Hiking in God’s Land

Zion National Park has always been a religious place for the people living among its sandstone cliff walls. The Mormons, who were instrumental in the canyon becoming a national park, granted many of the features their biblical names, like the three Patriarch Peaks – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Hiking among the incredible scenery of this Utah park, it was easy to see how early settlers and Native Americans alike found the place to be a natural cathedral worthy of worship.

The first task Ryan and I decided to undertake was to summit Angel’s Landing, a huge monolith of rock piercing the sky with its knife edged cliffs. The trail to the summit is an engineering feat worthy of mentioning, with “The Wiggles” section claiming probably the most intense switchbacks I’ve ever climbed. Then of course there’s the final pitch to the summit, a Class Three scramble with thousand foot drops on either side.

Ryan accomplished this rather daunting feat a few years ago, holding his own by becoming friendly with one of the few trees on the top of the summit (as in clinging to it for dear life). This time, he let me continue on the heart-stopping final pitch on my own, not wishing to relive the narrowness and crazy heights a second time.

It was most certainly narrow, and most certainly harrowing, but I found myself pretty comfortable making the hike to the top thanks to all the chain railings bored into the rock. As long as I had one of those chains to hang on to, I felt pretty confident there was no way I’d fall, and so the edge sometimes a foot or two away never seemed to scare me too bad.

I snapped a couple pictures at the top, then hurried down to the wider spot where Ryan was trying not to hyperventilate watching others pick their way up the ridge of rock.

That feat accomplished, the other highlight of Zion National Park that Ryan and I couldn’t wait to undertake was the Narrows hike – one of the west’s most famous backpacking trips.

The Virgin River, which has carved Zion Canyon to be what it is today, flows south from Chamberlain Ranch outside the park, creating a 16 miles stretch of canyon that hikers can explore with an overnight permit and a shuttle to the top. Again, Ryan and I were very lucky, because it was this canyon system that had flooded in the “100 year flood” all the rain had brought. By the time we started our hike though, the river was down to 42 cubic feet per second, the high during the flood was 4200cfs. 

Another possible setback was the shuttle to Chamberlain Ranch where the canyon begins. The mud that the rain makes in this area can be absolutely detrimental to vehicles, gumming up the tires and undercarriage like thick peanut butter. Fortunately however, our driver was a man named John, who likes nothing better in life it seems than negotiating muddy, wet roads.

John is a character worth mentioning with his long, unruly white hair, lined leathery face, and semi-crazed blue eyes. He’s been working odd jobs as park ranger, maintenance guy, and shuttle driver for a few years and he had lots of stories to tell from his years in the Southwest.

One of our favorites went something like this:

“You see that ranch over there? They have guests in the summer and they’re famous for having this huge slip and slide thing they water down with irrigation water. Anyway there were a bunch of kids over their one day sliding and after I dropped off the folks in the van, I stopped on the way out to watch ‘um. They were having such a blast sliding down the thing and laughing and stuff and I was having a blast just watchin ‘um when I noticed the parents lookin in my direction. Anyway I had to get in the van and get outta there quick before someone reported some person in a white van watching all the kids.” And then he laughed jollily at the situation. With the way John looks, the white van was the least of what would provoke suspicion in the parents at the ranch, though his spirit is kindly enough. When we told him of our adventure, he decided we were two of the coolest people he’d ever met, and I’m sure he’ll tell the story of the crazy kids he met who were touring the county during one of his other shuttle runs.

Back to the Narrows, the trail begins very subtly, winding through ranch land with cows for company. Suddenly though, the trail leads to the river, and from there, its water walking or picking along the shore all the way down to the park.

The canyon varies in width, but we were certainly most impressed in the sections from which the trail gets its name, where the walls thrust up from the river a thousand feet and the channel spans five to ten feet. In these places, there’s nothing to do but wade - ankle deep, knee deep, thigh deep, sometimes waist deep. The water was a murky muddy from the flood, which made progress tough
since we couldn’t see where we were placing our feet on the river floor. New snags also made progress interesting, especially in narrow places where the river had wedged huge tree trunks crosswise across the canyon from the torrent of the flood. We had to pick our way through some interesting obstacles as a result.

We camped at the first campsite, which is at the junction of the Virgin and Big Creek, a tributary which actually supplies most of the Virgin’s water. We had to climb around a 12 foot waterfall to reach camp, (see below), and had been hiking for a good six hours. The junction was a beautiful place to camp, with three canyons (Big Creek, The Virgin River, and their combination), spreading away like arteries from our camp on a sandbar. We slept with the rainfly off, admiring the stars peaking from the three slits above.

Day two somehow became even more scenic, as we passed Big Spring and entered Wall Street, the most impressive portion of the canyon we had seen thus far. At this point we started to encounter day hikers, who are allowed to hike as far as the Big Spring before turning around. These people ended up being valuable assets, explaining where the deep parts of the river were and how to avoid them. One area though was supposed to be unavoidable swimming, as several upriver hikers had testified. By the time we got there though, someone had figured out where the shallowest area of the pool was, along the cliff face on a little shelf underwater, which allowed you to only get waist deep or so, assuming you didn’t slip off in which case it was up to your neck.

Gingerly, I stepped out into the water, probing with my walking stick with each step and managing to only get waist deep as predicted. Ryan, meanwhile, had made a personal goal of staying as dry as possible, and did not like the sight of my soaking shorts. He decided to poise himself like a cat on the steep wall of the cliff as it tapered into the water, and make the leap to a similar, steep face across the deepest portion of the traverse. Here’s how that went: (click here if video does not load).

All I can say is he’s lucky he’s so athletic.

By the time we reached the mouth of the canyon, and the shuttle bus to take us back to our car, we were convinced that the Narrows was our favorite backpacking route of the trip in terms of the hike itself. The technicality of the river made the hike very interesting, and the scenery was so unique, it’s hard for any mountain scene to beat. The huge canyon walls, striped with black and brown and riddled with gaping cracks and arches were more than enough to humble us, tiny ants that we were in God’s land.