The BLM page for Peek-a-Boo Slot Canyon ends with two words: “No fees.” No permit, no timed entry, no guide required, which in this corner of Utah makes it an outlier. Antelope Canyon needs a Navajo guide. The Wave needs a lottery permit. Horseshoe Bend charges to park. This one you can simply walk into. The same BLM page then explains why most people do not: the road in is deep sand that needs a high-clearance four-wheel drive, and in summer it can stop one of those too.
Entry cost
Free. No fee, no permit, no reservation
Also called
Red Canyon
Where
About 9 miles north of Kanab, east off US-89
The walk
0.7 miles round trip, easy, per the BLM
Access
High-clearance 4x4, or a guided tour from Kanab
Guided price
$59 to $130 per person, four operators
Managed by
BLM, Kanab Field Office
Time zone
Utah, Mountain Time. Page, Arizona is not
Three places are called Peekaboo
Before anything else, make sure you are booking the canyon you think you are. The name is attached to three unrelated places within a couple of hours of each other, and people arrive at the wrong one.
| Name | Where | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Peek-a-Boo Slot Canyon, also Red Canyon | 9 miles north of Kanab, off US-89 | This page. A short red slot on BLM land, free, reached by a sand road. |
| Peek-a-Boo Gulch | Dry Fork of Coyote Gulch, Hole-in-the-Rock Road, near Escalante | A different canyon entirely, usually hiked with Spooky Gulch. Over three hours from Kanab, with a climb at the entrance. |
| Peekaboo Loop | Bryce Canyon National Park | A 5.5-mile hiking trail among hoodoos. Not a slot canyon at all. |
One practical consequence: photographs labelled “Peek-a-Boo Canyon” in open image libraries are usually the Escalante one. The four on Wikimedia Commons under that name are all geotagged at 37.48, -111.21, which is Dry Fork. If the picture that sold you the trip shows a high double arch at the entrance, you are looking at Escalante, not Kanab.
The Escalante pair is covered alongside the rest of the region in our comparison of the slot canyons of Arizona and Utah, and the Bryce trail in the Bryce Canyon hiking guide.
What the BLM says about it
The land manager publishes a short page on this canyon, and it is worth taking literally because it is the only description here written by someone with no tour to sell. It calls Peek-a-Boo an easy, short hike of about 0.7 miles round trip into one of the most beautiful slot canyons in the area. Inside, it points out ancient Moqui steps cut into the canyon wall and logs wedged between the walls above your head, left there by water.
Photograph by Raven Chavez for BLM Utah, public domain. BLM Utah publishes it under the title Peekaboo Slot Canyon without recording where it was taken, so treat it as what a slot canyon on this land looks like rather than as a specific corner of this one.
The same page carries two warnings, and both matter more than the hike description. The first is the sand, covered below. The second is that flash floods have pushed boulders into the canyon, creating drop-offs, and that floods keep changing their height and difficulty by depositing or washing away sediment. The practical effect is that the inside of Peek-a-Boo is not a fixed object. An obstacle somebody photographed two seasons ago may be buried now, and a new one may have appeared.
It is free. The road is the price.
Free entry is the headline and it is true, but it hides the actual budget. The question at Peek-a-Boo is never what the ticket costs, because there is no ticket. It is what vehicle you have.
The BLM puts it in one sentence: the route to the trailhead is deep sand and requires a four-wheel, high-clearance vehicle, and may even be inaccessible to those vehicles in the summer months. It then adds that ATVs and UTVs are the most common way people cover that stretch. That is the land manager saying, in its own words, that the normal way to reach a free canyon is on a machine most visitors do not have.
So the real comparison is not free against paid. It is this:
| How you get there | What it costs | What can go wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Your own high-clearance 4x4 | Nothing | Nothing, if it genuinely is one and the sand is behaving. |
| A rental “SUV” | Nothing, then a recovery bill | Most are front-wheel-drive crossovers with ordinary ground clearance. Sand is exactly what they fail in, and there is no phone signal to call from. |
| Guided trip from Kanab | $59 to $130 per person | Group size varies from 10 to 30, and two of the four operators cancel if the trip does not fill. |
Guided prices are Viator starting prices for four Kanab operators, read on 11 November 2026 for dates in April 2027.
Driving yourself
If you do have the vehicle, this is a genuinely free morning and nobody will stop you. The BLM directions run as follows. Head north out of Kanab on US-89 for about 9 miles, then turn east after the Peek-a-Boo sign at the highway. You go up a short hill and across a cattle guard into a large gravel parking area. On the eastern side of that lot, BLM route 102 begins. Follow 102 until you reach a wash, then turn west onto route 106H and follow the wash until it dead-ends at the slot canyon.
Two things that sentence does not say out loud. The gravel parking area is where ordinary cars stop and where the UTVs are unloaded, so arriving there is not the same as arriving at the canyon. And the sand between that lot and the canyon is the whole difficulty of the trip: the walk at the end is just over half a mile on flat ground.
For what it is worth, winter and early spring are when self-driving is most realistic, because cold damp sand carries weight far better than hot dry sand.
