Zion National Park

[This post is part of the Utah Ultimate National Parkness series - see the main post for additional background.]

As I mentioned, Zion National Park was our favorite of the Big Five national parks in Utah. Just about everywhere you go in the park was pretty, but then when you hike up a bit, you really get the full perspective and beauty of the park.

I think our favorite hike was the Emerald Pools/Kayenta hike. From there, the valley between Zion’s canyon walls looked very prehistoric to us - we kept expecting a brontosaurus to lift its head from the vegetation. The hikes and overlooks around the park were super interesting and very different from each other.

More photos from the Kayenta/Emerald Pools Trails:

Probably the second most famous hike in the park is called The Narrows (I’ll talk about the most famous next). It’s a large and long slot canyon - a narrow passageway between towering rock walls, formed by water cutting through sedimentary rock, often still having a river running through the base. The Virgin River is the one that runs through The Narrows and you have to hike in the water most of the way. At some points, the river is chest deep, and they don’t let people hike there when the flow is higher than 124 cu ft/sec because it becomes too dangerous to navigate - the flow was about half that when we were there. People rave about this hike, but there was no f’n way I was willing to do it - the water is COLD (you have to rent waterproof shoes/body suits/wooden hiking poles) and chest deep on an average person is higher than that on ME. But, there was a lovely dry ground path to hike in to where you start the official hike. We really enjoyed that part! Check out the captions below.

Another traveler all decked out in the rented outfits for the hike in the river.

The shuttle bus at the base of the towering canyon walls.

One more reminder this hike could kill you.

The lovely, dry part of the hike.

People starting to get into the water.

A better view of The Narrows entrance. It gets much narrower.

Canyons were just gorgeous.

The most famous hike in the park is the Angel’s Landing hike - it’s crazy (I would say, just IMO, but really in an objective sense it is). Five miles round trip with 1750 ft elevation change - the first 2 miles you are hiking up a winding path with ever steeper switchbacks that take you up 1100 feet in 2 miles. Then, it gets harder - the last half mile takes you up the last 650 feet and is so steep, narrow and rocky, that they started limiting the number of people who can go up each day (you need a permit) and there are chains for you to pull yourself up. If you want nightmares, you can check out videos of that last half mile on instagram (don’t look down!). Oh, and 19 people have died hiking there - the most recent one earlier this year. BBUUUUTTT, maybe we are a little crazy, we decided to see how much of the first part we could manage - the hike to the 1100ft mark is called Scout’s Lookout. We made it more than halfway up and the views were so worth it.

It all starts deceptively easy.

But you can look up and see how high it goes. There are people in the middle of that blackish cliff

Here’s a closeup - can you see the people better now?

Looking down on the switchbacks. They get steeper later.

You can see more of the early part of the hike next to Craig.

There is a lodge in the middle of the park, which was a great place to take a break in between hikes or pick up lunch if you don’t want to pack a lunch (because of the size of the park and the shuttle system, going in and out on the same day is very inefficient) - it might also be a good base of operations for the area, but I think it was ridiculously expensive when we were making reservations.

Lodge on the right, hiking on the left and a beautiful place for a picnic under the big tree.

I think we’ll be back. There was so much more to do that we didn’t get to and what we did see and do gave us so much joy.

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