Welcome to Zion! When we had our Galapagos plans fall through, we decided to meet up with the family in Utah for a National park trip - starting with Zion National park. We only spent 3 days here, but we did get a good taste of the park through some canyoneering and biking. Zion is known for Canyoneering - which is where you climb up/down steep walled canyons often by walking through/in the water. We rented gear (big waders & felt soled boots) and took the bus up to the start of the narrows. There were a lot of people for the first 1-2 miles (note the first picture below) but it thinned out as we kept going.
About 4(ish) miles miles in, we took a side canyon that we later discovered was called Orderville canyon. The canyon was much narrower and very impressive to walk through given the very steep sidewalls. We though it would be a quick sidetrip, but we kept going for at least 2 miles before getting stuck under a set of cascading waterfalls where the water was too deep to proceed with just waders. We later found out that this canyon travels for another 20+ miles before it rises back to the surface & exits. The narrows itself is 22 miles… long ways to go in a canyon like this.
Great way to wet our appetite for a bigger canyoneering trip later on! Here’s the map of the days’s activities - GPS signal was spotty inside the canyon, kinda funny to see it on the map now as our track jumps up and down the super steep cliffs… :)
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Mark brough his DSLR camera - fairly inappropriate for canyoneering, but he kept it safe!
The next day we did a bike ride through the canyon - I took the trailer with Sara and the bike was very rusty, so I was exhausted! Also explains why I didn’t get any pictures…
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Bryce Canyon coming soon!