill in snow. It means you can bring a mixed group, park once, and have some of them a mile up a canyon while the rest never leave the grass.