If you are entering the southern entrance of Snow Canyon State Park near Santa Clara, Jenny’s Canyon is your very first trailhead inside the park. It is on the right side of the road just past the payment booth.
The trail is a very quick .3 miles out and back, but you do have to walk through sand. The entire length of the trail features beautiful views of the red cliffs and mountains.
South of the trail are the last outcroppings of the lava fields that come all the way up from Santa Clara. The lava fields make for a nice contrasting foreground with the red rock in the background.
This last view point is actually a little past Jenny’s Canyon, looking back north toward the Jenny’s Canyon.
The canyon is easy to find as the short trail leads right to its entrance, which you can see in the image below. Jenny’s Canyon is a box canyon, meaning there is no exit point and it just closes off after 20 or 30 feet. This actually makes it really difficult to photograph because there is not a gap of light to signal that it is a slot canyon. Including as much of the sky above the canyon as you can will help with this problem, but creates a new problem as the exposure difference inside and outside the slot canyon is extreme.
The image below shows the end of Jenny’s Canyon. I tried to capture just a sliver of light because I couldn’t include the sky very well.
The image below is another shot of the end of the canyon. I captured this one because I really liked the big rock that had fallen down and gotten stuck between the canyon walls.
This next image is from inside the slot canyon looking toward the entrance. This is probably the best view to really capture the canyon; however, it is also the hardest to capture due to the light difference. You will want to be here in low lighting for sure. I was here in the middle of the day and was trying to shoot quickly between people coming in and out. As you can see below, it didn’t work out well because the light bleed from the opening in the canyon cast way too much on the canyon walls.
The next image is closer to the entrance where the difference in lighting conditions weren’t so drastic. This was much easier to capture and the additional light on the canyon walls really shows off the colors of the canyon walls.
There are also some great details when you get into the canyon. One of my favorite places was the area shown below with some cool honeycomb-weathered rocks.
There is actually quite a bit of honeycomb weathered rock. The cool area below has honeycombs going through a small arch.
I climbed up onto a ledge to get close to the arch so I could shoot through it and was surprised to find a whole row of arches along the honeycombed wall.
Some more honeycomb weathering in the image below.
Jenny’s Canyon is also a good place to spot some wildlife, at least lizards. We found one in the little area just above Jenny’s Canyon.
It was a fast little guy, but I think it was scared of us and would stop and sit still if we got close.
