All Good Things Gotta Come to an End

The time had come. The time to go was now. I put this video together before I left. It included a picture from every month of my time at Zion. It was hard to leave, but I can look back and have nothing but fond memories for the people and the places that I got to visit. I could leave Zion a more confident and happier person than I arrived. The great thing about it was that I knew it was always there for me if I wanted to come back. For now, though, Jacqueline and I were excited to start a new chapter out in Oregon. Our dads came out to help us pack up the U-Haul and then we hit the road at the end of July. 

Labyrinth Falls

Well, I thought I had been to Labyrinth Falls. Turns out I hadn't. I hiked down to the Barracks numerous times, but never had been below where there was a pretty powerful waterfall with a small down climb. I wanted to see it and this was my last patrol day. It was fitting that Derrick would be with me. It seemed like this year whenever I was going to go out and do something fun and adventurous Derrick was the one going with me. I guess that showed how much I trusted him and just how awesome Derrick is at his job. He can sometimes have a surly attitude but most of the time Derrick was a pleasure to hang with at work and honestly he can be the most helpful and polite person to visitors and coworkers.
 I was going to miss my patrol days with him. Well this day started out as usual for a trip into the Barracks. It was up the canyon between Checkerboard and Crazy Quilt, then down the slickrock. We did not take the journey into Misery Canyon but instead just followed the exit route in. It went pretty quickly and along the way we could see a fire burning off to the south.
After dropping into the Barracks, I remembered just how truly stunning this place was. I am so impressed every time that I am down there. Soon we were at the waterfall I always turned around at. This time, though, we were able to find a way to down climb it. It went pretty easy and then it was terra incognita. This was a beautiful part of the canyon with pools to wade and small waterfalls.
There were a few short down climbs before coming to a very beautiful and large waterfall. Okay, this had to be Labyrinth Falls. This is a turn around point where all other parties were required to turn around. From the look of the place, most people did not even get close to this place and probably most people assumed that the previous waterfall was Labyrinth Falls. On this day, I got permission to rappel below there to check out conditions to make sure that other people were not going down there. We would leave a fixed line and ascend back up. Unfortunately, just as we arrived it started to rain.
This was not a good place to be in a flash flood.
The canyon was very narrow and this was a large river flowing through a very narrow canyon. I think the closure of Parunaweap by the NPS to protect it as a Research Natural Area had saved numerous lives because this place seemed to flood frequently. We were now deep in the heart of it and Derrick and I reluctantly had to perform a hasty retreat. A little adrenaline kicked it up for us and we were soon safely above the canyon climbing out of the slightly tricky exit route.
 Having done it so many times, though, the route just seemed easier and the rain never came down too hard. So we had the hot sun to keep us company as we took our time getting back on the slickrock. I was disappointed that I didn't get below Labyrinth Falls, but I was happy I got to spend my last patrol day doing something new. Zion truly meant something more than just a place to live and work to me. It really was ingrained in who I was as a person. I wondered if I could find that in our new home in Oregon.

Passing it on

 Over the last few years I kind of took it on myself to try to protect the Narrows. I saw the impacts from so many people trampling the resource and ruining the experience for many others. I spent many days in there blocking social trails and cleaning up human waste. Well, with Jacqueline and I moving to Oregon in a few weeks, it was time to pass on that duty to someone else. In the winter, Zion flew a position for someone to fix up the social trails. I applied for it, but unfortunately, so did a veteran who got the extra points and I was never even considered. It was slightly frustrating and the entire process of applying for Park Service jobs was frustrating to me because here was a job that I was definitely the most knowledgeable about in the park and yet I was not even considered for it.
But here I was taking him up through the Narrows and showing him all the common places where people liked to take a poop and use as social trails hoping that he would do his best to eliminate these and bring them back to their natural habitat. He was a nice enough guy, a little quiet, but he seemed to take everything in that I was telling him. I just hoped that the trails would begin to look better. A couple of days later, I was lucky enough to take Cindy our chief ranger up the Narrows. I was able to point out all of the troublesome spots and the Narrows was nice and busy so that we could really see the impacts of a massive amount of humans all at once.
 I really respected the fact that Cindy took an entire day to come with me in the Narrows and I felt like this was something that was definitely on her radar as far as too many people being in Zion. We just are not built to handle the amount of human traffic that our trails, canyons, and rivers have impacting them every day. It also just does not feel like a National Park when there are so many people around all the time. Try finding a quiet place to just urinate in the Narrows. Good luck. You more than likely are going to have an audience. That is why so many social trails are created. People need to find a quiet place to take a pee or a poop.
What are you going to do, but a toilet in a wild and scenic river. Not likely. The only thing that can be done to save this ecosystem is to find a way to limit the number of people that get their opportunity to trample it every day. This will disappoint some, especially those that do not plan ahead, but will improve the experience for many others. I know I would have paid a fee or come back another day just to see the Narrows and see it protected in a way that it felt natural the first time I saw it. After being in there dozens of times, it still is an amazing place, but the impacts of too many humans just can not be denied. Zion is a place for all, but it doesn't mean they all have to be there at the same time.

A couple of trips through Keyhole

My time at Zion was winding down. There were a lot of people around who always want to go through canyons, so I decided to take a few people through Keyhole. The first was Jacqueline's brother Paul. Paul is an adventurous person who spends a lot of his time snowboarding in the winter. He is not much into hiking because he has bad knees, but I offered to take him through Keyhole Canyon and he was up for it.
Keyhole is perfect because you can get through it in a few hours and still have time to do something else during the day. Paul did great getting through the canyon and took to rappelling pretty well. It is funny to me how simple it is to rappel but how nervous people get because of the danger of the big drop. Paul handled it really well. I even made sure to let him continue through the stinkhole at the end of Keyhole.
A few days later, I was taking Robert Heiser and Patrick Savory through. Patrick had done a few canyons with me in the past and Rob seemed to get out quite a bit. Rob was very grateful to me for taking him through the canyon, but he is always great company. He drove the shuttle buses in Zion and it was always good to see him stop by the desk to say hi. We had another fun trip through the Hole. It felt good to take people through canyons to give them an experience they could not have without my expertise.