The four Kanab operators compared
Four companies run this canyon out of Kanab, and they are four separate operators rather than one operator resold under different names. They differ on more than price, and the differences are the kind that only show up after you have paid.
| Operator | From | Rating | Who drives | Length | Max group | Minimum booking | Cancels if not full |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kanab Tour Company | $59 | 4.96 from 111 | Guide, 4x4 with air conditioning | 90 min | 10 | 3 adults | Yes |
| Coral Cliffs Tours of Kanab | $99 | 4.97 from 797 | Guide | 2 to 3 h | 10 | 1 | No |
| ROAM Outdoor Adventure Co | $125 | 4.98 from 1,506 | You do, a UTV, 21+ with licence | 2 h | 30 | None stated | Yes |
| Adventure Tour Company | $130 | 4.90 from 251 | Guide, 4x4 | 3 h | 20 | 2 adults | No |
Prices, ratings, review counts, group limits, booking minimums and cancellation terms read on Viator on 11 November 2026 for dates in April 2027. Kanab Tour Company also sells a private UTV version at $125 for the same canyon. All four offer a full refund if you cancel at least 24 hours ahead.
Three columns in that table are the ones worth re-reading.
The minimum booking. The $59 trip needs three adults on the booking. Two people travelling together cannot buy it at all, which means the cheapest tour in Kanab is not available to the most common kind of visitor. For a couple, the real floor is $99.
Cancellation if the trip does not fill. Two of the four reserve the right to call it off for insufficient numbers, and two do not. That is a small print difference until you have driven in from Page the night before and booked a hotel around a 9am departure.
Who holds the wheel. The ROAM trip is the one with the most reviews by a distance, and that is partly because it is a different activity: you drive a Can-Am UTV yourself through the backcountry and the canyon is the destination at the end. You need to be 21 or over with a valid licence to drive, and the group can be up to 30. If what you want is the canyon rather than the machine, the smaller guided trips put you in a group of ten.
Which one to book
The answer depends on how many of you there are and whether you want to drive, which is not how these are usually ranked.
Three or more people, and you just want the canyon. The Kanab Tour Company trip is the cheapest by a wide margin and the rating holds up. Ninety minutes, a guide drives, and the vehicle has air conditioning, which is not nothing in a place where summer sand stops 4x4s.
Peek-a-Boo Slot Canyon Small Group Tour from Kanab
Ninety minutes, maximum ten people, guide drives an air-conditioned 4x4 from Kanab. The booking needs three adults on it, and the operator can cancel if the trip does not fill, so it suits groups rather than couples.
Two of you, or you want certainty. Coral Cliffs is the one with no booking minimum and no clause letting them cancel for low numbers, and it caps the group at ten however many bookings they take. It is also the trip that is explicitly sold as suitable for all fitness levels, with infant seats available, so it is the straightforward answer for families.
Peek-a-Boo Slot Canyon Guided Hike, small group
Two to three hours from central Kanab, guide drives, groups never combined above ten. No minimum number on the booking and no clause allowing cancellation for low numbers, which is the practical difference from the cheaper trip. Water and snacks included.
You want to drive the UTV. ROAM runs the trip that most people have reviewed, and the reviews are about the whole outing rather than only the canyon: you take a Can-Am through the backcountry below the Grand Staircase and walk the slot at the end. The driver has to be 21 or over with a licence, and the group can reach 30.
Peekaboo Slot Canyon UTV and Hiking Adventure
Two hours from Moqui Cave on US-89, driving a Can-Am UTV yourself to the canyon. The most reviewed trip in Kanab by a long way. Drivers must be 21 or over with a valid licence, groups run up to 30, and the operator leaves 15 minutes after the stated time.
Adventure Tour Company, the fourth, is the longest at three hours and the only one that sells the spare time as part of the offer: if the canyon does not use up the three hours, the guides fill it with other spots in the area. At $130 it is the most expensive, and the rating is the lowest of the four, although 4.90 from 251 reviews is hardly a warning.
When to go, and when not to
Spring and autumn are the easy answer, as they are for everything in this part of Utah. The two periods to think about are more specific than that.
High summer is when the BLM says the sand can become impassable even to high-clearance four-wheel drives. Tours still run, because the operators know the road and their machines are built for it, but this is the season when self-driving goes wrong.
July to September is monsoon season, and the canyon is a drainage. The boulders and drop-offs the BLM describes got there by water moving fast through a narrow space. Any slot canyon in the region is a bad place to be when a storm is sitting over the plateau above it, even a storm you cannot see from where you are standing.
Winter is underrated here. The canyon is red sandstone rather than the deep narrow kind that needs overhead sun to glow, so you are not losing the light show that makes Antelope a summer booking. The sand is firmer, the operators are quieter, and in a canyon that is only 0.7 miles long, not sharing it matters.
