SOUTH COYOTE BUTTES

An exposed Jurassic Navajo Sandstone can be seen in the Coyote Buttes region. Iron oxide pigments of different kinds are present in the layers of the sandstone, which is why the colors vary.

Coyote Buttes South has two trailheads: Cottonwood Cove and Pawhole. Compared to Pawhole, which is 2.5 miles long, Cottonwood Cove’s trailhead is around 11.5 miles long on jeep roads. There are no pathways, there aren’t many people around, and it’s a huge, lonely area that becomes dangerous and impassable when it rains. Gaia, a GPS-like program, was required for navigation as we had to drive over the sand. It is breathtakingly gorgeous but in a rather frightening way.

We went to both locations and were completely enthralled by the amazing shapes and colors, some of which resembled chess pieces and others witch hats (you can see a chess piece in the last few photos). We traveled through pine forests that were coated in snow and ice and shimmering in the early morning sunlight before arriving in a genuinely amazing desert-like setting.

<https://www.thewave.info/CoyoteButtesSouthCode/Map.html>

You feel as though you are on a foreign planet when you see all of those amazing rock formations of different shapes and colors.