Tours of the Grand Canyon leaving from Las Vegas can be very different in the winter and summer. Most people who are planning this type of tour will have lots of questions about everything from the weather and expected temperatures to snow. While the Grand Canyon may be more stable in weather from season to season than you are used to on the east coast, there is still seasonality in the area that can make the experience quite different from summer to winter. That being said, winter tours of the Grand Canyon are a wonderful experience that are just a little cooler than you can expect in the summer. We offer Grand Canyon tours year round in two different versions. We offer a private tour that visits only the Grand Canyon with your group and no outsiders, and we also offer tours of the Grand Canyon as part of our multi-park tours as well. On these tours, you will be part of a diverse group of travelers that will visit multiple national parks like Zion Canyon, Bryce Canyon and Monument Valley. Depending on the length of the tour, you may also visit numerous other national parks and protected spaces. We prefer to treat our guests to these longer versions of tours because the amount of time it takes to travel from Las Vegas to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon is almost a half day. This means that if we are only going to visit the Grand Canyon for a limited amount of time, we are spending almost as much time driving as exploring. Instead, we prefer to do a “tour loop” which visits parks in succession based upon not only their distance from Las Vegas but also their distance from each other. These multi-day tours will usually visit Zion Canyon first because it is closest, then move on to additional parks like Bryce before reaching the Grand Canyon later. This minimizes the amount of time spent traveling and maximizes the amount of time spent in each park.
So how cold does it get in the Grand Canyon in winter? It gets cold enough that you will probably need a coat, or at very least a jacket and layers of clothing. Because our tours provide our guests with ample exploration time outside and the Grand Canyon can get as cold as freezing temperatures sometimes, we always suggest that you pack expecting it to be cold. If you wear layers, you can then also be prepared for the mild weather that we can also potentially expect during the days. If it is in the sixties in Las Vegas, you can probably expect it to be about ten degrees colder at the Grand Canyon, if not a little bit more. Because of the wide open environments that do not trap in heat in these desert national parks, it is almost always a little colder there than it is in Las Vegas. Most people do not realize that Las Vegas is not hot year round, and can under-prepare as a result. Plan on it feeling like very early spring if you live on the east coast.