Zion National Park: Where Angels Land
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
We spent three nights in Southern Utah, staying at a glorious holiday house about ten minute’s drive from Zion National Park. The house was huge; four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a giant open plan kitchen-dining-living area with double height windows looking out onto the snow covered surroundings, two balconies, snow-covered gables, and a giant outdoor jacuzzi.
The jacuzzi didn’t cooperate on New Year’s Eve (the water was as cold as John Howard’s heart), but we got it working on New Year’s Day, and spent the evening on the first day of the year drinking Coronas in a bubbling jacuzzi surrounded by snow. ‘Twas a brilliant completion to a day that saw us traipsing over icy rocks and craning necks to look skywards at the domineering towers of red rock that formed Zion National Park.
A gentle river, the Virgin, snakes its way along the bottom of the canyon floor, weaving around thousand-foot high brutes of rock. We followed it’s edge as far as we could, to where the trail became too icy and the canyon too narrow.
We took another trail, this one up the side of one of the cliffs to some gentle waterfalls. Coats of ice covered the cliff face, and the water crashed into mounds of ice at the base.
A herd of wild deer emerged ahead of us, and crossed through the icy-cold river in single file, as the setting sun cast an orange glow across the water. We watched in silence, breath floating away in front of our faces.
Next morning I rose before dawn after just a couple of hours sleep, head murky from the Coronas the night before, and drove back into Zion on my own. I wanted to tackle the famous Angel’s Landing hike; a strenuous climb up 1500 feet to a lookout in the centre of the canyon, and with a last half-mile that is a fin of rock jutting out into the canyon little more than three feet wide in spots with an 800 foot drop on one side, and a 1000 foot drop on the other.
I donned Bec’s YakTrax for the trip – this was not a place I wanted to slip. Light was easing in as I started at the trailhead. There was no-one else around, just the noise of the river gently caressing rocks below me. The trail climbed up the side of the cliff, and my gloves and beanie came off as the sweat began to pour. The trail then briefly levelled out and turned into a gap in the cliff; Refrigerator Canyon. The gloves and beanie returned.
The trail climbed again, now coming from the back of the cliff, up a relentless series of twenty or so small switchbacks that had me gasping for air. The trail narrowed, and bunched up into a thin mound of ice covered rock that was too steep to walk up. A couple of feet to my right was a sheer 500 foot drop. A foot to my left was a sheer 800 foot drop. Chains had been nailed into the rock to haul oneself up with, though in some places they were frozen into the ice. I gingerly tried to pull myself up, trying desperately to get some sure footing.
After some nervous slips, I crested the rise, and about an hour-and-a-half after setting out reached Scout’s lookout; a (relatively) wide expanse that offered some stunning views back down the canyon, and was the resting place before one would normally attack the last fear-inducing, spine-tingling ascent. But I was out of time. We had to get to back to Las Vegas later that afternoon, and there was no way I could reach the top, take in the view, and make it back down in time.
As much as I wanted to keep going, to tackle a scary-as-hell climb up a narrow fin of rock covered with ice and snow, I had to let it go. I took some snaps from Scout’s Lookout (the big chunk of rock on the left of this photo is the trail leading up to Angel’s Landing), appreciating the fact that I had this stunning natural wonder all to myself, before realising I only had about half-an-hour to make it back down and to the house before the girls would start worrying.
And so I literally ran down the mountain. Down the ice-covered trail, bouncing along in Bec’s YakTrax (an absolute life saver).
Zion was almost overwhelming in its contradictions. Beautiful and powerful and peaceful and intense. I’d like to return one day. To Zion and to Bryce. To see them in the summer, stripped of their icy cloaks. And to reach the summit where angels land.
Dave
