Reconnecting with Zion Canyon

Zion Canyon and I have had a long back and forth relationship. I came to Zion in 2006 to start a volunteer gig with the backcountry division in the park which would then transition into a paid fees position while taking a break from my studies to become a teacher. I happened to meet my wife there which further derailed me another 3 years working for what would become the Wilderness division.  We would marry in 2008, but with both of us working seasonally, we finally made the transition to teaching. Two years later with the addition of a child, we were back. She was still seasonal, but I was a term employee with benefits. Enough so, with that we were able to afford another child and day care expenses. 
But just barely and for another four-ish years we made it work, but with my approaching term ending with 2 children to raise, we made the wise decision to go back into teaching. We moved away to the McKenzie River in Oregon, which was both fantastic and challenging at the same time. We stayed in Oregon for 3 years, but eventually we found ourselves back in Southern Utah, teaching this time. This is where we find ourselves now in our third year teaching in St. George. While I would have loved to work for Zion National Park again, there is a part of me that is glad that I do not. It also helps that it is near impossible to get hired back at this point due to rules changing while I was away, but still I do feel that now I am truly seeing Zion from an outsider's perspective. 
But I still love it and I mean who wouldn't. The big issue for me, though, is everyone else seems too also. Or do they? Is it just another box to check off? Is it something to say that they did? I am not sure because experiences vary. For some people a morning hike up Angel's Landing and an afternoon in the Narrows is just perfect. From the lines and crowds, it seems like this is ideal. For me, I wanted to know why this place was protected and what the early visitors to Zion were experiencing. So I have been reading a massive amount of texts from when it became a park and before. For me this is great reading because it gets to the bottom of why this place is here for future generations, but also why it is so insanely overcrowded. 

So, many of the earliest experiences were men on horseback riding up the main canyon along the river to the beginning of the Narrows and back. This meant most of their travelling was in the Virgin River which made it dawn on me that I had never hiked the river from the Temple of Sinawava down. So I got inspired and on a Sunday in August, I did this very thing. I wondered what it would be like given that I avoided the main canyon like a plague because of the parking issues, shuttle riding, and massive amount of clueless, sunscreen smelling, and unfamiliar faces I would encounter along the way. 

It was incredible and let me tell you why. It was just me doing this hike on this day and it felt wild. Strangely enough, I could be near people, but my experience was much different then what they were having so I was not in their world. There was no trail because I didn't need one. The river was there to guide me down the canyon and this river ecosystem felt much wilder than a few miles upstream where it was getting pounded in the Narrows. This turned out to be a really good idea that allowed me to reconnect with the main canyon for the first time in years.

My hike actually started in Pine Creek because the parking was so tough that I had to park quite far away at the first turn out. This gave me a chance to see the Pine Creek bridge which is truly a feat in discreet engineering. Each rock was taken from a different part of the park to make this truly a rainbow bridge. This was the last piece of the tunnel road completed in the late 1920's to open the road from Zion to Bryce. I tried hiking down Pine Creek, but there was so much vegetation that it was a battle. Eventually I made it back to the road and caught the shuttle at Canyon Junction. 

Taking the shuttle up Zion Canyon is not an experience, but a necessary evil. I stood until the Zion Lodge, packed in tight, but eventually was able to get a seat. When they dropped me off at the Temple of Sinawava, I took a quick trip to the bathroom, then off to the river. I started across from Telephone Canyon and immediately felt like I was in a unique position. When I came back to the Temple, I was in the river. The Pulpit looked different then before and I felt disconnected from the world where the shuttle was travelling. It was just me and the river. I got out of the river right away though because it is actually really easy walking. Zion Canyon used to be a massive lake, so it is actually rather flat, though abundant in non-native cheat grass. I even found myself some sort of sticky plant that stuck to my legs. I did my part in spreading that seed for sure. Almost immediately I ran into a buck and I would see wildlife all day long that was at least slightly nervous in my presence. The coolest thing was the Great Blue Herons that were fishing and flying away when they saw me. 

