3 Hikes in Snow Canyon

Cinder Cone Trail . White Rocks Amphitheater . Scout Cave

We were in St. George to hike and enjoy warm weather. We were not disappointed. We spent one day in Snow Canyon and decided to do these three hikes: Cinder Cone Trail, White Rocks Amphitheater, and Scout Cave.

Cinder Cone Trail. This is a trail that spirals up an extinct volcano. It is about 2 miles, out and back, and the elevation gain is about 500 feet. I would say it is a moderately difficult hike because it gets steep at the top with loose gravel and is slippery. But the rest of the trail is not difficult. You go thru some lava fields, spiral up the volcano and then you can hike around the perimeter and look down inside and see weeds or desert plants growing, you can even hike down but it is steep. You can also look out and see the valley. You have a 360 degree view!

Well marked trail.

We didn't see many hikers.

We saw a few of these signs. Not sure what the dangerous animals were. We didn't spot them.

No Shade on this hike!

Getting to the top!

Looking down into the ancient volcano.

Looking out one direction is Diamond Valley. You have a good view in all directions.

White Rocks Amphitheater. There are 2 trails that lead to White Rocks Amphitheater. Since we had just done the cinder cone hike, we started at the trailhead on highway 18 because we were close to that trailhead. It was also the shorter hike. The parking lot was just off the highway but I didn't see a sign marking it as the White Rocks Amphitheater trailhead.

From this trailhead it is a 1 mile out and back trail.

You can see the trail at the edge of the parking lot.

Some of the trail is rocky.

Some of the trail is sandy.

The trail we were on joined up with the trail to White Rocks Amphitheatre trail

coming from the main area of Snow Canyon. At this point you go right.

And then there is this part of the trail!

Which led to a sign that points you to White Rocks Amphitheater.

You climb up the rocks. At this point we saw

other hikers. Many of them had hiking poles.

We made it!

This is one side of the amphitheater. We hiked up the rocks behind Mark.

These are some of the rocks you can go up.

There was a little canyon on the other side.

There are some desert plants where there is soil.

And some pockets of water so it must have rained recently.

We enjoyed this hike. It was different than the other hikes in Snow Canyon. This would be a good hike for kids, especially the short trail we took. It is a very diverse place.

Scout Cave

All trails says 3.4 miles out and back. The park map says 6 miles. It starts at the southern entrance to the park. There was construction and so the parking lot was closed so we had to park at the Jenny's Canyon trail head and walk back so add on another mile each way and we had a long hike.

There are rocks and sand on the trail.

You can see the beautiful red rocks in the distance . We wondered exactly where we were headed and where the cave would be.

The trail divides here. Left to Johnson Canyon and Arch, right to Scout Cave. We thought we would do the Johnson Canyon hike later, because it is not very long, but that never happened.

The trail

An interesting tree.

Eventually we hiked down into a large wash, with very little water but lots of vegetation and it was pretty and cool. Then we passed some very large houses. Right along the trail but up much higher. We came to some steps and that was a good climb.

The stairs.

After that we went on what we though was switchbacks and it looked like a well used trail but it turned out we were on the wrong trail! We later saw a sign that said "illegal trail".

The sign we saw after going on this trail!

We could see the cave but somehow we passed it. We asked one of the few hikers we saw about the cave and he said it was right where we had come from. Luckily we hadn't gone too far at that point so we went back and scrambled up the rocks to the cave. There is a little scrambling there at the end. The floor of the cave is flat and it is a big open room and you have a good view.