Zion National Park - Springdale, Utah

When we had visited this part of the country two and one-half years ago in our rental RV, Zion had been our favorite park. Accordingly, we reserved a spot at the campground inside the park for two weeks in the hopes of recapturing the pleasure Zion NP had given us on our previous visit, we were not disappointed!!!

For us, the beauty of Zion NP lies in the fact that the campground and facilities are at the bottom of the canyon, at river level, and you therefore always have beautiful views of the sheer red rock canyon walls on the eastern and western sides of the canyon wherever you are at in the park. This contrasts with the Grand Canyon, where you don’t really get a good view of the canyon until you get right at the rim. In addition the entire scale of Zion NP seems smaller, and therefore more intimate, than the Grand Canyon. These factors had caused us to feel so very comfortable when we last visited Zion, and the magic was still there on our return visit.

The most enjoyable activities which we had at Zion, in addition to watching the sunrise and sunsets, were taking various hikes which gave us different views of the beauty of Zion Canyon. The most strenuous hike was the one we took up to Scouts Lookout and Angels Landing, high on the western side of the canyon. To reach Scout’s Lookout, you have to hike two miles up the canyon wall, climbing over 1,000 feet at the accent. This includes climbing up through “Walters Wiggles,” a series of 20 or more sharp switchbacks. At that point it is possible to ascend even higher to a peak called Angels Landing. This requires crossing narrow spines with sharp drop-offs on each side and scaling slickrock with slopes exceeding 45 degrees. To help with the more difficult portions of this ascent, the Park Service has cut foot holds in some of the rock faces and provided chains that you use to help pull yourself up across the slickrock. It’s quite an effort to make it up to Angels Landing, but the views from the top are quite spectacular. With her discomfort with sharp drop-offs, Jo was content to stop at Scouts Lookout and let David proceed to Angels Landing on his own. David took a number of photographs of the trail to Angels Landing as well as from the top of the landing itself. After later viewing David’s photographs, Jo was very thankful that she had not attempted to follow David up to the top of Angels Landing!!!!!!!

The other really adventuresome hike was the one we took up the Virgin River to the “Narrows.” This is the area where Zion Canyon narrows down to a slot canyon which in many areas is little more than 10-20 feet across. In much of the narrows, the river runs completely across the canyon floor, and the only way to pass through the narrows is to walk through the river itself. To protect ourselves from all of the rocks in the river as well as the cold river waters, we rented dry pants, special boots and socks, heavy duty hiking sticks, and dry packs to protect our camera and supplies from the river waters. The hike required going several miles up the river to the heart of the narrows. Most of the time was spent in the river water as there were limited wider spots where there was room to climb out of the water for a respite. Because of all the rocks that are continually falling into the river, we were constantly hiking through and across rapids. To avoid the really deep portions of the river, it was necessary to frequently hike back and forth from the left to the right side of the slot canyon searching for shallower portions. But as some of the photographs here demonstrate, the beauty of the sheer canyon walls made this effort all worthwhile.

We took several other hikes while we were at Zion which helped us to enjoy other vistas, including the Watchman hike (a mid-level ascent giving a good view of the canyon floor overlooking the campground) and Emerald Pools, a hike up an ascending series of pools which provided good views of the opposite canyon walls, even though low water levels kept the pools themselves from being as pretty as they had been when we were last at Zion in the spring of 2005.

In contrast to the strenuous demands of several of these hikes, the easiest method we found for enjoying the canyon was a bike ride through the canyon. From May through October, the Park Service strictly limits private vehicular traffic in the canyon and requires visitors to use the shuttle buses provided by the park service. Visitors are allowed to use the bike rack on the shuttle to take their bikes along with them into the canyon. We took advantage of this to take our bikes all the way to the northern most end of the canyon up near where we started our hike into the narrows. From this point the river flows southward, and the road likewise is a generally downhill grade as it follows the river southward. That means that we were able to coast much of the way down through the canyon while looking up and enjoying the view of the beautiful red rock canyon walls rising on either side of us. The splendor of this undertaking was enhanced by the near solitude of our journey. Because of the ban on private cars in this portion of the canyon, most of the time while we were biking we seemed to have the canyon to ourselves except for shuttle buses that would pass every 5-10 minutes. This solitude made the whole experience even more wonderful, and an experience we definitely intend to repeat when we return to Zion Canyon, which we hope to do next fall when we come back down from our planned trip to Alaska.

