Zion National Park

4/11/09
I drove north from Flagstaff on AZ 89, skirting the edge of the enormous Navajo Indian Reservation, where intense dust storms made for some harrowing driving. Passing by the turnoffs to both South and North Rims of the Grand Canyon was frustrating, but I had to be patient. The rims of the Grand Canyon are 7-8,000’ elevation; North Rim wasn’t even open for the season yet. Zion National Park is based at around 4000’ and was entering its peak season. Grand Canyon would have to wait.

I stopped at Glen Canyon Dam and puttered a bit around Powell National Recreation Area, but this is a water-centric park. Directions to trailheads frequently begin with the instructions "rent a boat". So west along southern Utah to Zion, whose proximity to Las Vegas took me by surprise. I had been in Las Vegas so long ago and had driven so much in the interim that I figured it must be far away by now, a subconscious myopia from my reliance on state maps.

The heart of Zion National Park is the North Fork Virgin River, whose headwaters rise beneath 10,000 feet high cliffs north of the park before combining forces to slice through 2000 vertical feet of Navajo Sandstone to create Zion Canyon. Navajo Sandstone is one of the thickest layers of sandstone in the world, and while it extends over a huge portion of the Colorado Plateau, it is most spectacularly exposed at Zion. It is basically why Zion National Park exists.

Navajo Sandstone is very strong. It does not crumble, it cleaves, forcing the Virgin River to cut nearly straight down, carving a 14 mile-long stretch of canyon known as The Narrows, which narrows in some spots to barely 20 feet  beneath walls 2000 feet high. Downstream from the Narrows the river hits softer rock formations underlying Navajo Sandstone and widens just enough to conduct a modest national park: a lodge, a few campgrounds, a human history museum, and seven-mile long Zion Canyon Road, which allows visitors up-canyon to hike, climb, or just crane their necks at the tallest sandstone cliffs in the world.

Comparisons to Yosemite Valley and its even higher granite cliffs are common, but Zion is no imitation. Instead of silver-gray, the walls of Zion are colored as in fantasy, at least for someone new to the Colorado Plateau. The cliffs are predominantly a dark orange and a red that is more burnt-looking than the dominant formation surrounding Sedona. Higher up the Zion cliffs turn a creamier beige, almost white, even though it is the same Navajo Sandstone. The orange and red are from iron oxidation (of course) and this iron has leeched from the uppermost cliffs, leaving them their more natural beige. Orange and red blotches and streaks stain some of this cream layer, iron oxide leaching from the thin remains of the Temple Cap Formation sitting above the Navajo Sandstone. These blood-like swaths dripping down the face of one high mesa earned it the macabre name The Altar of Sacrifice.

Altar of Sacrifice

The names of many of Zion’s features are similarly gothic - the Great White Throne, the Towers of the Virgins (which include the Alter of Sacrifice), the Court of the Patriarchs, the Mountain of Mystery. These names came not from D&D aficionados or even from the Mormons who settled the canyon and named it Zion, but from a Methodist minister passing through in the early years of the National Park.

Another feature distinguishing Zion from Yosemite is its confinement. Yosemite Valley is a mile-wide, allowing for open vistas of the landscape. Zion canyon is a 1/3-mile wide at its widest, an opening called the Temple of Sinawava (from a Paiute word for coyote), and even there the canyon is barely wide enough to allow glimpses of the top. The Great White Throne, 2200’ of sheer relief, defies all probability, not to mention photographic perspective.

The Great White Throne

At the end of the Zion Canyon Road a mile-long trail continues up canyon before giving out at the Narrows. From there the canyon is not reliably wider than the river, yet it is a very popular watery hike in the brief window between spring snow-melt - in early April when I was there the only people entering the Narrows wore wet suits- and the flash floods of summer thunderstorms, when the river flow can increase by a factor of a hundred within an hour.

