Angel's Landing Graffiti

You wouldn't usually think of Angel's Landing as a pristine place in Zion. Though amazing, it sees hundreds to thousands of people a day during the spring, summer, and fall. But for one day, for a couple of hours,the wilderness permits staff would have the place all to ourselves. There are toilets up at Scout's Lookout, which is the spot many people think is close enough to the top, that need to have the waste removed each year. The way the Park Service does that is by helicopter. Because of the danger to thehelicopter operation of having people up there, the trail crew keeps the trail up from the Grotto and down from the West Rim closed.

The wilderness permits staff took that closure opportunity as a chance to attack something that is an eyesore for both the park service and visitor's alike on Angel's Landing: GRAFFITI!

And we are not talking about a little bit of graffiti. These are not hand prints that people stick on the walls in the Narrows. Though frustrating, that graffiti can be taken off with a little bit of water and a scrub brush. No, this is carved into the soft sandstone, sometimes with meticulous effort, where it stays for decades.

In fact, there is a rumor that a person died on Angel's Landing because they were looking for a free space on the rock to carve their name and fell off the edge. So after years of

neglect there are literally hundreds of graffiti panels on top of Angel's Landing. So the job of removing it fell on the shoulders of the wilderness permits crew. Angel's Landing is technically not part of our district, though, it seems if we did not do it, no one else would. It had been a project for people for many years. In fact, it was one of my projects 4 years earlier. The problem was that we had not found anything effective in removing it. We had tried all our usual techniques and failed. The conclusion we finally came to was that we were going to have to deface the rock to get the job done.

A drill with a chisel bit was the decision after seeing its effectiveness on the Emerald Pools trail. But as the day came closer, I started to have doubts. We went through a whole process of getting this approved by the major heads of every department. While this worked out fine, I thought that there may be other less abusive ways of getting the job done. So days before, I took out various different hammers to try to get the job done. Success!

Frankly, the best of the hammers that worked was the smallest of them. I just pounded on the carved in section and then used a grill brush to scrape it off. On the scratched in graffiti, using only the top of the hammer was even more effective, not even leaving a mark. We had found a tool that was easy to use and could be used at all times of the year.The day before the scheduled helicopter flights, I took the other leads in wilderness permits up to the top of Angel's Landing.

What we discovered was the same thing that we knew previously, that the rock on top behaves differently than anywhere else. Maybe it is

from the constant impact of other people, but it just takes more beating, more scrubbing with the grill brush, and just generally more effort. Also, getting the job done with visitors up there is very difficult. So Derrick Fassbender and I were happy to have the place to ourselves when September 22nd finally rolled along. We hiked up with a member of the trail crew and then were left to have at it. We found pounded, scrubbed, rubbed, and eliminated hundreds of panels on that day. We got rid of eyesores like the giant BYU that my buddy Brian Hays had asked us personally to get rid of since he was a graduate and offended that his university would be represented in that way. We got rid of names and hearts with dates from 10 to 20 years previously.

We did get to see the helicopter

flights and realized that they were not anywhere dangerous to us. All and all we got 4 hours of time to ourselves up there and that was enough to see much of the graffiti go. Though not all, which is disappointing because we know it will reproduce when someone sees it and gets the idea to write their own name, especially in a spot where it is so easy to do now that it is clear. So please, do not put graffiti on Angel's Landing.

The whole world does not care that you were there. Take a picture, tell a story, but don't leave your mark. On a personal note, this was a very rewarding experience. To know that you could come up with a way to make an actual difference on a place everyone knows about in Zion made me feel great. Though the rock does not look perfect, I would compare it to tattoo removal. After removing a tattoo, the skin does not look new, but at least it isn't showing the horrible idea that someone had when they got the tattoo. The great part about the removal is also that we can eliminate the graffiti faster than it can reproduce. In future years, I think we can have Angel's Landing graffiti free. I think this would serve everybody well both the Park Service and the visitor's who get to experience it for the first time.