Peekaboo or Antelope Canyon
Most people reading this have already seen Antelope Canyon somewhere and are working out whether this is the same thing cheaper. It is not, and the differences run in both directions.
| Peek-a-Boo, Kanab | Antelope Canyon, Page | |
|---|---|---|
| Land | Public BLM | Navajo Nation |
| Guide required | No | Yes, by law |
| Entry cost | Free | $80 to $137 at the operator checkout |
| Getting there | Deep sand road, 4x4 or a tour | Paved, the operator drives the last stretch |
| Time inside | Unhurried, 0.7 miles round trip | Timed slot, usually around an hour |
| Crowds | Groups of 10 to 30, often nobody else | Continuous groups through the canyon |
| Light beams | No | Upper Antelope, late morning in summer |
Antelope Canyon prices are the checkout prices of the Navajo-authorised operators, not resale listings. The full breakdown is in our guide to what Antelope Canyon actually costs.
The honest summary is that Antelope is the better canyon and Peek-a-Boo is the better morning. If this is your only slot canyon, go to Antelope and accept the queue. If you have done Antelope, or you are based in Kanab for Zion and Bryce anyway, this is a short, cheap, quiet version of the same geology with nobody moving you along. The regional picture is in our slot canyon comparison, and Kanab itself in the guide to the town.
Frequently asked questions
Do you need a 4x4 to get to Peekaboo Slot Canyon?
To drive yourself, yes. The BLM states that the route to the trailhead is deep sand and requires a four-wheel-drive, high-clearance vehicle, and that it may be inaccessible even to those vehicles in the summer months. A front-wheel-drive crossover, which is what most rental desks hand you when you ask for an SUV, is not a high-clearance 4x4 and will bog down in that sand. The alternative is a guided tour from Kanab, which is why almost everyone who visits arrives on one.
How much does Peekaboo Slot Canyon cost?
The canyon itself costs nothing. The BLM page for the site lists no fees, no permit and no reservation. What you pay for is transport: guided trips from Kanab run from about $59 to $130 per person depending on the operator, the vehicle and how long you spend there. If you have a genuine high-clearance 4x4 you can drive in and pay nothing at all.
Which Peekaboo is the one near Kanab?
Three different places in southern Utah go by that name. Peek-a-Boo Slot Canyon, also called Red Canyon, is about 9 miles north of Kanab off US-89 and is the one reached by the Kanab tour operators. Peek-a-Boo Gulch is in the Dry Fork of Coyote Gulch off Hole-in-the-Rock Road near Escalante, usually hiked together with Spooky Gulch, and is more than three hours away. Peekaboo Loop is a 5.5-mile hiking trail inside Bryce Canyon National Park, with no slot canyon at all.
How long is the hike inside Peekaboo Slot Canyon?
Short. The BLM describes it as an easy hike of about 0.7 miles round trip. The walking is not the hard part of this trip and it never has been: the difficulty is entirely in the sand road that gets you to the mouth of the canyon. Tours allow somewhere between 90 minutes and three hours for the whole outing, most of which is driving.
Is Peekaboo Slot Canyon suitable for children?
The canyon is, and most Kanab operators take children. Coral Cliffs sells it as suitable for all fitness levels and has infant seats available. Adventure Tour Company prices infants from age one. The one to check is the self-drive UTV trip with ROAM, where you must be 21 or over with a valid licence to drive the vehicle yourself. One thing to weigh with small children is the approach rather than the walk: the drive in is bumpy and sandy, and more than one operator warns that it does not suit people who struggle with off-road rides.
Are there boulders or drop-offs inside the canyon?
Sometimes, and it changes. The BLM warns that flash floods have pushed boulders into Peek-a-Boo, creating drop-offs, and that floods keep changing their height and difficulty by depositing or washing away sediment. That means a trip report from two years ago may describe an obstacle that is no longer there, or miss one that has appeared since. Ask the operator what the canyon looks like this season rather than relying on photographs.
Can you visit Peekaboo Slot Canyon without a guide?
Yes. Unlike Antelope Canyon, this is public BLM land with no permit system and no requirement for a guide. Anyone can walk in. The restriction is purely mechanical: you have to get a vehicle down a deep sand road first, and then find the route, which runs along BLM route 102 to a wash and then west on route 106H until the wash ends at the slot.
Do the Kanab tours run in winter?
Most operate year round, and winter is one of the better times to go because the sand is firmer when it is cold and damp and there is nobody there. The seasons to think twice about are high summer, when the BLM says the sand can stop even a 4x4, and the July to September monsoon, when any slot canyon in the region carries flash flood risk.
Is Peekaboo Slot Canyon better than Antelope Canyon?
They are not the same experience. Antelope Canyon is deeper, narrower and more dramatic, and in summer it produces the shafts of light most people are picturing when they say slot canyon. It is also Navajo land, costs between $80 and $137 at the operator checkout, and moves you through in a timed group. Peekaboo is wider, shorter and far less photographed, you are usually one of very few people in it, and nobody is counting the minutes. If you only have one slot canyon in your trip, Antelope is the postcard. If you have already done Antelope, or you want the version without the queue, this is it.
Written by Diego Fresno, travel writer and independent publisher covering the American Southwest. The access, fee and hazard statements in this guide come from the BLM's own page for Peek-a-Boo Slot Canyon, and the operator prices, group limits, booking minimums and cancellation terms were read one by one on 11 November 2026.. Verified quarterly: last review 11 November 2026. About the author →
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