The Grand Canyoning

So originally we (Jimmy) had planned to do the Narrows on our first full day in Zion National Park but we (Jimmy) forgot to tell us (Meg) about this hike until we got there and we (Meg) started freaking out.  I'm sorry, I'm being confusing.  I'll start over.

Basically, I guess Zion is known for this hike called "THE NARROWS".  Sounds doom-filled, doesn't it?  Like, bone-crunching dark spaces filled with snakes and ghosts?  Crazy, that's what I thought too. The only pieces of information I could gather between the park map, Jimmy rambling and the park ranger we spoke with our first night was that it is a strenuous hike in a river, parts of which will be chest-deep or only accessible by swimming and that at any second there could be a flash flood that could kill us all.  Ok so I'm exaggerating a little bit on that last one, but that's what my panicked mind came up with at first, what with all the intense and overly present flash flood warnings EVERYWHERE.  The more we talked to the guide, the more I understood that flash floods depend on the weather in the park and also the weather in surrounding areas since storms up north could feed huge amounts of water down the Virgin River and wash us all out.  She basically strongly cautioned us to pay very close attention to the weather and if there was any hint of rain maybe reschedule our hike for another day.  When we woke up the next day and saw clouds in the sky and knew that the ranger had already ranked the flood warning at "moderate" we took the risk and bumped the Narrows hike back to the next day... knowing that if it rained the next day we would not be able to do the hike at all. 

(Spoiler alert: don't worry, it all worked out)

Which lead to our back-up plan (also known as Meg's plan anyways): a day trip out to the Grand Canyon!  Since we had woken up early anyway, we had a quick breakfast, grabbed some coffee on the road and rushed over to the Grand Canyon (about a 2 hour drive from Zion)  We decided to attack from the North Ridge, rather than the South Entrance since that's where 9 out of 10 people that visit the canyon go.  We were still a little crowd-shy after the mayhem at Bryce Canyon the day before and when we realized the North Ridge was the closer of the two anyways, we were more than happy to go the less-traveled route.  Although interestingly enough, the drive out there took us right through the Arizona Strip - the least populated place in the continental US.  Don't worry - we didn't see anyone, as predicted.

As required, after we parked we first set off to just see the canyon itself from the best viewpoint of the North Rim.  If I were to think back to that moment, I'm still not really sure how I would describe it.  I'm pretty sure I just laughed.  And then when Jimmy asked me why I wasn't taking any pictures I just sort of looked at my little camera and tried to explain to him how such a little thing can't possibly capture the size of that canyon.  I'm not going to lie, I kind of love moments when you realize that you can't possibly capture the whole image, idea and feel of what you're looking at.  Don't worry, we took LOTS of pictures.  And once we started hiking, the grandiose scale of it all it became a lot easier to deal with.  But first- the first impression pictures:

as close as I would let my feet get to the edge

Once we looked down that never-ending canyon and still couldn't begin to comprehend how but it was we set-off for our hike down into the canyon.  We ended up taking the North Kaibab trail - which is actually part of the Rim to Rim trail (connecting the North and South Rims) but we only went down the initial slope and then worked our way back up since we had to drive back to Zion that same night.  The hike itself was lots of fun.  We got there early enough - and gained an hour in the process since Arizona and Utah are in different time zones - that we decided to make our way down in to the canyon as fast as we could so that we could get to the bottom and still have plenty of time to climb back up.  And before you even ask, I'll tell you that yes, running down the trail is definitely more fun than hiking back up.  But all in all it was overwhelmingly beautiful out and the trail was mostly just sand and rocks (along with horse and mule poop since they also lead rides down the trail) which made for easy going.  We had a snack of dried mango (thanks Trader Joe's) and water while sitting on a bridge at the bottom and then decided to work our way back up.  It wasn't until we were almost back to the top that one of the guides for the passing horse groups [- sidenote: anytime horses or mules passed by we had to step out of the trail and let all 10 or so of them pass.  but the guides for each of these groups were by far the friendliest people we talked to that entire hike. and one of the guides had said hello to us on our way down and he's the one we passed on our way back up too -] informed us that most people don't even make it to the bridge but only go as far as half of that distance and then turn back.  So we were comforted in knowing we got a good hike in even though it felt like wimping out when we turned around with so much trail still ahead of us. But I'm talking too much.  Now I'm going to clog up this cafe's internet to show you all the awesome pictures we took:

the trail down - see it zigzagging?

rock faces

jimmy really liked the rock faces

red sand started to have an effect on our already not-so-clean feet

going through a tunnel

look for me at the lower left hand corner for an idea of how big these walls are

the bridge/snack stop

looking back at what we'd already done

blasted out section of the trail

working our way back up

back at the top of the trail - i just really like the drawing of a distressed mule

dirt lines post-hike

Ok first off - I PROMISE we definitely washed our feet once we got back to Zion. But more importantly, after the hike we decided to walk back up to the lodge to wander a little, drink water and cool off before getting back in the car.  It was also amusing to be in the small minority of people who were sweaty and dirty from actually hiking down as opposed to most of the tourists who were spending their time in the gift store.  We ended up in the Saloon at the lodge where we both first indulged in a Grand Canyon Stout and relaxed in air conditioning.

...and then I moved on to an extra big and super refreshing iced coffee and Jimmy indulged in a little bit of scotch... since one of us technically had to drive back to Zion and one of us definitely needed to keep celebrating the fact that we had just hiked down into the Grand Canyon.

After checking out the rest of the lodge we climbed back in to the trusty subaroo to return to Zion for a well-deserved dinner, foot-washin, and a LOT of sleep since we were both pretty tuckered out.  Before we move on to the next day though, I'm going to share this one last picture with you... just in case none of our other ones did a good enough job of convincing you to maybe schedule your next trip to the Grand Canyon and invite us along.  If you go to the Grand Canyon, you can stay at the the lodge and look at this all day while Jimmy and I are hiking:

I'd make sure those chairs are empty for you, of course.