mom's hiking list: March 1, 2025

Red Reef Trail, Silver Reef Trail and Dino Tracks

On our way home we stopped at Leeds to hike the Red Reef Trail and while we were there we did the Silver Reef Trail and Dino Tracks. The Red Reef Trail was awesome! It was crowded, but even so it was definitely worth the hike!

Red Reef Trail

There is a fee at the parking area ($5 or America the Beautiful Pass) since it is part of the Red Cliffs Recreation Area. It is worth it and you will be lucky to find parking during the busy times!

All trails says it is 2.2 miles out and back, 219 ft. elevation gain. Most of the trail is easy but there are some challenging parts, depending on how far you go. You can stop at any point if the challenge looks like too much. This is where we ended up and as you can see, it is beautiful! Really a great hike!

Here are photos from the entire hike.

We got to the parking lot about 10 am on a Saturday and there were parking spots available but by the time we left, at about noon, it was full. We followed signs on a well marked trail.

The stairs went up to the rest rooms, a campground, and some other hiking trails.

We followed the signs for the Red Reef trail and it took us across a little bridge and through a picnic area.

The trail is well used and they want you to stay on the path. The has been restoration work done and so you see a lot of native plants along the way.

We continued on.

You can see there are a lot of people. There was a large group right behind us that we tried to stay ahead of.

At this point there was a bit of a bottleneck, coming and going.

I am sure this hike would be different at different times of the year, depending on the waterflow. I would like to do it in the fall!

Here we are! The trail continues on using the notches you see in the rock. Someone said there used to be a rope here that was helpful. But its no longer here. There were people continuing on without the rope but we decided to turn back here.

We passed this arched area on our way and you can hike up to it. There were people there and on the way back there was someone playing a flute. I wasn't close enough to see it but it sounded like a south American/Peruvian pan flute. It was very cool and we were just lucky to be there at the right time to hear it.

Silver Reef Trail and Dino Tracks

The Silver Reef Trail starts in the campground, near the restrooms. It is short, less than a half mile to the lookout and back, 111 ft. elevation gain.

We wouldn't have gone out of our way for this hike, but since we were there for the Red Reef Trail and it was close, it was a good addition.

Yes, this is the right trail.

You head uphill. It is uphill all the way to the look out point.

We came to signs that pointed out the dinosaur tracks. Otherwise you would miss them.

You also have a view and can see the campground.

What we didn't know is that the dinosaur tracks are a spur from the main trail. So after seeing the dinosaur tracks, we continued on what we thought was the trail, and it was some kind of a trail but eventually the trail was faint and we could see the "trail" wasn't taking us to where we wanted to go. We continued anyway and scrambled up some rocks and ended up at the lookout area. As you can see in the photos there are no trees and you can see for a distance, so we weren't lost, we were just off trail!