Trail Review: Elephant Hill inside Canyonlands National Park

Elephant Hill is a trail I have been dreaming about driving for a long time. It peaked my interest when I saw a Jeep driving through a tight section called “Devil’s Pocket”. This trail will not disappoint! It has some great technical off-road sections and the views were spectacular!

Getting There

The trailhead starts at this location: https://goo.gl/maps/xvZohNHGPbvfsdJe8

Keep in mind, this trail isn’t “just out of Moab”. It is an additional 1.5 hours to get there.

Trail Permit

Elephant Hill requires a day use permit to drive on. They only allow 3 vehicles per group and each group needs to be separated by 45 minutes. As you work your way through the obstacles, you will know why. You can reserve the permit up to 24 hours online. You can also get a permit at the Needles District visitor center inside of Canyonlands. There is no cost for the permit, but there is a $30 fee per car to get into Canyonlands. Luckily I bought a year permit to get into any national park.

I always get a little excited when I see a warning sign like this!

First Obstacles

The trail wastes no time at throwing the hard stuff at you. In fact, the majority of the hard obstacles are on the first mile of the trail.

You can see the road winding up the side of Elephant Hill

Jeep having no problem on these rock shelves (and looking good while doing them!)

They filled in some places in the trail with cement to make it smoother. National Park dollars hard at work!

Pull in and Back Down

As you go down the rocky and technical section of the road, you will encounter a point where a sign tells you to pull in and then back down because the turn is too tight. It isn’t as bad as it looks, but a spotter comes in handy!

Tacoma backing down the trail

Met Some New Friends

We caught up to a Tacoma and a Jeep as we were going down the technical rock shelves. The Tacoma made it down with a few scratches to the bumper, but nothing serious. The Jeep made it without any problems.

I am not sure they were having fun. They seemed very stressed by the trail and took it VERY slow! It is hard to blame the Jeep owner considering his rig was probably 60K, but hey, that is what it was built for! :) Luckily they let us pass soon after so we could make better time.

Scenery

The scenery was incredible!

A shot of the “needles”

Explored some sections near the road

Jeep Commercial

Devils Pocket

I was the most excited / nervous about this obstacle. As stated in the introduction, it was what peaked my interest in the trail in the first place. However, I just didn’t know how tight it would be and I would rather not scratch the paint!

It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I just kept my driver’s side mirror close to the wall and didn’t have any problems at all!

SOB Hill

Son of a Bucksnort hill? Yeah, yeah, let’s go with that!

This was a fun section. We did a four point turn to get around it, but if you have big tires/lift, that might not be necessary. When we came back, I saw another vehicle reverse through this obstacle. I am going to try that next time!

Lunch Time

Erik making us some burgs! Why does everything taste better on the trail?!

Joint Trail

We didn’t get a chance to do this hike, but we definitely will next time! I wanted to make sure we had enough time to finish the loop and see the hike the confluence trail.

Just having some fun!

Couple of characters

More beautiful scenery

Silver stairs was a fun obstacle. We were wondering where the Bronze stairs were? #wakawaka

Confluence

At the top of the loop, there is a hike to go to “Confluence”. It is the place where the Green River meets up with the Colorado River. It isn’t a hard hike, and is definitely worth it!

Go Cougs!

Drone Time

Erik brought his drone and we got some cool shots. I need to invest in one!

Drone caught me airing back up the tires!

Hello down there!

Cell Coverage

I got signal one time this entire trip (at Silver Stairs). I wouldn’t count on it though (it was very weak). Other than that freak moment, there was ZERO coverage.

I would make sure you let people know where you are going and make sure you bring enough supplies if you break down and have to walk out of there!

Luckily it is a popular location and the visitor center isn’t far from the trail head, but you could be easily hiking 5–10 miles. Keep in mind, the cost of a breakdown is minimum of $1500.

One happy camper!

Final Thoughts

If I were to rate this trail, I would rate it as my top trail for scenery. It is a trail you must do at one point. It is pretty far off the beating path though. I drove all the way there from Orem, did the trail, and went all the way back in one day. I do not recommend doing that! We left at 5am in the morning and got back at 1am that night (morning I guess)!

I wouldn’t rate it as my favorite trail for Jeep obstacles. I preferred some of the other Moab trails for that.

If you want to save some time, you could do just the upper loop of the trail. The bottom half is cool, but if I could only pick one, I would do the upper.

It would be a good idea to get a map because parts of the trail are one way only.

Cheers and have fun Jeeping!