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Bryce Canyon Winter Festival Spotlights Winter Outdoor Activities and Recreation
If you've never visited the Utah desert in winter, you've missed one of the most spectacular sites—or should we say "sights"?—on Earth. At about 8,000 feet above sea level, winter means the red sandstone hoodoos, fins, arches and spires of Bryce Canyon are veiled in snow. The Bryce Canyon Winter Festival, scheduled for Feb. 17–19, 2007, is the perfect reason to put this trip on your itinerary.
The Bryce Canyon Winter Festival, held every year over Presidents Day weekend, offers the chance to learn about and participate in a wide variety of winter recreational activities including cross-country ski tours, ski waxing clinics, snowshoe tours and races, archery clinics, ski archery competitions, kayaking demos (in an indoor pool), GPS clinics, backcountry safety clinics, night sky and astronomy programs, photography clinics and contests, and snow sculpture contests. Here's a schedule of events. All events are held at Ruby's Inn or inside Bryce Canyon National Park. Most events are free, but you will need to pay admission to Bryce Canyon.
The historic Ruby's Inn is the official host and organizer of the winter festival. The inn was originally a ranch built in 1916 by Reuben C. (Ruby) Syrett, who visited a nearby canyon named Bryce a few weeks later and became one of the first to tout the canyon's value as a destination for tourists. By 1919, he had built a lodge where travelers could rest and get meals. In 1923, Bryce Canyon was named a national park and Ruby's Inn gained in reputation. Today, it's owned and operated by Ruby's grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
For more information and reservations, visit www.rubysinn.com or call Ruby's Inn at (866) 866-6616.
Before or after the festival, you might want to visit one or more of Utah's national parks and monuments, such as Zion, Grand Staircase-Escalante, Capitol Reef, Arches, Canyonland and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Skiers and snowboarders also should consider tacking on a few days to get in some downhill thrills at Brian Head Resort, about 1.5 hours away.