Round Trip Distance: 0.5 miles
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 5528 - 5555 feet
Cellphone: 0 bars
Time: 1 hr.
Trailhead: Moccasin Mountain Dinosaur Tracksite
Fee: none
Attractions: dinosaur tracks
The Moccasin Mountain Dinosaur Tracksite is located west of Kanab, Utah. The site includes hundreds of tracks from at least 5 different species of early Jurassic dinosaurs. Kayentapus, Grallator, Otozoum, Batrachopus, and Brasilichnium footprints have been identified at the site.
While the trailhead is well known and marked on Google Maps driving apps seem to know nothing about the BLM 30 which leads there. Turn-by-turn directions can be gotten by entering the GPS coordinates for the turnoff 37.02451, -112.79406 into your driving app. From there BLM 30 is well signed all the way to the tracksite.
BLM 30 is strictly a 4WD road due to long stretches of deep sand. The road is easiest to travel right after a good sand packing rain.
There are 2 trailheads from which to choose where to park. The first is at the top of the hill above the site and the second is about an hundred yards later at the bottom of the hill. At the second area there are 3 kiosks that you will want to study before trying to find the tracks. A map gives a general idea of where to look and some photos of the tracks show what the tracks look like.
From the trailhead the hiking is all upon Navajo sandstone slickrock. As can be seen the scenery is rather pretty.
A good way to find the first tracks is to keep hiking down the slickrock until you come to a drop off.
To the right of the drop off there is a sloped expanse of lighter colored sandstone that has some yellowish stains in places. Begin walking up each finger, or ripple of rock, examining the flat surfaces closely for the tracks.
The fossilized tracks are almost hiding inside of the surrounding rock. As the sandstone slowly erodes the fossils, which are of a harder substance, are becoming exposed.
This looks just like the Kayentapus track on the trailhead kiosk. It is about 30 cm wide.
In this photo there are 4 tracks in a row forming a trackway.
Here is a trackway of Grallator tracks.
And one of Otozoum tracks.
