Utah National Parks - Zion
Utah is definitely the Mecca for the outdoors. If they didn't restrict where I can get alcohol so much I would seriously consider adding myself to their population.
We arrived at Zion on Memorial Day to a torrent of vacationers and quickly realized today was not our day to enjoy the park. We skipped over to St. George, saw a movie and setup camp right outside the park.
We had reservations in the National Park for Tuesday and Wednesday night so we didn't stress about skipping a day of it. Bright and early Tuesday we parked and rode the shuttle to our first hike - Angel's Landing.
Angel's Landing is a five mile out and back overlook that includes some harrowing climbs and careful shuffles along the mountain's edge to get to the actual landing. The shuttle ride was spent with a couple telling us how someone had done the hike yesterday and said it was the stupidest thing they'd ever done and includes warning over the intercom on how easy it is to die...it was a bit dramatic.
Granted, I didn't take any pictures of the super dangerous parts; I was concentrating holding on for dear life. After all the risks we'd taken over the last few weeks, heights and narrow ledges are starting to loose some of the initial glamour of danger.
At this point our stamina was insane and we ended up hiking over 30 miles over the 3 days we were in Zion. After Angels Landing we did a few small hikes in the park and proceeded to get ready for hiking The Narrows the next day.
When we first arrived in the park I stopped by the ranger's desk to find out exactly how you can do the overnight trek to the Narrows campsite. It was much more than I expected - we needed dry bags, neoprene socks, walking sticks and needed to arrange a $50pp shuttle ride from the top back to the park once you complete it. Looking at $200 dollars for a one night hike was not ideal for me and we decided we'd go as far as you can go the next day without a permit and enjoy the day hike.
Almost everyone rents special boots, the neoprene socks (for the cold water) and a walking stick to be able to navigate the slippery rocks and slight rapids, and again, we cheaped out (surprise everyone). I read online that if you get there early enough not only do you beat the crowds but people will leave behind some of the walking sticks that people have used in the past. We we're on the first shuttle out at 6am the next morning, hoping that the water wasn't too cold and we could snag us some sticks.
Everything worked out beautifully. We're now hiking super fast and the first 1.5m of the trail is a paved walkway until you get to the river's edge - we we're the first people down there and had our pick of what sticks we wanted.
Unsurprisingly, the water was totally fine. Maybe using Tahoe levels of cold as a baseline for all water has toughened us up but we had no issues, even with no direct sun for the first 6 hours of the hike. Being ahead of everyone was also in our favor...we were the first people on the trail for most the day and were by ourselves for 3 or 4 hours. We finally ran into people about halfway into the hike when hikers with permits to camp started coming down from their night before.
While we thought everything was going fabulous we did mess up a bit. So far we were averaging around 20 minute miles on our hikes, depending on how strenuous they were. We knew we were going significantly slower, but still hadn't reached our 3.5 mile turn around point after 3 hours. When we finally did reach it and talked to some of the campers coming down, we realized the hike we were working off of was actually the one-way overnighter that everyone else was doing. We ended up hiking around 14 miles with how many times we had to switch back and forth in the river to avoid rapids and deep points; it took 7 hours. 14 miles isn't the worst, add that most people described the hike as "slipping over bowling balls in a foot of water" it was a little rougher than we we're expecting. With all that, it was by far one of the coolest hikes we've ever done.
The next day we rallied for one more hike - Observation Point. 8 Miles round trip to the highest point of the park. Again we arrived pretty early and had most the trail to ourselves:
Zion was absolutely amazing deserves all the credit it already has. We did as many of the hikes we could and still were missing huge parts of the park. Can't wait to go back and enjoy it again ;)
We arrived at Zion on Memorial Day to a torrent of vacationers and quickly realized today was not our day to enjoy the park. We skipped over to St. George, saw a movie and setup camp right outside the park.
We had reservations in the National Park for Tuesday and Wednesday night so we didn't stress about skipping a day of it. Bright and early Tuesday we parked and rode the shuttle to our first hike - Angel's Landing.
Angel's Landing is a five mile out and back overlook that includes some harrowing climbs and careful shuffles along the mountain's edge to get to the actual landing. The shuttle ride was spent with a couple telling us how someone had done the hike yesterday and said it was the stupidest thing they'd ever done and includes warning over the intercom on how easy it is to die...it was a bit dramatic.
Granted, I didn't take any pictures of the super dangerous parts; I was concentrating holding on for dear life. After all the risks we'd taken over the last few weeks, heights and narrow ledges are starting to loose some of the initial glamour of danger.
At this point our stamina was insane and we ended up hiking over 30 miles over the 3 days we were in Zion. After Angels Landing we did a few small hikes in the park and proceeded to get ready for hiking The Narrows the next day.
When we first arrived in the park I stopped by the ranger's desk to find out exactly how you can do the overnight trek to the Narrows campsite. It was much more than I expected - we needed dry bags, neoprene socks, walking sticks and needed to arrange a $50pp shuttle ride from the top back to the park once you complete it. Looking at $200 dollars for a one night hike was not ideal for me and we decided we'd go as far as you can go the next day without a permit and enjoy the day hike.
Almost everyone rents special boots, the neoprene socks (for the cold water) and a walking stick to be able to navigate the slippery rocks and slight rapids, and again, we cheaped out (surprise everyone). I read online that if you get there early enough not only do you beat the crowds but people will leave behind some of the walking sticks that people have used in the past. We we're on the first shuttle out at 6am the next morning, hoping that the water wasn't too cold and we could snag us some sticks.
Everything worked out beautifully. We're now hiking super fast and the first 1.5m of the trail is a paved walkway until you get to the river's edge - we we're the first people down there and had our pick of what sticks we wanted.
Unsurprisingly, the water was totally fine. Maybe using Tahoe levels of cold as a baseline for all water has toughened us up but we had no issues, even with no direct sun for the first 6 hours of the hike. Being ahead of everyone was also in our favor...we were the first people on the trail for most the day and were by ourselves for 3 or 4 hours. We finally ran into people about halfway into the hike when hikers with permits to camp started coming down from their night before.
While we thought everything was going fabulous we did mess up a bit. So far we were averaging around 20 minute miles on our hikes, depending on how strenuous they were. We knew we were going significantly slower, but still hadn't reached our 3.5 mile turn around point after 3 hours. When we finally did reach it and talked to some of the campers coming down, we realized the hike we were working off of was actually the one-way overnighter that everyone else was doing. We ended up hiking around 14 miles with how many times we had to switch back and forth in the river to avoid rapids and deep points; it took 7 hours. 14 miles isn't the worst, add that most people described the hike as "slipping over bowling balls in a foot of water" it was a little rougher than we we're expecting. With all that, it was by far one of the coolest hikes we've ever done.
The next day we rallied for one more hike - Observation Point. 8 Miles round trip to the highest point of the park. Again we arrived pretty early and had most the trail to ourselves:
Zion was absolutely amazing deserves all the credit it already has. We did as many of the hikes we could and still were missing huge parts of the park. Can't wait to go back and enjoy it again ;)
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