In the wilderness and wilderness study areas of the Kanab Field Office, one can truly see the diversity in landscape and lifeforms found in southern Utah.  Going from east to west, one first encounters the spectacular Paria Canyon/Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness Area, 45 miles east of Kanab.  The Wilderness area encompasses 112,000 acres of redrock canyons and upthrust fault mountains.  For more detailed information on this  Wilderness Area,  including permit requirements for the canyon and Coyote Buttes, please visit the following website: 
http://www.blm.gov/az/st/en/arolrsmain.html

The definition of Wilderness as stated in the 1964 Act is: “…A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain…an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation,…managed so as to preserve its natural conditions and which  generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature…”.

This Congressionally designated Wilderness now (2008) is 24 years old, and increasingly being "discovered" by many more people.  The main Paria Canyon is a 38-mile long, desert river canyon, starting in a small valley under the pink crags of Bryce Canyon (50 miles north of the Wilderness) and ending at the Colorado River, the beginning of the Grand Canyon. The cliffs above the Paria, for the last 10 miles of its meandering, rise up 2,000 to 2,700 feet over the heads of backpackers slowly making their way the entire length, usually in 4 to 6 days of hiking. The canyon is composed of several different layers of sandstone formed over millions of years of geologic time, where this part of the earth changed from lush jungles and swamps, to sandy desert, to inland sea, and finally to what it is now. There are several hundred river crossings involved in the hike down the canyon, which creates the ironic experience of wading through water walking in the desert.

Buckskin Gulch is a large, very narrow, tributary of Paria, occurring wholly within Utah and connecting to Paria Canyon precisely and serendipitously at the Arizona state line. It is known as one of the longest slot canyons in the world, winding its way through the Navajo Sandstone for about 12 miles of contoured and sculpted, and some would say, convoluted stone walls surrounding hikers in their rocky grasp as they experience the walk through the rock. Sometimes there are pools to wade through, and sometimes they are deep enough to have to swim through, and no way to avoid except turn back.  One of the problems with hiking in narrow desert canyons is dealing with the force that has shaped them—mainly flash-floods.   Impressive thunderstorms form in the summer months, especially, to release their watery loads very intensely and rapidly.
Because the area surrounding these canyons is mostly bare soil and rock, with a light coat of vegetation, the rain does not sink in but flows off the land and down into the canyons and eventually drains into the Colorado River. A weather report is always an essential before entering one of these canyons, for once inside, sheer walls do not allow an escape from the canyon or even above the flashflood.

Coyote Buttes is a Special Management Area of the Paria Canyon/ Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness.  It has become one of the most popular destinations for many people visiting the Colorado Plateau. It is a colorful but fragile Navajo Sandstone slickrock  (bare sandstone formations, ledges and landscape in general) location.  The attraction is the thin ledges that swirl in wild contours of color and stone that are very brittle and breakable.  It has grown as an attraction over the years due to the many published photographs and other media coverage of this small area. Nature has fully used its imagination to converge with the appreciation of our individual minds in all their variety of thought and wonder.

Because of the popularity of all these places and their growing recognition, and an increase of people hiking in the area in the past 10 years a permit system was finally instigated in 1997. It was the best way to limit use and preserve that which was causing the use, to survive. A web site was designed and is now one of the easiest ways to get a permit to any of these locations.

The website is: http://www.blm.gov/az/st/en/arolrsmain.html  and has much more information on it for hiking these places. If you can not reach the site with your own computer, or one in a library, you can phone the Arizona Strip Interpretive Association at: (435) 688-3246 and they can do it for you. Every day 10 Walk-in permits are available (always for the next day ), depending on the time of year (mid-March to mid-November at the Paria Station on US 89, 44 miles east of Kanab, mid-November to mid-March at the Kanab BLM Field Office). People should be at the appropriate office before 9am, but it is not first come first serve, as everyone present will have an even chance. Call the Kanab office for information about  the land and reservations: (435) 644-4600.  The fee per person at the present time is $5. The limits for Paria and Buckskin are no more than 10 people in a group, for day-hikes or overnight. No more than 6 people in a group, for Coyote Buttes, day-use only.  20 people per day are allowed into Coyote Buttes.  Children under 12, day-hiking in the canyons are free, but are charged for over-night or Coyote Buttes.