The Maze: Utah's Most Remote Backcountry

Its roads and trails are difficult, and visitors need high-clearance four-wheel-drive vehicles. Most trips last at least three days, and a week can easily be filled. Visitors should plan for self-sufficiency and carry the gear needed for self-rescue.

Roads in the Maze are isolated and very hard going, and drivers without experience should stay off them. Study your route carefully before you set out. Four-wheel-drive and mountain bike groups must stay at designated sites.

Backpacking here is demanding, and the trails are primitive. Cairns guide hikers from the mesa top down to the canyon bottom, but washes often go unmarked, and without a topographic map many canyons are hard to tell apart. Getting past steep slickrock and pour-offs on the Maze Overlook Trail and other routes takes basic climbing ability. A 25-foot rope often helps lower or lift packs at tough spots, and some routes can unsettle hikers who fear heights. Hans Flat Ranger Station, 46 miles along dirt road from Utah 24, is the place to check on the reliable springs in the canyons.

Every overnight trip in the backcountry needs a permit. In spring and fall, requests often exceed the permits available, so book well ahead for peak-season trips. Backpackers can reserve a designated site or stay in an at-large zone. The Orange Cliffs Unit of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area shares the park's western boundary and follows the same backcountry plan and permit system.

Famous outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid used the Maze as a hideout. Among its landforms, the Chocolate Drops are a series of sandstone mesas standing high above the land around them. They are also called Locomotive Buttes.