t: In the 1860s, Mormon pioneers happened upon what is now known as Zion National Park. Zion is a Hebrew word meaning a place of safety or refuge, and it's easy to see why a pioneer travelling across the Colorado plateau would choose the name.
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s: we find a campsite, and decide to spend two nights here. I’ve learned to try to stay on the outside of campgrounds when driving through looking for a site. Usually, there’s a big loop road around the whole thing, with smaller loops cutting through in the middle. Stay either to the right or to the left, as appropriate, to look for a site that isn’t entirely surrounded by other campers. Ideally, you’ll find one where your "backyard" is a river, or a nice big cliff, or something that affords a certain amount of privacy, and allows you at least one direction to look, when you’re sitting at your campfire, where you can pretend you’re alone. Of course, you also want to avoid being on a main thoroughfare to a rest room, and main RV through-roads. And, you want shade if it’s hot, and protection from wind and other weather, if necessary. However, be aware that some trees will drop sap, "widowmakers" (large dead falling branches), and/or chipmunks on your tent. |
t: The park is beautiful; the Virgin river travels the length of the canyon, surrounded by soaring towers, waterfalls and cliffs with names like "Mountain of the Sun", "The Altar of Sacrifice" and "Angels Landing". After getting our campsite and checking out the visitors' center, we took the scenic drive to the north end of the canyon at the "Temple of Sinawava", where a wild (well, not so wild) turkey was amusing tourists by calmly walking among them. We did part of the river walk, which is a very easy and pleasant trail. The river walk eventually leads to a more strenuous trail called "The Narrows" - the canyon walls are very close, leaving only enough room for a single person to pass in some places while wading through the river. We didn't do the Narrows - it requires a permit, and needs to be done either as a day-long through-hike or a two-day hike with an overnight stay. It might be something to do in the future, but I'm not sure I'm a big fan of backpacking through waist-high water in places.
s: we take the scenic drive thru, and try to scope out what trails we want to take. Some of them say they’re not recommended for people who are afraid of heights, but we’re unable to get a handle on what this really means. I AM afraid of heights, insofar as I may experience them passing by me quickly as I fall down them, but there is no indication here how unsafe the actual trails are, or how high the heights, or if they’re on both sides of the trail or only one, etc. Will we have to leap ten feet across gaping chasms, or creep along narrow ridges with sheer thousand-foot dropoffs either side? Will we be required to sidle on tiptoe along a four-inch ledge somewhere along the way here? We opt out of the Angel’s Landing trail because we’re not sure exactly how scared of heights we’re supposed to be. Probably, next time, we’ll take it and see just how scared we are.
t: Returning to our campsite, we eagerly made our fire and later cooked dinner. The stars were amazing, and I really liked waking up in the night to see the moon glowing above the Watchman, stars shining everywhere and the river running nearby.
t: On our second day at Zion, we headed out for a "real" hike, up the side of the canyon to the Emerald Pools. Our previous Sundays spent hiking up Marin mountainsides was great preparation, and we had no trouble visiting each of the three pools along the series of waterfalls. Zion had a really pleasing mix of flora; a variety of wildflowers and trees with a sprinkling of cacti in places that put any landscaped rock garden to shame.
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s: This is a great hike, recommended for anyone in decent condition. We did the double loop to visit both upper and lower pools, and it took maybe 2-1/2 hours. Great waterfalls, stunning rock faces and formations, and occasionally, big vistas of the canyon opened up below us. Nowhere was I particularly frightened by the heights, though I was more careful of my footing in some spots. Passing hikers had stacked up little hoodoos of rocks at various points. We knocked many of them down. I’m sure people think this is a cute thing to do, but I feel that it is typical of human egotism that they feel they must leave some mark of their passing - it’s the type of thing the national park service is there to protect nature from. In some places, where there’s a large enough flat surface, there are hundreds of these little rockpiles, and we go to some effort knocking hundreds of them over. So, now, have you not been there? Do you need to go back now? Who the fuck do you think you are, to presume to improve on the decor of this canyon? You little shits, I kick your rocks over, and I’ll kick YOU over too, given the opportunity! s: Oh yeah, one more thing: smokers and cigarette butts, and garbage in general. Most people seem to realize now that you don’t leave candy wrappers etc., on the trail. I smoked for 25 years, about two packs a day, and as a smoker, would have stopped at least twice on this hike to have cigarettes. But during my last ten or fifteen years of smoking, I came up with the novel concept of putting the finished butts back in the pack when I was done. No, they are NOT biodegradable. I am continually astounded that people can hike these places and seemingly cannot avoid leaving their crap all along the way. What are you people ON? I was sort of half-joking about the pathetic man-made hoodoos, but garbage on a trail like this literally makes me murderous. Don’t let me catch you doing it, or YOU will be the next piece of garbage on the trailside. If you can’t handle packing your garbage out, DON’T GO IN. <Leaving Soapbox.> s: I seem to have come up with a pretty mean-spirited tone on this, but let me temper it here by saying that this is one of the most beautiful places we have seen on the face of the earth, and we hope to return many times, and god help us if we ever find even the tiniest speck of evidence of our previous visits, unless it’s a local inhabitant recognizing us. |
t: Later in the day we headed back to Hurricane, about 20 miles out of Zion, in an effort to find some lunch and groceries for dinner in a less tourist-infested (and priced) area. We weren't entirely successful in this endeavor, but it did give us the opportunity to peruse the local Hurricane newspaper. It included an account of a mountain lion who had been discovered in a tree in a residential area. The local authorities eventually tranqed the lion to remove it, but it was disappointing to learn that they'd subsequently put it down, without any real reason given in the article.
s: The trip to Hurricane was largely pointless. Couldn’t even find a decent burger for lunch. A café there served a "California burger." Ptui!
t: We returned to the retail area right outside of the park and found our groceries for dinner. We also found a great t-shirt shop, where they custom print hats and t-shirts that are much better than any we found in the park itself (VarieTees, 849 Zion Park Blvd. if you're ever there). I got a great hat with skeletons here, and Steve picked up a really nice rattlesnake shirt.
t: We returned to our campsite for a break, and then walked to the OmniMax theater to see their presentation of the park and surrounding areas.
s: The OmniMax movie was pretty cool, focusing on the native concept of a specific place in Zion being the source of human life. Not too preachy about the Native Americans and how come there aren’t many left, etc. Some great footage, especially that first bit of the plains above from a low-flying plane, where the canyon suddenly opens up beneath, and your stomach drops about 300 feet just watching it. Good (quick glossy) view of the human history of the canyon, and some hair-raising scenes of a couple of rock climbers.
t: In the middle of the night we heard something and woke - plop...plop...we were wide awake immediately; the clouds that had rolled in during the evening had turned to light rain. We got the rainfly on the tent quickly, and almost as quickly I was asleep again. Our tent continues to be wonderful, there wasn't a night during the trip that I didn't feel snug and comfortable almost immediately.
s: Yeah, I really love this tent. I was thinking, though, that for car-camping we might someday want to get one that’s a bit larger. If we got stuck in rain or snow, it would be pretty cramped in there after an hour or two… Oh, man, I’m becoming a camping gearhead. I’m already a music gearhead, computer gearhead, and art- supplies gearhead; I narrowly avoided becoming a photography gearhead. Now I’m a camping gearhead. Sigh.
t: Wait! I need a new zoom lens!
