White Pocket

One of Arizona‘s obscurer scenic areas is Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, maintained by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Compared to monuments run by the National Park Service (NPS), the BLM does little to advertise its offerings. Vermilion Cliffs has no Visitor’s Center, and only vehicles with serious suspension and ground clearance can traverse the unpaved roads to reach its trails.

We hired Kanab Tour Company (in Kanab, UT) to take us to the small remote region called White Pocket. I can best describe this area as “strawberry / vanilla swirl”.

Our guide drove us by truck to an access point, actually in Utah’s Escalante / Grand Staircase National Monument (another BLM property). He unloaded the ATV that would take us to the Pocket, and we all piled in, with the guide doing the driving. Optionally, we could have had our own vehicle and driven behind him. Soon we entered Arizona and Vermilion Cliffs. The roads were narrow and bumpy, the vehicle loud and fast. Our guide was an experienced driver in a capable machine, and we passed several Jeep-type vehicles that were going much more slowly.

This part of Arizona sits at an elevation around 5000 feet. It’s mostly grasslands with small shrubs and trees (a lot of juniper), and the occasional rocky hill sticking up. The rocks are reddish for the most part. As we approached White Pocket, it stood out as strikingly distinct from the rest of the landscape. The entire Pocket is about half a mile square, pale and barren. The parking lot had a few other cars and ATVs. As we entered the area on foot, we were greeted with lumpy convolutions that resembled brains.

There isn’t “a trail”. Our guide took us across the rocks on a route he liked, but encouraged us to look around, climb, take pictures, explore on our own. There were a few other people, maybe a dozen in the whole area.

White Pocket has almost no vegetation, and very little shade. I don’t recommend it as a Summer destination, but it was bearable in mid-May. Its formations are mostly Navajo Sandstone (the same rock formation found in much of the Grand Canyon), blown into dunes and swirled by wind, and then petrified.

I took a ton of pictures. I like all the ones I chose for this post, but I could easily have tripled the number and still liked them all.

You may have heard of “The Wave” formation in Coyote Buttes, not that far from here. This area has a lot of similar features.

After a couple hours exploring, we returned to the ATV. On the way back, we stopped at the Maze Rock Art trail. A roundtrip hike of about a mile and a half took us to this spectacular petroglyph panel.

I can’t say enough good things about this trip. It was amazing.