Four Alcove Trail on Comb Ridge

The Four Alcove Trail is along one of the many creeks that flow east off of Comb Ridge into Lower Butler Wash in southeast Utah, about five miles west of Bluff. This isn't one of the better known trails in this unpublicized area, but a small ruins in a high alcove is visible with binoculars from the Butler Wash Road at about 5.5 miles north of the south gate.

This trail starts at short side road that has a loop and a campsite at the end, right on the edge of Butler Wash. It heads up a narrow gash in the Comb Ridge sandstone to an area that has two alcoves on the north and two on the south. There are cow trails leading across the wash and sage brush area to the creek. In the creek there are trail segments that cows and a few hikers use. There isn't a sign in box or other information for this route.

The small ruin that is visible is high in an alcove and comes in and out of view. In the area below the ruins there is another south facing alcove and also two north facing alcoves directly across. The high desert plants like Pinon Pine and Utah Juniper penetrate this creek area. There was some moisture in the upper end of the creek from recent rain.

To get a better view of the south facing ruins I climbed into the very large north facing alcove. Although this alcove is very large there were no standing structures, though there were several holes that looked like amateur excavations. I didn't see any easy way to get closer to the high level site.

The lower south facing alcove has a deep cave but quite a bit of sandstone has crashed into the area in front of the site. There is a small dry wall structure with what looks like an attempt at petroglyphs. The second and smaller north facing alcove also has a small dry wall structure.

I liked the views from this narrow gash of a canyon back down towards Butler Wash. Before the four alcove area there is a side trail leading to the left to a side branch of the creek that also has an alcove with a small dry wall structure and more good views.

I used about 1:45 hours here and this felt like about a 3 mile hike.