I rolled into Zion yesterday afternoon. The road in from Mt Carmel to the east is probably one of the most fun roads in the country. After crossing the park boundary it twists and turns to follow tiny Pine Creek through miles of red and white rocks before diving into a tunnel entrance. Throughout the tunnel (which has plenty of twists and turns itself) occasional windows in the walls reveal glimpses of what’s to come, but only a hint as there is no place to stop in the tunnel. Finally, over a mile later, the road blasts back out into daylight high up on the a canyon wall revealing the valley floor 1,000 feet below. The road switchbacks down the wall to meet Pine Creek once again just before it joins the Virgin River and the intersection that leads up into Zion Canyon itself. A small parking lot just short of the tunnel affords the opportunity to hike a half mile up to the headwall overlooking the canyon and the road twisting down the canyon walls below.

After a stop for dinner at Zion Lodge it was out to the campground for me. My poor tent is suffering after being put away damp every morning, or in some cases being put away covered in frost and then melting into a soggy mess inside the side-case of the bike. Last night was one of the warmest of the trip so far so I slept with all the windows open and finally gave it a chance to dry out.

The objective for the next morning was to switch once again from dirty motorcyclist to dirty hiker and climb up Angels Landing, a 2.5 mile hike up a 1,200 foot tall chunk of rock in the middle of Zion Canyon, another of the classic hikes of the National Park system.

The trail works its way along the river and quickly starts climbing up a headwall just west of the monolith. With full exposure to the morning sun it certainly felt like summer in November. None too soon the top of the headwall is reached and the trail plunges back into shady Refrigerator Canyon between Angels Landing and the taller ridge to the west. At the back of the canyon the trail does a quick about-face and climbs a series of quick switchbacks aptly named Walters Wiggles that bring the trail to the back of a knife-edge ridge that crosses over to the final summit of Angels Landing. The final half-mile across the ridge is extremely exposed, with sheer 1,400 foot drops on both sides and in some places only a few feet across. Intermittent chains bolted into the rock provide support for hikers but this final stretch is still not a place to be visited in anything but perfect conditions.

Once again random people met on the trail provide amusement. In this case 2 travelers from California, funny enough heading to all of the places I just visited but traveling in the opposite direction, performing what can best be described as “extreme yoga” not so much for the extremity of the positions but for the fact that they were performed on an angled slab of sandstone out on the sharp end of Angels Landing.

Eventually the sun set and after a frantic search for that perfect sunset shot it was back to the lodge for dinner again, with a night in the tent soon to follow. I plan to stay here again tonight but with snow in the forecast for later in the week it seems to be time to temporarily vacate the Colorado Plateau. Tomorrow I plan to drop down to I-15 and make for Las Vegas. We’ll see if I can get motivated to get up before sunrise again and get a shot from the top of the headwall above the tunnel.

The trail up Angels Landing brings up a topic that I’m sure I will visit again: the “wildness” of trails in the national parks. The trail itself starts off as any normal trail would: a dirt track, but then very quickly turns into alternating slabs of asphalt and concrete. Even the route the trail follows is obviously hacked out of what would otherwise be a smooth cliff face with what I’m guessing are leftover boreholes from blasting still visible and rock walls filling in gaps under the trail. Building a trail is one thing, but I’m not sure the permanently altering the landscape to the extent that was done here to create a space for a trail where it would otherwise be impossible to build one, or to blasting a tunnel through a mile of rock to allow for a road is the right thing to do in a national park that is supposed to be a celebration of nature. To be fair my examples were built in a much earlier era but I’m not so sure similar projects aren’t currently going on in other wild places.

For that matter something else I’ve noticed is the tendency of the park service, the BLM, and every other agency that manages public lands to carpet bomb the landscape with toilets, they show up in the most improbable places. There was one between Walters Wiggles and the knife-edge trail to Angels Landing, there was one at the bottom of the climb into Coyote Gulch, there is one at the top of Nevada Falls in Yosemite, and another a few miles away in Little Yosemite Valley. I’m the first to admit that I’m grateful for a good bathroom here and there (and its always a treat when I dot have to bring my own paper) but the ubiquitous wilderness bathroom does have its downsides (see picture, taken at the top of Walters Wiggles). I’m not sure what the solution to this is, but leaving 55 gallon drums of poop in the woods certainly detracts from the experience. I suppose it’s a symptom of the parks being loved to death, too many people are coming to these places and, quite literally, crapping the place up. I came out here in the winter because the weather is cool, the crowds have thinned out, and it’s possible to get backcountry permits without a 6 month wait but I worry that as more and more people who don’t know how to behave in the woods come out here it will only get worse. Permits are already required to day-hike to Half Dome in Yosemite and The Wave in Arizona (when normally most parks including Yosemite only require them for overnight trips). Overnight permits are nearly impossible to get in popular places during the busy season, requiring a lottery months in advance yet other places (like the Escalante) are just as scenic as any National Park but are relatively quiet because they don’t carry that designation, they are “only” a National Monument, or National Forest, etc.

Tags: Red Roamer, Colorado Plateau, Zion National Park, Hiking