09. July 2022
Day 36: Zion National Park
Getting up early
As Zion can get pretty crowded (like most of the big National Parks), we decided to get up early. One big difference here is, that you are not allowed to drive through the biggest part of the Park on your own. At least not during summer, so you have to take one of the free shuttles from the Visitor center, which then drops you off at one of the stops along the route.
This was also part of the reason to get up early and catch one of the early shuttles which shouldn’t be too crowded. Our plan worked out and we were at at the shuttle station close to 07:00.
We only had to wait 2-3 minutes for our shuttle
Small drawback was that we had to stand in the shuttle, but we preferred that to additional wait time.
The Narrows
The Narrows is a canyon hike which follows the Virgin River, up to 60% of the time is spent wading, walking and sometimes even swimming through the water. This leads to a really interesting hike, something we have never done before.
To get to the start of the hike you take the shuttle until stop #9, Temple of Sinawava. From there you follow first the Riverside Walk, which is a regular Trail, for around 1.7 km.
Riverside Walk, which leads to the start of the Narrows
At the end of the Riverside Walk, there is an access to the river, but no trail is visible and the stones at the river side soon ends. That’s were you start to understand for what you signed up! :) So into the water and let’s go. From then on, it’s walking through the water and then walking on the small parts of land on the side of the river.
On of the parts where there is land
Soon we reached parts of the “trail” where there was no land anymore and it’s just river. It was a really fun experience!
Water only (and people)
Even though it was early in the day, it was warm enough that we didn’t get too cold with the constant wet feet’s and river crossings. And I have to repeat it, after so many hiked miles, this was a really unique experience and we had a lot of fun.
As we proceeded further, the trail started to narrow more and more and let to some phenomenal views.
The Narrows, nothing to add
There are two different ways you can do the hike, out and back from the stop #9, what we did. Then you are allowed to go all the way to Big Spring. Or you can get a permit and hike it from the other side as a one way hike (start at Chamberlain’s Ranch). This meant for us Big Spring was the goal.
Big Spring
It took us nearly 3 hours to get to Big Spring, my Garmin stopped over 10 km for that, but officially its around 7.5 km.
During most of our hike, we didn’t encounter too many people. Thanks to the early start and because of the distance. But as we hiked back and the closer we came to the shuttle stop, the more crowded it got. At the end it was really crazy and we were happy to just get out of all the people.
definitely recommend an early start!
Rest of the day
It was after 14:00 when we were back at the shuttle station and it got really hot in the meantime. So we decided to call it a day for the park itself and go back to the Hotel.
There we did the only reasonable thing, chill at the pool!
Pool for us
For dinner we went to Oscar’s Cafe, which was good but not as good as King’s Landing yesterday. Then we mobilized all the remaining energy and cleared out the car and reordered & repacked most of our staff. This was more than necessary after more than 5 weeks.
Good news to close the post for the day, we won the lottery for Angel’s Landing for tomorrow! Slot is 11:00 and later, this means we will start the day a bit more relaxed and with a run and then go in the afternoon for Angel’s Landing.
Pictures
Part of the Narrows
More of the Narrows
And more
And even more