dust and starlightUtah / Arizona
Coyote Buttes and The Wave
Permit country on the Utah–Arizona line: The Wave and Coyote Buttes North, Coyote Buttes South, and the Wire Pass slot into Buckskin Gulch.
Part of Utah National Parks and Red Rock Country, with the map of all 4 of its regions.
2 places · 27 photos
Map of Coyote Buttes and The Wave
The places
All placesEvery photo from here
Newest first
27 photos
Field notes
When to go
Our frames here are from April 2025 (Wire Pass), early June 2025 (Coyote Buttes South, the desert still in bloom, with a storm building) and late October 2025 (The Wave and Coyote Buttes North in warm late-morning light). Late October is simply when our permit for The Wave landed. Spring and fall are the milder seasons; in summer the BLM asks hikers to plan for serious heat and carry at least a gallon of water per person.
Getting there
Coyote Buttes North, The Wave included, and Coyote Buttes South are separate permit areas. As of 2026 the BLM lets 64 people a day into the North and 20 into the South, in groups of up to six, through advance permits on Recreation.gov about four months out and a daily lottery you enter on your phone two days ahead; for the North, from inside the geofence around Kanab and Page. The South needs a high-clearance 4WD. Wire Pass needs only a day-use permit, $6 per person as of 2026, and The Wave's suggested route is a strenuous 6.4-mile round trip from the same trailhead.
Our story
We'd applied for The Wave's permit 24 times before we got one. When it landed, for late October 2025, we crossed slickrock and a long crossbedded slope to reach it, ran into a band of desert bighorn and later a full herd, and had The Wave itself in warm late-morning light, with a rain pool caught in its curve and the sky reflected in it.
Wire Pass was an earlier trip, on an April morning in 2025: we walked the slot from the same trailhead as The Wave, toward Buckskin Gulch, past a wedged ladder and flood logs jammed overhead.
In early June 2025 we had Coyote Buttes South to ourselves: crossbedded domes, sandstone teepees and red hoodoos, wildflowers still holding on in the late-spring heat, and one frame of the buttes under a building storm.