Historic Blue Forest Trail: The Best Hike in Petrified Forest NP

Visiting Petrified Forest National Park is a delightful surprise, as the park is full of colorful striated badlands hills, ancient petroglyphs, and the largest concentration of petrified wood in the world.

For me personally, I was just so taken back by how beautiful the scenery was in Petrified Forest. Given the name and the location of the park, I was expecting basically just petrified wood in the middle of the barren desert, but the blue and red painted hills made it extra fun to explore.

And the best place to get up close and personal with the painted hills? Historic Blue Forest Trail.

This is one of the so-called “Off the Beaten Path” trails in Petrified Forest, as named by the park service itself. Petrified Forest NP gives visitors an easy to follow guide for what to see and do in the park. You drive either from north to south or south to north, and stop at the 12 numbered and named stops, all of which are right off the one main thoroughfare.

You can pick up a Park Map at the visitor center which clearly lays out the route and stops. On this guide is also a section called Off the Beaten Path Hikes. These hikes are longer (anywhere from 2 to 8 miles), see very few visitors, and take you out into the wilderness.

I love hiking and would have loved to do most of the hikes on the list, but I had time for just one extra stop (in addition to all the main stops on the map). I asked the ranger what the best trail for incredible views was and she said Historic Blue Forest Trail, and y’all. This has got to be the best hike in the entire park. I seriously loved it.

You get to hike up, through, and in-between the striated painted hills, surrounded by beauty and away from any other people.

Let’s get into exactly what it’s like to do this hike.

Trail Stats

Distance: 3 miles (4.8km)
Elevation Gain: 236 feet
Difficulty: Easy overall, with a couple small areas I’d classify as moderate
Time to Complete: 1.5 hours

Know Before You Go – Important

Historic Blue Forest Trail is an actual trail, but it is not always super well-defined. There are a few spots that can be a little tricky where the trail isn’t 100% obvious. In fact, there was one spot where I went in the completely wrong direction.

Because of this, I’d highly recommend stopping in at the Visitor Center and asking for a guide for this trail. They’ll give you a stapled-together guide full of pictures and descriptions pointing out where and how to follow the trail. If you don’t have AllTrails (where you can do live navigation as you hike), you should for sure grab the guide.

If you do have AllTrails, the guide can still be helpful.

The Trailhead

Historic Blue Forest Trail starts at the Tepees, which is noted but not numbered or pictured on the park map. It is between the Newspaper Rock and Blue Mesa.

There is a little pulloff by the Tepees area on the west side of the road, but this is not the trailhead. The actual trailhead is just south of there, at a pulloff area on the east side of the road. You can find the exact location here.

You’ll park on the pullout area next to a fence, and then walk to the obvious opening in the fence. A raised path will start right from the road and is quite clearly a trail to follow.

The Trail

The trail starts on a raised, gravelly path that goes through a valley, surrounded by the lightly blue badlands hills. These hills are around you, but not particularly close.

The path goes up to some of the actual badlands hills, which is where the trickiest spot on the trail is. The path curves, and there’s a little sign on the hill in front of you, pointing to the left. It seems clear that you work your way around the hill and continue into a deeper canyon with very dark hills. After a few minutes, you’ll come to this tight canyon path:

However, this is the wrong trail!

The arrow pointing to the left is actually indicating that you go UP the hill. When you get closer to the hill, the path becomes obvious, but from farther away it’s easy to get messed up.

It’s kind of small, but there’s a little white arrow on the wooden

I clearly was not the only person who got messed up at this spot, as there were multiple sets of shoeprints going into the wrong canyon.

Anyway, once you start climbing the hill, the real adventure part of the trail begins! You’ll start winding your way along a narrow path on the ridges at the top of the hills, or winding your way between and through the hills.

For the most part, the trail is pretty obvious, but there are a few spots where it seems like the trail has almost disappeared. I think I could have just kept going and found the exact path again soon, but I was very happy to have AllTrails going to show me the exact way forward.

There are magnificent views all around you, and the views just get better the farther back you go.

While I would classify the trail as easy, there are a couple of quite steep, fairly sandy sections, but the steep sections take you to probably the best viewpoint in the whole hike, as you look out over all the hills around you.

One of the funnest parts of the hike, for me, was all the little paths along the top of the ridges:

From this viewpoint, the trail continues along the top of the ridges a little bit farther. The very last section of the trail actually takes you from the ridgeline back down into the valley, and lets you out right in the Blue Mesa Trail area.

This is the view over Blue Mesa. While technically you can continue all the way to the valley floor, I’d suggest just calling it good here.

I would stop before the trail starts descending – it was extremely steep and very rocky and had some sheer dropoffs, making it really easy to slip, and just felt more trecherous than I was comfortable with. Part of the trail had been washed out, which didn’t help either.

Then, just turn around and come back out the way you hiked in.

Overall Thoughts

I absolutely loved this hike – it was super fun and had a bit of adventure to it. Walking on the ridgelines between the Badlands hills was beautiful and exciting. Plus, I loved that I basically had the whole area to myself – I passed only one other group the entire time I was out.

Definitely make sure you have a map (whether AllTrails or a paper map from the Visitor Center), and go enjoy this incredible off the beaten path hike in Petrified Forest.