Zion Wandering
Friday.
Attempted climbing fizzled.
Zion Canyon bike ride.
Hiked Angel’s landing in 2-hours. (5-7ishpm)
The Subway, Zion National Park
Left Yosemite on a Wednesday, and this was most of Thursday.
Got a bit lucky with a permit being available the same day I went into the backcountry office.
****
This post is feeling a bit like bragging, as is just about everything on here really. Not sure what to do about that. Maybe that is just the internet for you.
I am traveling by myself. I have a lot of freedom to do things right now.
One day things will be different.
****
Moonlight Buttress
Cole and I climbed Moonlight Buttress. This involved a day to climb the first several pitches, a rest day, and then we did the route in a day. I don’t have pictures from the ascent day because my camera broke on this trip (again).
A chap by the name of Alex Honnold got famous by climbing this route without a rope in a little over two hours on April 1, 2008.
Zion NP: Hiking Hop Valley
Last week I went for a hike. Hop Valley trailhead to Kolob Arch and back.
It was lovely. Here’s what it looked like sometimes.
Zion
After we made it out of the canyon we hitched a short ride back to our car and high-tailed it for Southern Utah. We drove past the Glen Canyon Dam and planned to camp but it was already dark, fairly cold, and actually raining so we grabbed a hotel room in Kanab, Utah.
Th next day we got a campsite at one of the 2 mega-campgrounds in Zion and did some day hiking. We did a 10 mile out and back that included Angel’s Landing.
Still to come…..Death Valley, Sequoia, and Yosemite National Parks….it was an action-packed trip.
Hiking out
In the morning we packed up our stuff and hiked back down to the wash from our hilltop campsite. We left our big packs against a tree and followed proceeded to follow the wash upstream. It was a lovely hike with sun, sand, and water. The abundance of vegetation was rather surprising and ended up stopping us a little short of our goal. We basically hiked as far as you could go. I’m going to say we hiked to the end of the wash. My best guess was we went about 4 miles from where we had left our packs
After we got tired of navigating the spiky bushes we turned around, hiked back down and grabbed our bags where we’d left them, and continued all the way back to our car. It is interesting how walking the opposite direction things can look completely different. The hills and turns of the trail seem different. With the different light it was like another hike altogether!
Arriving at the car with a decent amount of daylight we got started on the drive back to Bozeman. About an hour north of Salt Lake we found a hotel parking lot and slept in the back of the van. This trip really made me appreciate the minivan in that it is like an RV except reasonably sized and with way better gas mileage.
Zion Backcountry
The day before we obtained a permit from the backcountry office in Zion to backpack in a more northern, mountainous region of Zion, Kolob Canyon. After the hour-long drive to the trailhead, the possibility of cold nights and hiking through more snow inspired the 2nd southern migration of our trip. We got our permit changed and drove back to the area of the park where we were earlier in the morning to hike up something known as the Coal Pit Wash.
With a name like “Coal Pit Wash” I didn’t expect too much except for warmer temperatures (the area is a lot lower than Kolob canoyn and basically a desert). It turned out to be a really varied and interesting hike. There was a good-sized stream the whole way, which we felt like only occurs in the spring when the snow melts. As you hike up the wash the water becomes clearer and colder as you reduce the time the snow melt has to flow among the sand and the red rocks. Also, as you follow the wash upwards the vegetation changes gradually from a very sparse desert to almost an impassible jungle as you get higher into areas more protected from the sun by the cliffs.
