Road Canyon South Rim

The south rim of upper Road Canyon can be accessed along the Cigarette Springs Road. This bumpy road is one of the east turnoff, about 10 miles south of the Kane Gulch Ranger Station along Utah Route 261 in the Cedar Mesa area of southeast Utah.

About 6 miles east there is a north turnoff that leads about 0.8 miles to the Road Canyon south rim. At the rim there is a route that descends into the canyon and a trail both east and west along the rim. I followed the rim trail east. Road Canyon is deep and layered as it meanders toward the east. With binoculars, there may be small Ancestral Pueblo ruins sites visible across the canyon.

The trail is easy to follow along the dirt segments and has rock cairns marking the way on the bare sandstone segments. After about 2 miles, there is a peninsula extending out into the twisting canyon. Just before the peninsula, there is a rocky outcrop with several large potholes that were holding pools of water.

The trail descends, with some rock scrambling, about 30 feet on the west side to a ledge and then crosses above the neck of the peninsula. There is more scrambling with a looping descent down the sloping sandstone before reaching the level of the narrow neck that leads to the large outcrop at the tip. This segment is somewhat exposed but is marked with cairns.

On the south side of the large boulder formation at several well preserved rooms. Sometimes these large boulder based sites have rooms on the boulder top, but there is no sign of that here. I didn’t see any kivas or rubble pile structures in the level area below these rooms. This doesn’t appear to be a village. Not very many people could live here and it looks like there isn’t much winter shelter.

These rooms don’t have a view toward the approach along the peninsula. One room has a good view down the canyon. 

Sleeping Ute Mountain, Mesa Verde, and the LaPlata Mountains are visible in the far distance, about 100 miles away.

One of the rooms has what appears to be a small window. Many of these structures have small openings in addition to the doorways, but an intermediate size opening like this seems unusual. There was a small display of artifacts here.

There are two low walls along the walkway out to the rocky peninsula. If these were for defense, they don’t seem to be much of a barrier compared to the rocky ledges that come before. My total hike took 4:00 hours on a 64 F windy mid October day. I carried and drank 3 liters of water. I saw 4 other hikers and 4 dogs during my hike.