Through the Narrows

Alright, we made it.  You are now officially at the day when I stopped wimping out and hiked the Narrows.  This actually ended up being my favorite, I think, of all of our hikes.  It was just ridiculously fun and beautiful.

[ALSO, more important sidenote: WE FINALLY HAVE INTERNET so the rest of these updates will all be done today so we can all be on the same page]

So the cool thing about Zion National Park is that they only let cars drive on two roads through the park and then the rest - and majority - of the park is only accessible through park-run shuttle buses that stop at every main trail head and landmark.  Jimmy found out on our first night that the first bus left the Visitor Center at 6:45 in the morning so we made a point of being on THAT bus to get to the Narrows.  Mostly to ensure that no one would be ahead of us, there would be no crowds and we would only be hiking with like-minded people. 

I'm not really sure how else to describe the Narrows other than how I had already explained it... just a bit less dramatic.  It really is just a hike through a river.  In the biggest slot canyon in the USA. To get to the Narrows we walked about a mile and a half up a paved trail that winds its way along the river.  At some point, the trail just sort of stops (probably because it's blocked by a huge wall of the canyon) and there is this small set of three steps that leads you down to the riverbank.  We closed everything in our backpacks up in plastic bags tied shut and each picked out a walking stick (people leave them leaving up against the wall for future hikers... they're highly recommended for this sort of hike) and started wading in.  At first the water is maybe about shin-deep at most but it's a good introduction to how fast the river is moving and how to walk along the riverbed, which is entirely rocks of various sizes.  Then, within less than 5 minutes of walking up-river, the riverbed drops out and you're suddenly chest-deep in water. 

making our way to the river

jimmy going in deep

I had to pack up my camera after taking that picture because seeing that the water was chest-deep on Jimmy meant that it was going to be even higher on me.  The good news is, that was really the only part of the river that was that deep.  Everything else ranged from trails along the river and then knee-deep to waist-deep in the river.  We hiked into the canyon for about 4 hours before we finally came back.  I'm just going to share the rest of the pictures with you because I can't begin to describe how amazing it was.  Early morning is DEFINITELY the time of day to do the Narrows - the lighting is soft and perfect and each time the sun gets a little bit higher, a little bit more light sneaks down the canyon walls. 

sunlight behind us at the trailhead

jimmy crossing the river.... just to cross the river

look at how clear that water is

a friend we made along the hike - ben moody

logs caught between rocks from the last flood- they were blocking the majority of the river

a little bit tired and a little bit soaked, all around a lotta bit of having fun

red walls

this section of the wall reminded me of cathedral walls for some reason

this is why they're called the Narrows

one of my favorite pictures of the walls

sunlight

just walking into sunlight

I know, I'm sorry. That's a lot of pictures.  Actually, I'm not that sorry... because I have about 90 more where those came from.  And this way you now have a much better idea of what the Narrows are like - as opposed to me, just a couple days before I took all of these pictures. 

By the time we turned around - sometime in the early afternoon - and as we made our way back closer to the entrance, there were huge crowds making their way up river.  It was a zoo.  Just too many people in ridiculous clothing (flipflops, bathing suits, jeans)... we even saw a girl with an ipod. Yes, that's another ipod, if you've been keeping count. All in all, the only time to really hike the Narrows is definitely ridiculously early in the morning.  We returned to camp and just spent the afternoon relaxing and reading in the shade.  And Jimmy built us a little cooler using the stream next to our campsite for some "refreshments" we had bought the night before...

Next up: the final leg to California.

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.