Zionistic Ventures, pt. II

One of the things we wanted to do was the famous photogenic "Subway" route at Zion. This took a lot of preparation with renting wetsuits, getting permits, etc. A storm was due to come in later in the day on the morning we awoke, however, the skies looked ominous right from the start. 

As we drove up to the top of the trailhead, the skies got stormier, and temperatures hovered around freezing. We debated whether we should do the slot canyon and decided it was pretty risky due to flash flood danger/general cold.....so instead we drove around the next couple hours.

Seems like winter up here at this part of the park.

What does the weather want to do today?

We opted to hike the same canyon, but from the bottom up. This would mean it would be non-technical, requiring no ropes, and we would miss most of the super cool part of the canyon....oh well we thought we had no choice.

From the bottom up, once we reached the canyon floor, spring was happening.

We spent most of this day lazily wandering upstream, often opting for the creek bed itself, rather than the trail above. Miranda had too much fun trying to chase & catch the fish swimming around. She came pretty close a couple of times.

Suddenly, coincinding with many of the dark gray-brown basaltic rocks in the streambed, many of these little frogs popped up. They were all over the place, and hard to spot due to their camoflauge, so we tried our best not to step on any.

When this guy was ready to be put down, he didn't want to leave M's hand. Musta liked the warmth....which is weird, because her knick name could be "cold hands"

Lots of mini waterfalls to play around.

After hiking upstream 4 or 5 hours, we're finally nearing the "Subway" part of the narrows.

The famous and really cool Subway....

I do have an explanation for this one....Miranda had a wetsuit on and I obviously didn't....the water was 35-40° and I was trying to avoid getting any more of my cotton clothes wet than I had to. Some of the potholes we were wading through were near full on swims.

Checking out the waterfall that marks the end of our upstream hike. Had we come from the top down, we would have went through many more mystical slot canyon worlds.....oh well, next time.

Wetsuits are warmer.....

Such a cool spot.

The next day (our last full day of the trip), we had yet to do the narrows, one of the most famous and beautiful hikes here. Despite the grim weather outlook, we were determined to see it. So we geared up with our full body wetsuits, put some rain jackets on top for good measure, and started wading upstream. Normally, a hike like this would have dozens to hundreds of people on a nice warm day. On this day, we saw no one, as it was a freezing rain-snow mix, and the water was decently high. We kept our eye out for signs of a flash flood, and took note of any safe areas we could climb to if shit hit the fan.

Even though you see spring-green leaves and lush water, it all was just very COLD.

I kept saying to Miranda, "let's just see what's around the next corner..." but she eventually reached a point of saturated body numbness and we turned back.

As some showers passed, the sky lifted a bit and the lifting fog was quite a sight.

Once we got back to the car and had the heat cranked on high, we decided the rest of the day would be spent very nicely driving through the rainy/snowy weather.

We saw a lot of normally dry drainages with full on waterfalls from all the precipitation. It was awesome!

Finally, the weather is clearing!

Checkerboard Mesa is in the background.

We watched the clouds and the spectacular sunset.

Now we're gonna go make a nice warm, short campfire with our $5 bundle of mini-logs....