Antelope Canyon by boat at Lake Powell: tours and kayak trips

Quick answer

The canyon runs more than 10 miles from the lake up toward Highway 98. The lake owns the bottom of it, the Navajo Nation owns the top, and the two ends have almost nothing in common as a visit. This post covers the bottom end — the part with water in it.

Way onto the water	Who runs it	Time	Adult price	How far up you get
Antelope Canyon boat tour	Antelope Point Marina	~1 hr	from $50	Down the arm, no stops
Kayak-and-hike tour	Kayak Lake Powell, Hidden Canyon Kayak, Lake Powell Adventure Co.	4 hr	$110–120	~5 mi paddling, ~2 mi walking
Paddle-only kayak tour	Kayak Lake Powell	2.5 hr	$85	~4 mi round trip
Rental kayak or board	Lake Powell Paddleboards, Antelope Point Marina	Your call	from $60/day	As far as you paddle
Your own powerboat	Launch at Stateline Auxiliary	~4 nm from Wahweap	Fuel	To where the arm tightens
Antelope Canyon tour, Wahweap	Lake Powell Resorts & Marinas	1.5 hr	$88.88	Suspended

Which Antelope Canyon boat tour is still running?

One, and it isn’t the one most people find first. Antelope Point Marina runs a one-hour Antelope Canyon boat tour from $50 for adults and $30 for children ages 4–12, with multiple departures daily. Out of Wahweap, Lake Powell Resorts & Marinas lists its 1.5-hour Antelope Canyon Tour as “currently unavailable until further notice” at $88.88 adult and $40.56 child, and gives no restart date. Those two companies are the only boat-tour concessioners the Park Service authorizes on Lake Powell, so when one suspends a trip there is no third operator to fall back on.

The ride itself is an hour on the boat and nothing else. Antelope Point’s page is clear that once the tour begins there are no stops along the way or on arrival, so treat it as an hour of sandstone from a seat rather than a landing. The suspended Wahweap version described what the boat portion covers: “approximately 4 miles of the canyon wall before it narrows.” That number is the honest ceiling for anything with a propeller. Past it the walls close in, the water shallows over a sand bottom, and the canyon becomes paddle territory.

If you’re comparing this against the rest of the lake’s tour lineup, our Lake Powell boat tours guide ranks all five scheduled trips on time for money.

Can you launch your own boat at Antelope Point?

Not a motorized one, as of the Park Service ramp table updated 8/5/2026. Both Antelope Point ramps are closed to houseboats and small motorized boats. The public ramp shows launch-at-your-own-risk for non-motorized craft with the Park Service note that it is “available for paddlecraft launching only,” and the business ramp is closed to everything. The ramp’s own park page puts the rule the same way: “currently only available for non-motorized paddlecraft hand launching.”

That inverts the usual advice. Antelope Point sits closest to the canyon, so it has always been the obvious launch — and right now a kayak on a roof rack has access there that a bass boat on a trailer doesn’t. Motorized boaters in the south lake launch at Wahweap Stateline Auxiliary, the one ramp open to houseboats and small motorized craft, and run the extra distance. Our distance guide puts Wahweap to Antelope Canyon at about 4 nautical miles, which is 12 minutes at a 20 mph cruise plus whatever the no-wake zones cost you.

The marina is a separate question from the ramp, and it’s open. Antelope Point’s tour boats, rental fleet and houseboats live in the water at the floating marina and never touch a launch ramp, which is why the tour still sails while the concrete out front sits closed. Our Antelope Point Marina guide has the gate, shuttle and services detail.

What do the guided kayak tours include?

All three operators sell the same trip at nearly the same price, so pick on start time. Kayak Lake Powell, Hidden Canyon Kayak and Lake Powell Adventure Co. each run a four-hour Antelope Canyon kayak-and-hike tour launching from the Antelope Point public ramp, at $120 per adult as of mid-2026 — Hidden Canyon was discounting to $110 — with children $100 at Kayak Lake Powell (ages 5–12) and Hidden Canyon (ages 5–11). Kayak Lake Powell publishes the numbers behind that four hours: 5 miles of paddling round trip and a 1-hour, roughly 2-mile walk at the end. Lake Powell Adventure Co. lists the same 5 miles paddling and 2 miles hiking.

Starts cluster in the morning for a reason. Kayak Lake Powell offers 8am, 9am, 10:30am and 1pm departures; Hidden Canyon Kayak runs 8, 9 and 10:30am in sit-on-top doubles and adds swim time from June through October. The arm opens onto the main channel, so the wind that builds through the afternoon hits you on the return leg, when you’re already tired. Lake Powell Paddleboards says it plainly on its tour page: “Mornings are usually the best conditions.”

