No Set Trail But There Is A Very Implied One: ~2.5 Miles (More If Explored Thoroughly)

Personal Experience Took 2 Hours & 15 Minutes

Difficult Hike With Scrambling, Climbing, Stairs, Slippery Slickrock, Overgrown Brush, Dead Ends, Heights, Slot Canyons, & Possible Heat And All With No Defined Trail

To hike the Fiery Furnace you must purchase a ticket from the reservation.gov website one week before to either explore the area yourself or take a ranger led tour. It is annoyingly difficult to get a ticket and basically impossible to get one spur of the moment. Another example of our public lands being kept from us.

Once you have a ticket, it’s best to show up at 7:30am on the dot the day of your hike (OR THE DAY BEFORE) because before you can do the hike you must watch a video that painstakingly goes over all of the details as if you were in grade school again. But once the 15 minute video is over, you must then let a ranger first quiz you over the video and then repeat the same material you just heard in said video (you ARE able to show up the day before for your hike for all of this so the day of the hike you can start it at sunrise if it’s, say… summer).

After the presentation you’ll get some tear-resistant paper tickets to tie to your pack so that any ranger who sees you in the Fiery Furnace knows you’re “allowed to be there.” Just know that you can’t follow the guided tours or any other group you run into. You may not join forces with any other random wilderness enjoyer you run into. You should also be quiet. Oh, and of course you may not walk on the sand dunes or the desert crust. Also, don’t leave trash or food or human waste in the Fiery Furnace. So basically just act like a civilized human in the amazingly beautiful natural wonder. It’s all so ridiculous and tiring that some uncivilized people have ruined this for the rest of us. That being said, even though the gift shop sells multiple different versions of Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire, it seems no one that works at or runs the Park has read it. That last fact, by the way, is obvious when you meet the rangers (although, not all of them are unqualified to be at this outdoor temple).

The hike does not have a set route but it does have a “path” and that path becomes clear the more you wander the amazing maze. My only advice is to go past EVERY SINGLE sign that says “Dead End”. Our ranger at the Visitor Center even gave us the same advice (we took the self-guided tour of Fiery Furnace). And that’s because all the amazing stuff is beyond those dead end signs: arches, bridges, windows, run offs, exciting views, etc…

There are also arrows attached to the sandstone that help guide you to the correct way through the maze that is the Fiery Furnace. The arrows are white with a background that is the same color as the sandstone so they’re tough to see. I discovered 2 or 3 of the twenty something arrows while my wife saw dang near every one of them. By the end of the hike (which we took in late June), I was very grateful for those arrows on account of the sun hovering directly above us. We had wanted to start at 7:30am but I am bad at reading directions thoroughly and had not realized we needed to wait to watch a video, get quizzed on said video, and then after 45 minutes of sitting in the visitor center we could head to the Fiery Furnace. Therefore we started the hike an hour later than I had wanted to. So, it’s a great idea if you’re in town the day before to head to the visitor center for this malarky.

Now, after all of that complaining and nit-picking at the NPS’s garbage, I must say that the hike was amazing and absolutely worth it. It was an unforgettable spot with very light traffic in a place that is notorious for being overcrowded.

The name Fiery Furnace doesn’t come from the heat it gives off, actually it’s one of the coolest places in the park due to its shadiness. It’s called Fiery Furnace because when that hot sun sets and throws its rays all over the red sandstone fins, it looks like a furnace heating up. That being said, it still gets quite hot when the sun is beating down upon you. You have the whole day to explore the Fiery Furnace and if you’re not on a ranger guided tour, you have plenty of places and opportunities to sit in the cool shade. I advise you to cool off at those sweet AC spots.