The steep, granite cliffs of Yosemite National Park are world renown, possibly from the magnificent images of Half Dome and El Capitan created by Ansel Adams. Zion was not a Park that Chris and Jay were familiar with until a few years before but they feel that it rivals Yosemite in more ways than one. Although a narrower canyon, there is an undulation in the cliff walls that offer interesting hiking opportunities and views of crimson sandstone cliffs thousands of feet straight up; their crowns a variety of flat mesas, jagged peaks and rounded mounds surging up and down the length of the canyon. Some crests are white which blended into the rusty oranges, reds and browns of the lower cliffs.
A glimpse of the canyon from the West Rim Trail.
To get an idea of scale, the trees on the slopes are at least 20’ to 50’ tall.
The Park keeps traffic to a minimum via a free shuttle system that runs from early in the morning to late at night, with stops at all of the overlooks and trail heads, enabling visitors and hikers a broad window to participate in all the Park has to offer. The adjacent town of Springdale also offers a complimentary shuttle service that traverses the single road to the Park entrance. Between the two services, Chris and Jay hardly used Big Red during their entire two-week stay. After settling into their campsite they immediately boarded a bus for a tour of the Park.
A disappointment to them was the massive number of tent caterpillars that had stripped the Cottonwoods bare of their fresh, spring foliage. They covered walkways and roads, crawled up the walls of the Visitor Center and campground restrooms, clustered atop the campsite number posts and dropped from treetops onto passersby below. Chris spoke with the camp hosts about the problem and was informed that the Park’s policy was that they didn’t harm the trees and although they had sprayed to control the caterpillars in the past there was no money for spraying this year. Chris’ background is in horticulture, and she battled the Gypsy Moth infestation that engulfed the east coast twenty years ago. She knew that complete defoliation of a tree over three to five years will kill it. Mature Cottonwood trees lined the banks of the Virgin River that traversed the entire Park, through Springdale and beyond. If those trees died, and their roots no longer hugged the riverbanks, the raging torrents that swell the river each spring would cause devastating erosion and loss of untold dollars in property damage.
The Camp Hosts tried to arrange a meeting for Chris with the Park employee in charge of the grounds but she was away for training and wouldn’t return until after Chris and Jay departed. It was obvious to Chris that the problem was not just in the Park and that Federal, State and Local authorities would need to coordinate an effort to eradicate the pests. She prepared a report outlining the problem, the effects of not controlling the critters, and offered to assist in a future program to halt the devastation, which the Camp Hosts agreed to pass along. Meanwhile she and Jay squished all that came across their paths in their own personal effort to assist.
Wildlife abounded in the Park and although they didn’t encounter any on their hikes, while waiting for the shuttle buses they spotted deer, fox and turkey almost every day.
This turkey was strutting his stuff for all the lenses pointed at him.
They settled into a pattern of photographing every other day; allowing time for Chris to edit the photos she’d taken the day before. But, like most plans it was difficult to implement and long after their departure, many photos still sat unedited on her computer. As much as she wanted to capture views at dawn, their late, sunset-light capturing schedule just didn’t enable them to depart the RV before late morning. But they enjoyed the photo ops the day hikes afforded so completely that there were few regrets.
The vertical ascents of thousands of feet from the valley floor took some getting used to but, day by day and step by step, Chris and Jay could feel their leg muscles firming and their breath coming easier as they tackled ever longer and steeper trails. The Emerald Pools trails were their first and the ones with a manageable vertical drop. The series of trails led to several pools of water created by skinny, wispy waterfalls dropping a thousand feet or more in different places along the cliff’s edge. As exotic as the trail name sounds, making one envision clear, green, water created by some phenomenon of the area, they were named for the green algae that collects in them during the warmer seasons. It was evident to Chris and Jay that the real photo ops on this trail would be when the snow melts forced torrents of icy liquid over the ledges in showy displays of seasonal change. But it was a good hike to get a taste of Zion.
A wide angle view from the upper-most Emerald Pool.
Most of the photos the travelers had seen of Zion were of visitors hiking in The Narrows. It is reached via the famed Riverside Walk, a two-mile round trip, paved stroll over the flat terrain of the valley floor which ends at a viewing platform surrounded by sheer rock faces which “narrow” to a slot canyon. The snow melt that spring was so voluminous that for weeks the river barreled out of The Narrows, at a torrential pace, carrying millions of cubic feet of sediment, collected along its path, making further exploration for Chris and Jay impossible.
A portion of the Virgin River as it exits The Narrows.
Not all of Zion National Park can be reached from the main valley so, an hour’s drive was necessary to explore Kolob Canyon located in the northwest section of the Park. The landscape was so different from Zion Canyon the area could have been hundreds of miles away. Finger Canyons, created from eons of stream-caused erosion, sliced through the breadth of the massive, burnt orange escarpments.
One of the finger canyons in the Kolob Canyon area of the Park.
Most of the trails, in this section of the Park, were rated moderate to strenuous so, Chris and Jay decided to do the short, flat, five-mile round-trip Taylor Creek hike, which led to the Double Arch Alcove, rather than the thirteen-mile treks. When they arrived at the trailhead, the weather was heavily overcast with roaring winds. Rain clouds threatened but had so far only dropped light showers. They figured they would be snug inside a protective canyon and forged ahead.
One of two settlers’ cabins along the trail.
Once inside the canyon they were protected from the winds but found they had to cross Taylor Creek repeatedly. It seemed they were walking a fairly straight trail which traversed a winding stream. Chris hardly slowed down at the crossings as she lightly stepped from water-washed stone to water-washed stone to cross the three-stride wide stream. In contrast, Jay was like a little old man testing his footing on the rocks and planting his hiking poles solidly in the water before taking another step.
The showers increased in frequency and intensity preventing the hikers from making their destination. Warnings of flash floods abound in the region and without knowledge of how much rain had fallen upstream, the steady rain spooked them enough to turn back. Jay suddenly became much more skilled at stream crossing and in no time was keeping up with his bride.
Chris and Jay crossed Taylor Creek 46 times and didn’t even get to the end of the canyon.
The most memorable hike was the ascent to the West Rim Trail, considered a “Must Do” by the creators of a local trail guide. The Easy Reference section of the guide also labeled it as having cliff edges and drops, blistering sun mid-day, and was “Stair Master” difficult. Sounded like a good day’s adventure to Chris and Jay! By the time they tackled it, late in their two-week visit, they’d toughened up quite a bit and were adequately prepared with plenty of water, hiking poles, sturdy boots and broad brimmed hats. Frequent stops to catch their breath on the switchbacks eased the pain a bit but at the end of the day they boarded the bus home grinning with the self-satisfying sense of accomplishment that only a challenging experience can deliver. Oh, and the views were spectacular!
The dip in the cliff face is where the switchback to ascend the mountain lies.
One can either continue up Angel’s Landing (on the right) or
hike to higher ground behind, which is not visible in this view.
