Zion National Park, Day 1: Scenic Drive and Hidden Canyon Hike

Monday (March 6th)  we did the "Zion Canyon scenic drive" from our new book, and stopped at a good many of the viewpoints to take pictures.  Vehicles are allowed to drive the byway through the week this time of year, but shuttles must be used on weekends, and every day throughout the busy tourist system.  We could understand why as we saw long lines of cars parked alongside the road, and people hiking long distances to get to the trailheads to begin their hikes!  We also saw a number of cars with parking tickets stuck to their windshields… d’oh!!  John commented that he was surprised at the number of people that were in the park, given the time of year and the fact that it was about 10 deg C today.  Having said that, I saw a lot of brave souls in shorts and open-toed sandals... must be from Australia!!  We Canadians had on 3 layers and knit gloves... :)

Just before the entrance to Zion National Park

The soaring canyon walls are really something!

John was amazed by how high the plateau is in Zion park; the top of the valley/canyon is 4450 ft (and we're camped about 1,200 ft below that around Hurricane, UT), and of course the canyon walls and hikes go up from there.

Court of the Patriarchs

"Yup... the water is frozen up there"

Lots of Temples and Monuments in stone!

We did a short walk to the Weeping Wall, which is a cool feature in a very vertical rock face wall.  Mud deposited in lowland streams millions of years ago was covered with wind-blown sand.  Centuries of pressure squeezed the mud into the shale layers, and the sand into thick sandstone layers.  Water passes easily through sandstone but not through shale. Rain and snow falling on the plateau above soaks into the sandstone. When it replaces the shale, it moves sideways to emerge from the cliff face as a spring – or a waterfall at this time of year.  It also creates icicles that release in the sun warmed air this time of year! 

This looks like a King on a throne to me! 

Weeping Wall; water emerging from the side of the rock face

John noticed that the waterfalls were frozen about 1/2 way own the face of the canyon wall, then running where the sun shone on them. We also saw many frozen shrubs and trees that had water cascading onto them and were not in the sun to thaw them!

Then we did a longer hike with an elevation gain of 850 ft in a mile!  It ascended back into a narrow canyon (the "Hidden Canyon" hike from our new Utah book).  The ledges were narrow, and provided great views of the surrounding canyon walls and Virgin River valley below.  The last half hour provided lots of fun becahuse of the "scrambling" required to navigate over, around, or sometimes under fallen trees and giant boulders.  We haven't done that kind of hiking in years!

On the trail; notice the petrified dunes ledge that we're hiking on.

The hiking path got quite narrow but it was more the pitch that necessitated the chains

Hark! A sign of spring along the trail!

John was amazed at how "vertical" the canyon walls were.  Everywhere we looked, you could imagine that the walls were just "sheared" off...

Our first "arch"!

 We had a picnic lunch on what we dubbed "picnic rock" then turned around and headed back.  Many brave souls scrambled further into the canyon, but we were ready to return to some sunchine.  Down was more challenging than up, and we used the chains attached to the canyon walls in a couple of places.

That's me down there at the bottom; perspective!!  Huge wall!

 John commented on the fact that there was such a different character to the facings: the difference in colours and textures