Fall Color in the Narrows

Everyone that comes to the wilderness permits desk is often looking for a secret about Zion. When is the best time to do this or that? Well, I will let you in on a little secret. The best time to hike the Zion Narrows is mid-October. Sure, you have to use a wet suit or dry suit and the air temperature is not particularly comfortable, but as far as beauty which is what you want, this is the best time of year. I did not know that, though, until I embarked on this expedition.

 As I got a ride from the EOC to the Temple of Sinawava, most everyone thought I was a bit crazy for going into the Narrows during this time of year. I was the first one up on this particular day. I needed to hike all the way to the park boundary. I was supposed to hike down from the top but I could not get a ride, so up from the bottom I was going. This is a trip we do not let backpackers do because of the fact that more than likely people will just camp before their actual campsite. I was only 1/2 mile up the Narrows when I ran into something I never saw before in Zion. It was a beaver swimming around in a pool in the lower Narrows. Unbelievable! The fact that this guy could live there with the throngs of people going up the river every day was just remarkable.

I was so excited to see him and life in the lower part of the Narrows. My goal with all this was to take pictures of social trails to see how they were rehabilitating. The results were mixed, but I feel like I was moving in the right direction. In the middle of all of this, I was able to enjoy the pretty sights around me also. I was staying in campsite number 6, which was right by the entrance to Kolob Canyon. The river had been a tough fight going upstream and I could see why as there was nearly 30 cfs coming just out of Kolob.

After Kolob, upstream, it was a bit easier going. I hiked all the way to the park boundary checking permits along the way. I ran into a group at Deep Creek late in the afternoon. They asked if they were doing well on time and I had to tell them, no, they were not doing well at all. They had to get moving quickly. I never heard anything from them after this, so I am assuming that they made it out okay. In fact, there were many of the backpacking groups getting in late. I was happy to fill up my day with hiking all the way to the boundary and back to six.

It was a cold evening and morning, but I was happy to see that my wet suit was dry by the A.M. The next day was smooth sailing with the current helping me downstream spending some time working on social trails trying to get them looking good for the season. They were as good as they were going to get. I even put up 5 signs because I spent so much time on the same trails. This was a hard decision as the last thing a person wants to see in the Narrows is a don't walk here sign. But they also don't want to see a large eroded trail either. I was happy to get out and warm up, but also sad that I could not do more as there were some trails that I had not been able to do all I want. I still felt like it was good for a season of work, especially when it is not exactly within my job description. Just want to leave the park a nicer place. 

Hide and Seek

The park finally re-opened. I went to work for one day for a couple of hours and then had a 3 day weekend. So we had some time on our hands and decided to use it to do a little bit of hiking. So we drove up the KT road and out to the Wildcat Canyon Trailhead. It was a beautiful day and a little bit cool, but comfortable. I was carrying Conrad, Jacqueline was carrying our stuff, and Zyla was carrying herself. This was an ambitious plan as Zyla was going all the way out to the Peaks and back which would be a 4.5 mile roundtrip. She did well for about the first half mile and then seemed to lose interest. We tried bribing her with "bunnies" like we did on the Coalpits hike, but she was less interested.
There is just so much that you can do to convince a 3 year old that continuing to hike was in her best interest. So we tried different motivation and played hide and go seek. I would hide and Zyla would come find me. Then she would run ahead and hide and I would come find her. Then we would both hide together and Mom would have to find us. Then Mom would have to hide, etc... This continued for miles on the trail. Zyla just never got sick of this game.
 It was not a day of enjoying nature and the beauty that surrounded us, no it was a day of hiding in the wilderness. Luckily we really had much of the place to ourselves, so there was no issue with her running around. There was one couple and we actually kept pretty good pace with them. In no time, we were at the end of the trail and taking pictures. We stopped for a bit here to enjoy the view and have a snack, but we were soon on our way hiding and seeking our way back.
Zyla found this enjoyable for the first mile or so and then eventually she got extremely tired. For the last mile, Jacqueline carried her about half the time as she was spent.
Still an excellent day for her moving well and really fast with her parents pretty tired after the hike also having to add a bunch extra by hiding in the woods. Really fun day with some excellent pictures coming out of it. 