Into the Narrows

Angel’s Rest
 The ranger at the Visitors Center told me I should hike to Angel's Rest, so I did. It has been rated as one of the top five hikes in the entire West, but I couldn’t see that. First of all, it's only 5 miles round trip, so would only qualify in thea "short hikes" category in my book. Even there I don’t think it would get my vote. It is one of the most congested hikes I've ever been on, in part because it is rated as one of the top five hikes in the West, and in part because it is so short all those people don’t get a chance to space themselves out. The first two miles are paved, and wind ingeniously up a very steep rock formation along a portion of trail called Walter's Wiggles, which drew most of my attention. I would rank the trail very high in any “best trail architecture" competition.

After two miles the trail plateaus out at Scout’s Point, a point nearly anyone can get to, and when I arrived midday on the sunny Sunday just about everyone had. It resembled a busy city park: baby carriages, group photos, the works. This is a fine thing for sure, and I was happy to see so many people out having a good time. Scout’s Point has a terrific view and for many it would be the end of the hike, but it’s the next half-mile - a steep, knife-edge ridge scramble to Angel’s Rest - that gets all the glory. The difficulty was probably a class two, meaning use of both hands was sometimes required. The park has installed some metal chains to assist in this, and a coupe of stretches were tough enough going that I indulged. Exposure was at least class-four, meaning a fall would bring serious injury and likely death. I thought it odd that the park would actively encourage so many people to take this hike, and in fact two people fell to their deaths from this trail in the year following my visit.

It was quite a scene. Hundreds of people congregated at the base, some just gawking and saying “no way“ - ascents like this always look tougher from below. But many were going for it and some were simply not prepared for such a difficult traverse. Parts of the trail were so narrow that only one direction of hikers could go at a time, creating backups of hikers going in the other direction. The congestion was humorous. Some in the middle stopped to gather their breath and their courage, debating whether and how they should negotiate the next few steps. A few were panicking and I took on a facilitator roll, if only so that I could continue along the trail. "One step at a time" was my advice. "Don‘t look at the full descent. If each next step you take is safe you’ll make it just fine." All very social, and no doubt a big part of the Zion experience, but as far as hikes go it was basically a novelty act.

Observation Point
 In contrast, the hike I took the next day to Observation Point is a great one. It’s 8 miles round trip with a 2100' elevation gain, but much of it is flat, making other parts steeper than those dimensions indicate. It is all trail, no hijinks, and is beautiful from start to finish. It begins with the first expansive views I‘d yet had of the canyon and includes close-ups of great rock outcrops. Then the trail enters Echo Canyon, which was terrific, particularly before the sun managed to poke its light in. This is the only slot canyon in the park with an official trail built through it. The trail mostly but not always stays above the canyon floor. The last half-mile provides a cartographer’s view of Zion Canyon. Not a lonely hike by any means, but at 8 miles people have more room to spread themselves out. My feeling when it was over was that if it were to prove to be one of the best hikes in Canyon Country, I would not be disappointed.

 

Zion is the most heavily visited of all Utah‘s National Parks, and most of these people concentrate in the highly constricted confines of Zion Canyon. The park does a good job managing these crowds, or more precisely their vehicles. Private vehicles are not allowed on Zion Canyon Road from April through October; shuttle buses run regularly from the Visitors Center to the Temple of Sinawava. I took the shuttle to and from the trailheads of both my hikes. Both times the return ride was packed in like the New York subway at rush hour and I was indeed hanging on to the horizontal poll. No straps to hang on to though, so what gave at every twist and turn was my rotator cuff. I decided to recommend that the park install straps, but of course I never did.

In addition, the campgrounds are an easy walk to the Visitors Center and the Historical Museum, a key innovation few other parks have pursued. These facilities in turn are all located at the edge of the park, with groceries and other hints of civilization in walking distance just beyond in Springdale. (Utah charges 6% sales tax on groceries!) The upshot is you can drive to the park, park at your campsite, and not drive again your entire stay, at least if you stick to Zion Canyon.

