Southern Cathedral Valley Road

Total Miles
15.4

Technical Rating

Easy

Best Time

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter

Trail Type

Full-Width Road

Accessible By

Trail Overview

This is another stunning maintained desert trail that connects you from the main road to Lower Cathedral Valley. It is well-maintained and scenic. All vehicle types can make it, even sedans. In one section, the road weaves and snakes through a beautiful rock and dirt road in a canyon-like area. Again, 2WD vehicles can make it.

Photos of Southern Cathedral Valley Road

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Difficulty

2WD vehicles can make it, so it's easy.

Technical Rating

Status Reports

Very easy trail. The dry washes were easy to cross. Very rocky and very bumpy.

Just did the whole loop starting from clockwise from the River ford and ended in Caineville. Great weather the whole time. There aren't big rocks to navigate around or any flowing rivers to cross on the Cathedral Valley side. But, unless you'd really like to see the Bentonite Hills, I'd skip the river ford side and only go in from Caineville; you're not missing much by doing this. As for the river crossings in the valley toward the Temples, the river is bone dry and it appears as though a tractor has gone through and smoothed out the road and helped to make the crossings doable in a normal SUV. The road is not super sandy to where you'd need to worry about getting stuck in sand. The road is also surprisingly smooth. 90% of the road I was going above 30 mph. Only about 10% is rough washboard.