Round Trip Distance: 1.4 miles
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 4593 - 4654 feet
Cellphone: 0-3 bars
Time: 1 hr.
Trailhead: 37.31232, -109.62443
Fee: $5/person/day or $10/week
Attractions: cliff dwellings
The Pedestal Ruin is located in the Butler Wash Area of the Bears Ears National Monument west of Bluff, Utah. The well named cliff dwelling sits on top of a broad column of sandstone that juts out from the cliff serving as the pedestal platform of a long set of ruins.
To get there head west out of Bluff to the Butler Wash Road which is across from the Airport turnoff about 4 miles out of town.
At the 3.7 mile point from UT-163 take the 4WD road on the right.
The only real need for 4WD is the short sandy hill that gets you up onto the first mesa above the Butler Wash Road. If you had to begin hiking from this point you would be adding 0.8 miles to the round trip distance.
The 4WD road ends on a little knoll. There are several routes off of the knoll that head south toward the Pedestal Ruins but the best route drops off the left or east side of the knoll.
The trail is faint but if you find it the hiking is pretty easy. Basically you are just heading south parallel to the cliffs for less than 3/4 of a mile.
At that point there is a little cove of a canyon where you get your first glimpse of the ruins.
The main block of ruins indeed sits on top of a pedestal like column on the side of the cliff.
Access would have been through a gap on the right between the pedestal and the face of the cliff.
Not that we could have managed the climb but we felt we could see well enough from below the ruins.
Another ruin can be seen off to the left of the Pedestal Ruin.
