Becoming a Zionist

Well, I finally arrived in Zion National Park. I left Capitol Reef and in about four and a half hours I was pulling into the East Entrance of Zion National Park. Jill Killian was there at the gate and I told her to call Ray O'neil to let him know that I was there. He was one of my dad's good friends from years past in Grand Canyon and now we will be one of my bosses. He called my other boss, Annette, who I met in the visitor center. Annette was super friendly and showed me around the new joint including my new home in Watchman housing. It was plush as far as Park Service housing goes. I had the whole place to myself, but there was a little bit of stuff in there from someone else who I could tell was going to be my roommate. I had a big room all to myself. I could look out the window and see the Watchman and honestly it felt like home. I knew I wanted to stick around in Zion for quite some time and that some amazing stuff was going to go down for me here, starting with my first day of work tomorrow. First day right off the bat, Annette and I were scheduled to go for a hike. She wanted me to pick, but since I did not know the place too incredibly well, I took her suggestion to go to Observation Point. We could still drive to the trailhead as the shuttle bus was not running this early in the year. The trail was steep with lots of switchbacks. You could look right up from the bottom and see the hundreds of feet you had to climb. I was feeling good and Annette was a good hiking partner. She had been at Zion for many years so she knew a lot about the place. Eventually the trail leveled out and we went into a canyon type deal. Below us we could see Echo Canyon still with large ice chunks in it. The trail climbed out of the canyon to a more exposed section of slickrock. There were more switchbacks until the trail leveled out. Here we traversed across until

the trail junctioned. Then it lead us out to a viewpoint they call Observation Point. It was spectacular. You could see all of Zion Canyon below us with big cliffs such as the Great White Throne and Angel's Landing.

I enjoyed the view and took pictures with my digital camera. We hiked back down the same way and when we were back to the vehicle, we drove out on the east side and did Canyon Overlook also. I was much more impressed with OBservation Point. I could already tell that this was going to be a fun experience working in Zion National Park. I just hoped I would meet some more interesting people to hang out with. So far, it had been mostly the permanents left working in the park and they were a bit different than the lowly volunteer I had subjected myself to being to someday get a backcountry job.