Mineral Gulch

Well, the government was still under shutdown and while the crazies were coming out in Washington County with talk of taking over the park, I was using my skills of different routes to find a place to go outside the park that I had been interested in seeing. I called up some friends and convinced Patrick that we would have no issue pulling this off. Patrick came with me on a couple on canyoneering trips this year, so I had confidence that he could handle a long trip. So we went to go through Meadow Creek to Mineral Gulch. This had been on my list for quite some time of a trip that I was excited to do.

We left bright and early during the morning and it was strange to drive through Zion. The place was eerily quiet. Despite the reports of kicking people out of places, there just were not any people really to kick out by this point. Meadow Creek was located a few miles outside the park. It met up with Mineral Gulch that led into Parunaweap Canyon. We started hiking from a piece of old road that used to be Highway 9. The beginning of this was just route finding through the trees on a ridge that dropped us into the canyon. From there it was following a weak stream down.

 We did our best to keep our feet dry as we knew this stream was going to dry up. We saw what we believe was a fresh mountain lion kill sitting in the stream as there was still fresh blood floating around the kill. Almost immediately after this we came to the first obstacle. It was a 20 foot rappel down a slopy section of rock. There was already a rope installed, so we just used that. It was an awkward rappel, so I told Patrick to just handline it. He had a simpler time with it than me. Combined with another waterfall that we could walk around, these were the only obstacles and the rest of the canyon was mostly easy going. 

There was an unimpressive arch a few miles in. Patrick expressed his displeasure with arches and I would definitely have to agree with this one. Downstream we ran into the confluence of Mineral Gulch and continued down that. We heard a voice and far up above us was a man on a four wheeler, so far we could barely make him out. We kept going farther downstream and eventually the views were fantastic. The canyon became super narrow but still incredibly flat. This was an amazing canyon that would be a photographer's dream. It opened up a little bit and we found a cave with some pictographs in it. These were made with yellow paint. There were also cow pies and fire scars from many campfires in there. Still an awesome sight to see, but it could have been made better if it was protected a little bit better.

 We went down some more amazing narrows until it opened out to Parunaweap canyon. Patrick was hoping to get into the barracks, but unfortunately that was quite a ways downstream from us. We would visit that during a separate trip through Fat Man's Misery later that month. On this day, we just turned around to head back upstream. It was back through all the pretty narrows until we got to the junction with Meadow Creek again. Instead of heading back up Meadow Creek, we went over to Seven Canyon instead, so named because there was an arch that looked like the number 7 in it.

 There were all so some petroglyphs and that was our main goal. These were pretty incredible, though faded. There were a lot of them, mostly bighorn sheep. We saw some bighorn sheep on the hike high on the cliffs above and you could really tell that people hunted them and it was a blessing to be able to bring one down for meat. We decided that seeing the glyphs was good enough and the arch would have to wait for another day or never to be seen at all. We went back to Meadow Creek and started to head up that one. The one drawback of this hike was the large amount of time one had to spend in mostly wide open canyon.

 Still, the cliffs were scenic and the hike back seemed to take less time than it took coming down. We hiked up to the base of the waterfall this time and while there was not much water it was still quite a drop. We made it out a little after 4 p.m. making it about a nine hour day to do about 20 miles. It was definitely worth it to see the beauty of that place and definitely not as challenging as I thought it might be. It would have been very hot midsummer so this was the perfect time of year to do it. Patrick was nervous about the length of the trip but never once did we have an issue as we moved well the entire trip.

Shutdown Hike

My mom had come out to visit to take care of the kids while we worked. Unfortunately, the government decided to shut down corresponding with her visit. This meant less time for her with just the kids and more time for her to see Jacqueline and I. One irritating thing about Zion being closed down was that not even I could go into the park. So that meant all the hiking in the park was off limits to us also even though we were park rangers. I needed to get out though because it was pretty irritating to have to sit at home and check CNN to find out what was going on.

So, mom and I went out to Eagle's Crags. I was expecting it to be busy up there because of the park being closed, so we got an early start. This was a good plan because there was no one at the trailhead when we started. The hike was good and predictable. Mom hiked well and we made it all the way to what I considered the end of the trail. Going down we started running into a lot of people who were hiking up. I even had to give some of my water to a couple that was concerned about running out of water.

 There were quite a few people on the trail who definitely would not have hiked this trail had the park been open. I considered that a positive because it broadened people's perspective about the area and what it had to offer. When we arrived back at the trailhead, it was sure busy. There were cars parked all over the place. I was glad that we got out and that I got to spend a little bit of quality time with my mom.