The Narrows at Zion National Park

It's another morning for a hike at Zion, so the alarm clock was set again.  But today, it was a kinder, gentler alarm because it didn't go off until 7:00.  We are headed to another iconic hike at Zion--The Narrows.  After riding the shuttle to the last stop this morning, at 9:30 we then set off on the one-mile Riverside walk trail will take us to the start of the Narrows.

Then it was time to suit up into our water footwear.  Mark is putting neoprene socks on his feet.  We got the advice from another hiker that the local outfitter sells their retired hiking gear at drastically reduced prices, so we bought these socks for $5.  It took a little sewing to get Denisa's used socks into shape, but it beat the $28 for the socks, boots and pole combo they usually charge to day hikers to the Narrows.

We passed two bus loads of people as we walked the first mile up the riverside trail, so the park is already getting crowded by 10:00 in the morning.  Many of the people will dip their toes into the water at the mouth of the slot canyon, so this area gets really congested.

We headed into the slot canyon, walking in the Virgin River.  We  would find a trickle of a waterfall very soon.

Morning light is hitting the wet walls of the slot canyon, turning them into gold.  We should apologize up front that there will be way too many pictures in this blog.  But we are in some of the most beautiful scenery in the world, and it just begs to be photographed.

We found that we would walk the same speed as many of the people that started the hike when we did.  So we traded off taking group pictures with a group of three young women from the East coast.

The deeper into the canyon, the better the views.  We are 45 minutes into the hike, glad for those neoprene socks since the water is 52 degrees and the canyon is shaded and cool.  Denisa still has her jacket on, and it's hard to believe that it's 97 degrees outside of the canyon.

We thought we would be walking in that cool water all of the time, but there is a good amount of walking on the sandy areas beside the river inside the canyon.  We were surprised to even see sizable trees growing inside the canyon at this point.

Have we mentioned that the canyon walls were beautiful?

The easiest sections of walking in the water were in shallow areas where we could see the tops of the rocks.  We wore shoes over those neoprene socks, but our feet would get sore from walking (and stumbling) over rocks all day.

In deeper sections, each step was a guess of what we would stumble over as the water was a muddy brown so we couldn't see the pebbles or boulders under us.  Having a walking stick was a great help with walking in the water.

Some times there were huge boulders that had fallen from the canyon walls years ago.  Most people slog their way down the river around them.  Mark, of course, prefers to climb up and over the boulders.

The next two pictures are of the very same place.  We are now finding that it is impossible to capture the tops of the canyon walls.  But the first picture attempts to illustrate the height of the walls . . .

While the second picture attempts to capture the width of the slot canyon and the water at this point.

We are about an hour and 45 minutes into our trek up the canyon, when we come to the Orderville Canyon intersection on our right.  Much narrower and less traveled, of course we would take this route.

It is less traveled because this canyon is littered with waterfalls and rock obstacles that are very hard to get over.  In fact, we saw twenty people coming out of the canyon as we walked into it.  All those people had gotten to the first waterfall and determined that was the end of the line.  We are so glad that we made it over that first waterall, but we forgot to take a picture of it!  This is a picture of another one of the waterfalls (further down the canyon) that we had just climbed over.

Denisa would have never made it over the first one, but Mark figured out a way to get over it, and then pulled Denisa up as well.  The rocks are slick and wet, so each waterfall or boulder is a puzzle to figure out a way to conquer it.   We would have been all alone in the canyon, but Mark also helped another young man over the first waterfall as well.

This canyon got narrow and very tall very quickly.  You can barely see Denisa at the bottom of the canyon.  If she stretched out her arms, she could almost touch both canyon walls at the same time.








After the crowds of the main canyon, the solitude of Orderville Canyon was bliss.  The water was clear, so it was much easier to plan your footing through the water.  The wet walls appeared golden in the sun light.

We had conquered several waterfalls, and the first young man that Mark had helped had turned back.  We thought we were all alone, but we noticed a young couple behind us in the canyon.  We found out that they were from Ontario, Canada, and they had thought about turning around more than once.  But they could always see us ahead and thought that if we could go further, so could they.  We traded off taking pictures of each other in the canyon, and then we became a team of four conquering the waterfalls together.

The waterfalls weren't always tall, but the rocks were always wet and slippery.  Denisa has always said that Mark was part mountain goat, so he could cross anything.  But he really had to be creative to figure out a way to get her up and over as well.  We lost count of how many obstacles we went over, but we didn't see anyone else until we had to head back. 

We were in that side canyon for almost 2.5 hours.  When we returned to the main canyon, we decided to slog our way further in.  The water was also deeper and moving more quickly as the channel narrowed.


















All of these pictures seem to be vertical, as the canyon walls are very tall in this section known as "Wall Street."  Just like in New York City, we are hiking among the sky scrapers.  As tall as these pictures look, they still can't show the tops of the walls around us.  We are surely wandering through another of God's wonders!

 













It's hard to believe that the state of Utah is experiencing record breaking heat today.  We planned to leave our  motor home stop in Zion for last, hoping that the temperatures in September would be cooler.  But today it is 97 degrees outside of this canyon--a new record for this day of the year.  But inside the shadows of the canyon, walking in 52 degree water, Denisa still has her jacket on and zipped up.  It was just the perfect temperature!

Mark has scrambled up another large hill above the canyon floor.  That gives a unique view down the canyon from above.

 

We found that our best strategy for moving forward in the swift and deep sections was to link arms.  We each had a pole in our outside arms, helping to find rocks and to give us another point of contact with the ground for stability.  Having our four legs close together helped to keep us upright when one of us stumbled on the rocks we couldn't see under the water.  We swaggered from side to side, and with our arms linked it was a little like escorting a drunk.  We finally decided to turn around as the water continued getting deeper. 

We didn't take many pictures on the long walk back out of the canyon.  Even though we were walking with the current now, the unseen rocks under that muddy water still made it challenging.  It was a beautiful walk, but we were relieved to see the mouth of the canyon.  We felt the temperature rise as the canyon opened up to the heat of the real world.  We had been inside the narrows for 6.5 hours, and it was one of the most uniquely awesome hikes of our lives.