The best thing about the whole day was seeing that for the most part, the shuttle was doing its job. To be in, what was, the original route to visit Zion Canyon and have it feel nearly wild was incredible. I walked by the Angel's Landing viewpoint at Big Bend and I was not bothered by people or buses. I had incredible views of these monuments and many of my pictures echoed those of the early writers, artists, lecturers, and politicians. This is how they saw the Canyon and why it was protected. This section, at least, was still in its original condition given that the roads, trails, and instagram followers had not made their way down here. 

There were times I saw people like when I came around the corner from the Organ and Angel's Landing to see the bathers near the Grotto after their hike up Angel's Landing. But they were there and then they were gone. It still felt like the original Zion Canyon until near the lodge where extensive leveling and channeling of the river had been done to make sure the lodge did not experience the frequent floods that plagued the early pioneers that farmed near here. I tried to picture hogs running wild in Zion Canyon, which made me think that much of the vegetation was probably in better shape now then it was 100 years ago. 

Still, I could not believe just how quiet it was passing between the Grotto and the Lodge. This is a main thoroughfare for people going to the Emerald Pools. Yet, we were both sort of curiosities to each other as I passed under the stream of traffic on the black bridge leading from the Lodge to the Lower Emerald Pools. Below the lodge it was nearly abandoned, but no less spectacular. There were two women I saw lounging in a hammock, but that was it. Yet the scenes before my eyes were wonderful with the Sentinel dominating, but also the awesome views of Mt. Majestic which is best seen from the Virgin River. 
These are places where many early visitors looked up and said this should be protected or other's should know about this place or this is the house of God. That is what Frederick Vining Fisher thought as he sporadically named everything he could see with Claude Hirschi in 1916. The funny thing is that he named all these different courts along the way, like the Court of Music and the Court of Poets, but the only one that stuck was the Court of the Patriarchs. I am still not sure why some of his words were taken like gospel and others were completely ignored, but it probably comes down to politics that I will not understand 100 years later.
The river continued to flow along nice and meandering like. It was easy to see why geologists are convinced that this was a lake bottom for many years. It was even easier to see after finding my way to the Sentinel slide area. Unfortunately, there is a diversion dam right near Birch Creek that seems to serve no purpose nowadays, but probably has some, right? Below that the canyon became much more sporty. This is because the Sentinel slide is what dammed up Zion Canyon and then river has to make up for lost time to meet the meandering stream it becomes once again below the park entrance. 

Because of this ancient lake bed, it is easy to see why Zion Canyon is so remarkable. Given how flat it is with so many amazing peaks rising above, one can see much of the grandeur for miles before they are there. There is not too much hidden in Zion Canyon so one gets to experience much of it the entire time. Below the diversion dam, though, it becomes a different world of feeling semi-trapped in a narrows plunging river canyon that obviously wasn't meant to be tread by man. It was picking and choosing routes and crossings in the main part. Here I saw the only other people actually hiking in the river as they picked their way upstream. 

I was able to walk right by the slide area and see that it is still actively eroding and the river is still cutting its way through this massive debris pile that has plunged down from the cliffs above. The best part of this section, though, was following the Great Blue Heron as it moved downstream and eventually flying high above to get back to its home. Not a bad place to live. This section was long and challenging. It was the only section of the river that I would not choose to hike again as it was hard to see anything but the canyon itself and the road cut high above until I was nearing Canyon Junction. Here I could look back upstream to see the Twin Brothers and Mountain of the Sun. Eventually I made it back to the shuttle stop where I proceeded up the road back to my car instead of taking the shuttle. It would have been very anti-climactic to end the day like a sardine in the shuttle.

Instead, I was able to reflect on the experience I had and realize that after 13 years of hiking in and around Zion, I had done it. Not only had I enjoyed the main canyon, but I had found a new hike to do that was away from the crowds and allowed me to see the amazing beauty of this place. It gave me hope for the future of Zion because not every place is over run with people checking their cellphones every five minutes or blasting their speakers as they hike. You can still go to the main canyon and find what this place was set up to protect. On this day, it truly did feel like a sanctuary and I was able to have my own original Zion experience.