Wolfman Panel via Butler Wash

bears ears national monument, hiking, utah

Wolfman Panel via Butler Wash

Published by

Caitlyn

on

May 9, 2025

In order to day hike and/or backpack within most areas of Bears Ears National Monument, you need to buy a simple permit for each day you plan to be out there.

You do so via good ol’ Recreation.gov here: https://www.recreation.gov/activitypass/50c69634-1b00-11eb-82d6-dec19ab5394e

The permit is $5 per day for a group of up to 12, so for us – two people for two days – it was $10. Totally worth it.

I printed the permit from my e-mail and brought it with us everywhere. No one ever asked about it, but there were a few sign-in books where we wrote the permit number.

After our fun detour to the Sand Island Petroglyphs, we headed to our original destination of the Wolfman Panel along the Butler Wash interpretive trail. The road to the trailhead was the most rutted and pot-holed we saw on the entire trip. lt was super fun to do after navigating the scenic drive at Monument Valley earlier that morning.

I was surprised that a family arrived at the trailhead nearly at the exact same time as us, so we had company-from-a-distance the entire time we were here. I wasn’t mad about it, they were respectful and had a great sense of humor when each of us were trying to find our own way with the least amount of rock scrambling haha.

The trail starts with going under a barbed wire fence, to a dirt road you follow to a flat rocky plateau. You follow the rock-stack cairns to the left and down into the canyon, along the canyon wall.

I’ll admit, my socks with Birkenstocks combo was not the best choice for footwear here but it was fine. The main thing that would have helped me was having legs that were five inches longer for some really tall steps on the way out.

The rocks were all pock marked and different colors of yellows and oranges.

You eventually squeeze through a boulder and butt-scoot down a rock ledge, traverse some more rocks and sand on a hillside-ish area, and boom you’re at the grassy area where you can view the canyon wall where the panel is.

See? You can’t tell me they’re not aliens.

It was around 4/5pm by this point which was usually the hottest part of our days out there. The sun was laserbeaming and we were watching dark clouds approach from the distance. We stood there in wonder and thought up a bunch of alien-related theories about the glyphs and then turned around the way we came.

We crossed paths with a few people who were heading down to do the same thing, drove back out on the bumpy dirt road, and found dinner in the local town – Blanding, Utah.

Ike got food from A&W, which was inside of a bowling alley that doubled as a huge convenience store. I got my comfort sandwich from across the street at Subway.

We headed for our home for the night at Sunset Campground. We had it completely to ourselves and that’s my favorite thing ever.

This was another night we were lucky enough to not need window covers on, and we slept with the sunroof cover open so we could look at the sky and stars alllll night.