Miranda and I recently took a nice long trip to get away from winter. Its kind of funny actually, it snowed over 2 feet in Crested Butte while we were gone....but we quite enjoyed the fact we were missing out on additional winter. We've never been to Zion before, so decided mid-April would be a great time to check it out. I really wanted to take a lot of backroads to get there, but with the time we had, it seemed best to just get there, if we really wanted to spend all the time we had exploring the park. So I-70 it was, still a pretty drive though.
We camped out along the way, this here being some random pulloff near the San Rafael Swell. As you can see, this picture was taken before coffee.
Driving 10 hours to leave winter and arrive in a lush spring paradise is quite a stimulation to the senses. We were greeted with spring-green lushness everywhere, and temperatures in the 70's. Just what we need!
Along the Virgin River just outside the campground. We are really happy we chose to come here.
Usually we have a plan on many of the things we want to do on a trip, but this time, we decided to just make one up once we got there. Miranda and I were both extremely busy before we left on the trip, and ended up finishing our packing in the early AM hours the night before.
Another neat part of Zion is the bus system. From April-late October, you have to catch a shuttle bus if you want to see most of the main parts of the park, cars aren't allowed. This is because with 3 million visitors annually, without the buses, traffic jams would be rampant.
Although we generally like "off the beaten path" trails, etc it sounded like they were truly some spectacular things to see in Zion, and it was well worth sharing it with many other people.
This is beginning the ascent of the Angel's Landing trail
Miranda absorbing some sun. She almost looks whiter than an albino reindeer, but of course not as white as me, I always win.
This trail was pretty darn cool in the fact that to actually get to "Angel's Landing" you have to hike up a narrow spine for quite a ways with many chain-linked safety rails. There was a sign at this part of the trail that said since 2004, 6 people had fallen to their deaths on this portion of the trail. Definitely not a place to go if you have problems with vertigo. Really the hardest part of this section of the trail was running into large groups of people going the other way, some of them quite nervous and just wanting to get down. Miranda and I would carefully step aside, closer to the edge, making the passerbys even more nervous.
Without all the engineering and construction that went into this trail, it would be a whole different beast to get up this trail. As you can see below, parts of this trail basically ascend straight cliff faces, through built-in switchbacks. Really cool!
After the hike, it felt great to go wading in the river and refresh our feet.
The campground situation was kind of tricky. When we arrived at 3pm on Thursday, we got one of the last spots in either of the only 2 campgrounds in the park. It was in the emergency overflow section....not the greatest spot but we were just happy to be here. The next day, we woke up early, broke down camp, and went hunting for a better spot that opened up in the non-reservable campground a half mile away. This spot had two little streams running by us on both sides and was much nicer. We stayed here the rest of the week.
Very hard to tell what's going on in this picture so I'll explain:
Several years ago, Miranda and I went on a faintly described canyoneering route in Dinosaur National Park from some website I had found. It was a difficult canyon and somehow, one of the anchors I made didn't hold due to a "ghosting" technique I was working on (making anchors where in the end, nothing is left behind). Miranda was rappelling down a very short drop less than 10', when the anchor slid off the rock it was wrapped around. She fell 6 or 7' onto her back and wasn't seriously injured, although she easily could have been. So this trip was the first time that she was really getting back into the canyoneering/rappelling scene since then. The first rappell or two she was strongly fighting tears, fear, and a bottled up emotional/physical response that screamed to her "do not trust this ever again"....After our first few rappels however, she was doing just fine. Also, I have stopped screwing around with building "ghosted" anchors, because their failure could be a deadly situation, we were just lucky.
This canyon was super cool, and had some enormous rappels. It was entirely bolted, which takes some of the challenge away, but is overall safer.
We had a family of 5 in front of us the whole way. The dad was a huge guy, 6'1, 215lbs, built like a Navy Seal. We really wanted to sneak past them, but its very difficult with so many rappels. They were much slower than us due to their group size, so we spent a large part of the day just hanging back and relaxing. We had 10 rappels to get down this route.
A lot of the rappels, especially lower down in the canyon went through this type of fluted/grooved sandstone.
This part of the canyon was the best - reminded me of Chambers/Morning Glory at Moab. We love canyons. We'd love to come out and do some of these with our like-minded friends....(hint hint K & K, K & N & J, J)....
This is near the end of the day after this canyon. The guidebook told us we had to have two cars for a shuttle, due to the distance. We did not have two cars, and still really wanted to do this canyon, so I ran back to where the car was parked. Miranda waited in this spot for an hour or so, really not a big deal.
During my run was a very nice sunset
A semi-creepy, mysterious set of cabins I passed along the way.
The next day was a rest day. We decided we wanted to do the Subway the following day, a very photogenic, highly popular slot canyon with mandatory swims, rappels, etc. We got our ducks in a row and rented full-body wetsuits, attained permits (sometimes duirng the year, getting a permit to do the Subway is exceptionally difficult, so we were delighted that we actually got one easily due to the lack of crowds this time of year). We spent the day walking around in Springdale, the small town outside the park entrance. It was a very cute tourist town, filled with many nice restaraunts, galleries, and had a real eclectic, artsy, adventurous vibe to it. We'd love to try out living here for a little while.
Later that evening, we went on a special sunset hike, it was beautiful. More photos to come.
Super windy too!
Sunset just above highway 9 and the Mt Carmel Tunnel.
We have a ton more pictures to share, but wanted to not overwhelm, so this is the first batch.
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