Two cheaper paths exist. Kayak Lake Powell’s paddle-only Antelope Canyon trip is $85 for 2.5 hours and about 4 miles round trip, skipping the walk. Or skip the guide — Lake Powell Paddleboards rents kayaks from $60 a day at Antelope Point and delivers them to the ramp at no charge, and Antelope Point Marina rents singles and doubles by the hour or the day. Self-guided works here because the route is one canyon with no branches to miss. For the wider paddling picture, our kayaking guide covers the rest of the lake’s launches.

Is this the Antelope Canyon from the photographs?

No, and the mix-up sends people to the wrong side of Page. Upper and Lower Antelope Canyon are units of the Lake Powell Navajo Tribal Park, inside the Le Chee Chapter of the Navajo Nation, and you drive to both: Lower is off Navajo Route 22B a mile past the Highway 98 intersection, Upper is at the south intersection of the same two roads. Navajo Nation Parks & Recreation charges $15 per person to enter and states that tour guides are mandatory. The Park Service is blunt about what your federal pass does there: “Because it is not part of the National Park System, they do not accept the America the Beautiful Pass or the Glen Canyon Pass for admittance.”

The two slots are also different from each other. The Park Service day-hikes page rates Upper Antelope easy, with walls about 660 feet above the streambed and an A-shaped profile that leaves room to walk, under a two-hour limit inside. Lower Antelope is easy-to-moderate, roughly 120-foot V-shaped walls, and you move through it on stairs — 30 minutes to an hour. Both close during inclement weather.

Book them as two separate mornings if you want both. Our slot canyons guide covers the other drowned canyons you can paddle into, and the Lake Powell canyons guide maps how the whole side-canyon system fits together.

What does it cost to get to the water?

Two gates, two fees, and the second one surprises people. Glen Canyon charges $30 per private vehicle for seven days. Antelope Point sits inside the recreation area but on Navajo Nation land, so it collects its own entrance fee at the gate: $30 for a vehicle for 1–7 days, $25 for a motorcycle, $15 per individual, $30 for a boating entrance, or $60 for an annual pass ($45 senior). The gate is open 7am to 7pm daily.

Stack that on a tour and the arithmetic moves. Two adults on the $50 boat tour is $100, plus $30 at the Navajo gate, and you’re at $130 before tax. A guided kayak day for two runs $240 plus the same gate. Neither is the number on the booking page.

When should you go, and what are the rules on the water?

Early, and slowly. The whole canyon is a no-wake zone: the Park Service kayaking page designates Antelope wakeless at all times along with Labyrinth and Lost Eden, and the Superintendent’s Compendium gives the reason — the canyons are too narrow to safely let motorized boats travel on plane alongside non-motorized craft. The standard Glen Canyon rule against throwing a wake within 100 feet of another vessel or a swimmer applies on top of that, and between walls this close it covers the whole width. A 2016 KSL trip report on paddling the arm adds the corollary from the kayak seat: stay close to the canyon walls so the tour boats have the middle.

Weather is the other timer. Monsoon storms build from roughly July into September, and the Navajo Nation closes the upstream slots during inclement weather for the same reason the Park Service tells hikers to stay out of narrow canyons when floods are predicted anywhere upstream — 11 people died in a 1997 flash flood in this drainage. The storm that fills the canyon can sit 20 miles up the wash, out of sight from Page. Check the forecast the morning of, not the night before, and our weather safety guide has the wind and storm thresholds for the rest of the lake.

Key takeaways

1. Antelope Point Marina’s one-hour tour, from $50 adult and $30 child, is the only scheduled Antelope Canyon boat tour running in 2026 — Wahweap’s is suspended until further notice.
2. Both Antelope Point ramps are closed to motorized boats as of 8/5/2026; paddlecraft launch at the public ramp, and motorized boats launch at Wahweap Stateline Auxiliary instead.
3. Guided kayak-and-hike tours are four hours, about 5 miles of paddling and 2 miles of walking, at $110–120 per adult; renting a kayak instead starts around $60 a day.
4. The photographed Antelope Canyon is a Navajo Tribal Park unit reached by road, $15 per person with a mandatory guide, and no federal pass works there.
5. Budget for two entrance fees, go in the morning before the wind, and idle the whole canyon — it’s posted wakeless at all times.