Mossy Cave

The stream that carves the little canyon and feeds the Mossy Cave waterfall is not entirely natural. In the 1890s Mormon pioneer settlers in the valley below dug a long irrigation ditch, the Tropic Ditch, to divert water over the rim from the East Fork of the Sevier River and carry it down to their fields. That diverted water is what now tumbles through the canyon and over the falls.

In a bit over a century that flow has done real work, cutting the small gorge and steepening the drop where the waterfall now spills. It is a rare place where you can see erosion happening on a human timescale, the land visibly reshaped by a channel people dug for their farms. Long before the settlers, this high plateau was Paiute homeland, and the Southern Paiute remain connected to the Bryce Canyon country today.

A short way up the canyon the trail splits. One branch leads to a small waterfall where the ditch water drops over a ledge into a pool, a welcome and unexpected sight in this dry country and a favorite spot to sit on a warm afternoon. The other branch climbs a little to the mossy cave itself.

The cave is really a shallow alcove undercut into the rock, kept cool and shaded, where seeping groundwater keeps a hanging garden of moss and ferns alive on the walls and drips steadily from the ceiling. In summer it is a cool refuge, and in the cold of winter the seeps freeze into curtains and columns of ice that draw photographers to the frozen grotto.

The pink and orange spires along the trail are hoodoos, the signature landform of Bryce Canyon. They are carved from a soft, iron-tinted limestone laid down in ancient lakes, then lifted high onto the plateau. The color comes from iron and manganese staining the rock in bands of pink, orange, and cream.

The hoodoos themselves are made largely by frost. Water seeps into cracks in the rock, freezes and expands on cold nights, and slowly pries the stone apart, a process that happens here on hundreds of nights a year. Combined with occasional rain washing away the loosened debris, this frost-wedging sculpts the fins of rock into rows of delicate, ever-changing spires.

Spring and fall are ideal at Mossy Cave, with mild temperatures, running water, and comfortable walking. Summer is warm and busier, though the low trailhead and the shade of the grotto make it more bearable than the exposed plateau rim, and the waterfall is a cool draw on a hot day.

Winter transforms the trail. Snow dusts the hoodoos, and the seeps in the grotto freeze into ice, turning the alcove into a glittering wall of icicles. The footing grows slick and the little bridges can ice over, so traction and care matter, but a snowy Mossy Cave is one of the quieter, more magical corners of Bryce Canyon.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.