Bryce Canyon National Park
Episode Guest
Peter Densmore, Visual Information Specialist
Bryce Canyon National Park
Park Stats
Location: Paunsaugunt Plateau
Park number: 17th National Park
Park established: September 15, 1928 (National Monument on June 8, 1923)
President in office: President Calvin Coolidge
Park size: 35,835 acres
Visitors: 2,354,660 in 2022
Fun fact:
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Home to Mule Deer, Pronghorn, Mountain Lion, Utah Prairie Dog and more
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Only the toughest flowers and plants will survive
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Home to a 78-mile trail system of
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Bryce Canyon is the Greatest concentration of “hoodoos” on earth
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Longest-running astronomy interpretation program in the National Park Service (since 1969)
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Located at the top of the “Grand Staircase”, a series of colorful cliffs stepping down from Bryce Canyon to the Grand Canyon and containing a record of over 200 million years of the ancient environment and fossil records.
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It is not truly a canyon, but instead a series of natural amphitheaters
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Speed Round
What is your earliest park memory?
It would probably be going to Cuyahoga and Brandywine Falls. I’m from the Midwest and have family in Ohio, but it wasn’t a national park yet. That was established in 2000, so I’m not sure it counts.
It would probably be Timpanogos Cave in 2013. It would have been hiking there while I was living in Salt Lake City. Going up into the cave, seeing the heart of the mountain, and getting to experience a national park that’s much closer to the urban interface.
It kind of made sense that my life was more based in cities at that time and Timpanotus Cave was, was right there.
What made you love the parks?
Honestly, it was working at one. My national park relationship began to take shape around my 30th birthday. I left the city of Chicago, where I’ve been living and working in photo and video work there. I had a very depressing winter, a challenging winter, and on the tail end of that found my way to a job here at Bryce as their centennial coordinator for the 2016 centennial. Getting to know the National Park history and just preparing myself to become a park ranger and then experiencing it firsthand.
I really got to know them at the same time that I started working, but they came together.
What is your favorite thing about Bryce Canyon National Park?
It would probably be the intersection of the various geographic provinces and ecosystems that come together here. On top of the plateau, you’ve got a lot that’s in common with the Rocky Mountains, kind of continuing from the Rocky Mountains out onto these high plateaus that you find in this part of southwest Utah.
But as you go down in lower elevation, lower parts of the park, you’re getting into kind of the cold deserts of the Colorado Plateau, and you’ll watch the plants and animals change as you come lower.
As you go west, you’re very quickly into the Great Basin ecosystems, and everything you find in the basin range out there.
So, Bryce Canyon really sits at this point of intersection, it’s right at the edge of a lot of these provinces. And so the intermingling and interactions and just juxtapositions of those things I find exciting and beautiful.
What is your favorite thing to do at Bryce Canyon National Park?
I’m really big into the plants. Honestly, photographing the plants within their environment here is fun. The vivid colors of the clarion formation are such a beautiful background and such for these things.
And the plants are so interesting. They’re very small plants in a lot of cases. Some of the rarest wildflowers are just hugging the ground with these tiny flowers among the hoodoos. Going out and trying to find those and to photograph, you get drawn into everything else, so they’re a great gateway to enjoying the park.
What park have you yet to visit but is on your bucket list and why?
I think Canyonlands. It’s just a little bit to the east. You talk about these five Southern Utah National Parks. That’s the last one. And so, a little bit cooler in the winter. I may go there next month.
I would also say Gates of the Arctic, something up in that area. I just finished reading Barry Lopez’s “Arctic Dreams”, and was enchanted by that book and some of the comparisons he even makes between the Arctic environment and the desert environment. I find it sparked my imagination. So, if I can make it up there, that would be fantastic.
What are three must-haves you pack for a park visit?
Well, I usually bring my camera, that’s a big part of how I connect with new environments and capture what catches my eye.
Binoculars are usually in there too for birding and wildlife viewing.
And then typically my phone. The big reason for that is a lot of the great apps. One that I’ll shout out is the Merlin birding app. They’ve got the algorithms and such figured out to the point that you can record your environment and this app will recognize patterns in bird calls and song and will highlight the bird that it thinks it’s hearing. It’s very cool how some of this technology can expedite your connection with a new environment.
What is your favorite campfire activity?
If there are other people there, the company that can be shared over fire is great.
The fire itself is mesmerizing. So there’s plenty to enjoy.
Tent, camper, or cabin?
I’m a tent camper. I like being able to hear and feel the environment. Maybe not even a tent. Maybe just a sleeping pad and a sleeping bag, depending on the weather.
I guess I kind of technically live in a cabin currently within the park too, so I do love that. And if I didn’t live in a cabin, maybe that would be higher up.
Hiking with or without trekking poles?
Usually without. I like to have my hands free for things like photography and such, but certain conditions can make them a total lifesaver.
In icy, snowy conditions, or if there’s a lot of uphill and downhill, I think you can save your knees some strain, so it really depends.
And what is your favorite trail snack?
If it’s just a simple thing, it would probably be pistachios.
If it can be a little more complex, my wife will often make a simple trail mix. You can get dates and cashews in there together, but I’m pretty happy.
What is the best animal sighting that you’ve had?
I do a lot of birding, in part because my wife is an enthusiastic birder. Owls are always very striking life forms to have an interaction with. I remember being at lower elevations and hiking through juniper trees and stopping and looking up and there being a northern saw wet owl in this crook of a tree at eye level.
These owls are like the size of a softball. They’re very small, but they have these yellow forward-facing eyes that just glare right into you and just meeting the gaze of a small owl that was resting in the street during the day was unforgettable, so that one comes to mind.
What is your favorite sound in the parks?
Generally, it’s probably the wind in the ponderosa pine trees.
The scale of this landscape. is already kind of oceanic. It’s so big, some of these views, but most of my time is in the woods not at the rim, where our cabin is located and the wind through the trees creates an oceanic kind of sound, almost like soothing waves. I appreciate that.
And then as the birds come back the migratory birds come back, there are birds here all year round, of course, but as the migratory birds start to return, the song of the hermit thrush. That’s inspired poets for ages. It’s a beautiful and haunting sound. And so when I can hear the hermit thrush in the Ponderosa Forest again, that, that feels like a peak, thrice experience to me.
What is the greatest gift the parks give to us?
I think that they’re our national storytellers and keepers, whether that’s the nation’s history, ecosystems, failures dreams, and people. The National Parks, from battlefields to National Parks and the various sites of massacres and places that recognize struggles for human rights and all these stories are contained in some way through our National Parks.
They provide places for people to not only learn about those stories and start to weave them together into a whole, but they also provide a space for dialogue. Whether that’s online in our social media or within the park itself, I think a lot of the divisions in our society doesn’t exist, or seem to exist, as much within the space of the National Parks.
I feel like they’re great gathering places where dialogue seems to still be possible, and I think it’s kind of a sacred role of the National Park Service to help. I think it’s really important that we facilitate that dialogue and help people to understand their country and themselves and everyone else that makes it up better, to build curiosity and empathy and wonder.