To see the other parts of the park though, you have to drive, so the next day I took my car out the Zion-Mt. Carmel Highway to see some of the grand formations from a different perspective. The highway immediately switchbacks 1000’ above the canyon floor giving a spectacular view, the only place by car to get a properly wide-angle view of the canyon walls. It then runs along the top of a plateau of rolling sandstone, providing the opportunity to examine Navajo Sandstone not as a looming edifice but underfoot. as the petrified sand dune it is. Orange and white patterned swirls were simply beautiful: sinuous patterns of Jurassic wind. A few peaks do rise thousands of feet above, but much of the plateau is a lightly forested rolling rockscape that hinted at great roaming. It was a rest day for me and I limited myself to brief shutter-bugging hop-abouts from the side of the road. I pondered how a sand dune might get buried by mud and water and still retain its wind-swept swirls but I came up empty. I must be missing a key concept. 

Double-Arch Alcove
 My next Zion hike required a real road trip, out to Interstate 9 then north to the Kolob Canyons section in the northwest corner of the park. The drive itself traverses the geologically momentous boundary between the Colorado Plateau and the Basin and Range Province. The interstate runs along the base of the Hurricane Cliffs, the far western edge of the Colorado Plateau, and parallels the Hurricane Fault, largely responsible for the uplifting of the Markagunt Plateau, eroded by the Virgin River system into the great canyons of Zion National Park. To the east of the interstate rose the 10,000 foot  Pine Valley Mountain Range, the first in a wave of ranges extending 500-miles to the Sierra Nevada in California.

Starting at 5430' (higher than Observation Point) the Taylor Creek trail rises a gentle 1000 feet along over two and a half miles to the Double Arch Alcove, a very worthwhile destination. The trail zigzags endlessly across Taylor Creek, a pleasant piddle in early April, though boulders and tree trunks strewn high up along its deeply cut banks indicated the carnage it unleashes in flood.

Double-Arch Alcove is stunning, as dramatic a single-site as I’d seen on my trip. It rather defies description, but here goes. It is a recession in the wall - yes, an alcove - that looks like a seriously done-up stage set. It is mostly colored in a wild red, streaked by dark brown, pink, and whitish stripes. The back wall and primary focal point has tighter stripes with a yellowish green tint that brought to my mind the Joker’s smile. The alcove is an early stage of arch development, and is forming where water is emerging laterally from the cliff along a spring line. The bright colors are mostly from minerals and mosses

Compared to the warm spring day I’d hiked through, the alcove was an icebox, harboring unseasonable snowdrifts. I stared stunned for a while, retreated back to the sun to eat my lunch, then went back in and gaped some more. 

Double-Arch Alcove

Afterward I drove to road’s end and ate dinner at a picnic table in the shade of Utah Juniper buzzing with bees that left me and my food alone. One eventually investigated my coffee cup and turned abruptly away in disinterest if not disgust. I whiled away the rest of the afternoon reading about southwest stratification and then enjoyed the evening sun on the massive sandstone walls of Kolob Canyons.

The next day was my last day at Zion. I should have been off buying groceries but instead was reading about the Grand Staircase and looking through the newly-budding cottonwoods to the Watchman when I had a little geologic breakthrough. I was suddenly able to clearly identify the three main formations comprising this portion of the Zion Canyon wall. The cliffs of the Navajo Sandstone were already abundantly evident. Lower down slope I could recognize the Moenave Formation, the layer that the book on my lap, Zion : The Story Behind the Scenery, identified as red-brick blocky rock. It was the layer in between these two, the Kayenta Formation, that had me fooled, but there it was, the crumbly, vegetated slope below the sheer cliff of Navajo Sandstone. My Cascade-trained eyes had taken it for talus from the Navajo Sandstone, but it is a layer to itself. Where exposed it erodes into crumbly rock, but underneath it is solid rock, solid enough to hold up the Navajo Sandstone, at least for the time being.

Navajo Sandstone (High Walls), Kayenta Shale (Vegetated Slopes), Moenave Formation (Brick-like Blocks

close-up

I had finally absorbed what the books meant by a strata being either cliff forming or slope forming. Navajo Sandstone is cliff forming. It sheers in sheets. Kayenta Shale is slope forming. The formations have a remarkable consistency compared to the Northwest, where a mountain that may have been burped up in situ 50,000 years ago stands shoulder to shoulder with one that began floating over from the South Pacific 50 million years earlier. In the Northwest it is anyone’s guess what might be the story of the mountain on the other side. In Canyon Country I had a fighting chance of knowing my stuff.