Slickrock at a glance
- What it is
- Bare sandstone, no soil, no cut tread
- Grip when dry
- Excellent
- Grip when wet, icy or sandy
- Poor
- Route marking
- Cairns rather than a path
Why is it called slickrock if it is not slippery?
Dry Navajo or Wingate sandstone is one of the grippiest natural surfaces you can walk on. The name is a leftover from wagon-era travel: the National Park Service explains that loose sand and gravel lying on the rock made it slick for horses shod in metal, which had no purchase on it.
Rubber changed the equation entirely. On a modern outsole the same rock is confidence-inspiring enough that people run on it. The historical name stuck anyway, and it now sets exactly the wrong expectation for a hiker reading a trail description for the first time.
When does slickrock actually get slick?
Three conditions flip it. Wet rock, because a thin film of water on fine-grained sandstone behaves like a lubricant. Ice, for the same reason and worse. And a loose layer of sand or grit over the rock, which rolls under a foot exactly the way ball bearings would.
That last one is the common case and the easiest to miss, because the rock underneath looks and feels solid. Land managers in southern Utah routinely advise against the steeper slickrock routes when the rock is wet or icy, and the drop-offs on those routes are what make the advice serious.
How do you follow a route with no trail on it?
You follow cairns, which are small stacks of stones placed by trail crews to mark the line across open rock. Walk from one to the next, and if you cannot see the next one, stop and look before you commit rather than carrying on and hoping.
Do not build new cairns. Extra stacks placed by well-meaning visitors are the standard way people get led off a route, and moving the stones also disturbs the crust and the small life underneath them.
What this means when you're choosing
- A sticky rubber outsole, which matters far more here than deep lugs
- Shallow to moderate lugs, since deep ones lift the rubber off smooth rock
- A shoe you can edge and smear in, rather than a soft trail-cushioned one
- The forecast, because rain turns the best surface into the worst one
The common mistake
Choosing the shoe with the deepest lugs
Deep, widely spaced lugs are what you want in mud, and they are the wrong answer on rock. They reduce the amount of rubber actually touching a smooth surface, so a shallower, stickier outsole holds better on slickrock. Match the outsole to the ground, not to how aggressive it looks.
Common questions
Is slickrock hard to walk on?
On dry rock at a moderate angle it is easier than a rocky trail, because the surface is continuous and there is nothing to trip over. It gets hard when the angle steepens, when route-finding between cairns is unclear, or when the rock is wet.
What shoes are best for slickrock?
Anything with a sticky rubber compound and a relatively shallow lug pattern. Grip on smooth rock comes from rubber contact area and compound, not from lug depth, so an aggressive mud outsole is a downgrade here.
Where this is defined
- Shafer Canyon Overlook: Anatomy of a Canyon, National Park Service
- Devils Garden, National Park Service, Arches National Park