While our friends Rick and Ann were not able to join us in Watchman campground because their RV plus trailer exceeded the length limits in the campground, they were able to stay at a nearby campsite just outside the park. In addition to spending many of our evenings together sharing dinners and/or playing various board and card games, Rick and Ann joined us for several of our hikes in Zion Park, including the Riverside Trail along the river, Emerald Pools Trail (Rick was not impressed with the dried up pools!!!), and Weeping Rock, a curious formation where water which has been percolating through the sandstone for hundreds if not thousands of years, comes “weeping” out of the rock face and cascades down in a curtain of water for the enjoyment of park visitors.

The four of us also took two road trips together outside the park. The first trip was a long road trip east of the park through the “Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument,” a beautiful series of mesas and plateaus which descend in staircase fashion from the higher elevations around Bryce Canyon down towards the lower elevations of Zion and the Grand Canyon. Erosion of the various layers of sediment in this area exposes in turn the “pink cliffs, white cliffs, and gray cliffs” in different areas of this vast national monument. In addition to enjoying views of the pink cliffs, we were able to see a rainbow array of colors when we visited the Pariah area of the monument, where the erosion exposed lavender and purple tones in addition to the pink, gray and white layers of sediment. An added bonus during this road trip was going by the remains of the buildings which had been used for filming the TV series Gun Smoke many years ago. While the buildings are now quite dilapidated and can only be viewed from the roadside, we had an enjoyable time trying to reconstruct just what buildings had been the saloon, the sheriff’s office, and “Doc’s” office.

The other road trip the four of us took was to the Kolab Terrace area in the northwest corner of Zion Park. Because of the way the canyons break up Zion into several sections, it was actually necessary to drive west out of the park and head north before we could re-enter the northwest corner of the park. The drive up to Kolab Terrace offered us a much different perspective on Zion Canyon. From our higher elevation to the west of the canyon, we could look across the various canyons and washes cut into the mesa top and see the peaks of the higher canyon walls surrounding Zion Canyon. On the one hand, the striking colors of the canyon made it look like “Emerald City.” On the other hand, the broad plateau spread out in front of us made us realize how Zion Canyon was the anomalous geological feature, the narrow gorge cut by the only river across this broad plateau. The ride up and down from Kolab Terrace provided us with tantalizing hints of autumn, with the aspens turning yellow all around us.

One intriguing aspect of the drive up to Kolab Terrace was driving through an area where the park service was conducting a “prescribed burn.” Smoke was bellowing from many areas, cutting visibility dramatically. Driving along the highway at the edge of the burn gave one the feeling of driving through a forest fire, with hot spots still smoldering long after all the surrounding grasses had been burned away. We were glad they had this fire under control after reading about other prescribed burns in the past on other public lands that had gotten out of control.

On the way back toward Zion we took a small detour to the ghost town of Grafton. We visited the remains of a small community of Mormons who had struggled for many years to try to make a living with their small farms. The few remaining buildings have been restored to try to capture a small flavor of what that community was like. These building were used as a backdrop for filming the scene from the movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” where Robert Redford meets up with his school teacher girlfriend who later the next morning goes on a bicycle ride in an orchard with Paul Newman. Unfortunately, the structure which was built for filming that movie has since burned down, an apparently common destiny for many of these movie sets!! On the outskirts of Grafton, we visited the cemetery used by this small community over the years. Seeing the gravestones of two deceased wives of the same man made us wonder whether this has been a polygamous community. One of the most striking things in the cemetery was a pyramidal headstone bearing the names of three different family members who were recorded as having been killed by Indians on the same day in 1877. The other interesting feature of this cemetery was what appeared to be the graves of several Native Americans buried on the edge of the cemetery and bearing headstones carved in wood showing their nicknames proceeding by the word “IND.”

We were very sorry to see our two-week stay at Zion come to an end, both because we were going to miss this park and because we were leaving our friends Rick and Ann, who were heading down to Yuma to work camp for the winter season. We resolved to be sure to make it back here next fall and re-establish the wonderful relationship we are forming with Zion National Park.