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Zion Day 1: In Zion Canyon

Zion National Park is yet another of the wonderful National Parks that can be found in the western United States.  The park is located in quite an arid region, with fantastic (and enormous) rock features formed out of eroded sandstone.  Although the park is reasonable large, most of the visitors come to see Zion Canyon in the southern part of the park, a deep u shaped canyon cut by the Virgin River.  It was the Canyon where we did our first day of sightseeing.


Like the Grand Canyon, Zion has a free bus transportation system that runs from the nearby town of Springfield to the park entrance and then from the large parking lot just inside the park entrance right through to the end of the road up Zion Canyon.  Busses run every 5 minutes or so.  It's a great system to reduce congestion and it's very easy to get off and on at the various lookout points, trailheads and other locations of interest.

Although the park is arid, the river running down the canyon means that there is plenty of lush vegetation within the canyon walls.  We started with a walk to the Emerald Pools which is one of those lush locations fed by a tributary of the Virgin River.  The out and back walk was short but we struggled a bit, it seemed the family had all picked up some sort of bug or other.  Nevertheless we enjoyed the views and took some great photos of the canyon walls close up.

After this first walk our options for further hikes were limited - a few of the other short canyon trails were closed due to rockfall and we didn't feel comfortable tackling some of the higher and longer trails. This wasn't just because we were feeling a bit crook.  The high trails are treacherous (and not recommended for children) even compared to the exposed walks we had done in the Grand Canyon a few days prior.  Check this out.  Yes quite a few people have died on this walk.

So, taking a shuttle up to the end of the Canyon we alighted at the Temple of Sinawava for the famous short walk to the Mouth of the Narrows.  Upstream from here the Virgin river narrows dramatically into endless narrow slot canyon.  As an ex-Canyoner (Blue Mountains Australia) Eric watched enviously as some groups with dry boots and suits headed further upstream.  Eric and Samuel did wade a hundred or so meters up the freezing river - just to see what was around the next bend.  We will have to come back and do the full two day descent some day!

Deciding we had done enough for the day we had one last stop at one of the Visitors Centres on the way back down the canyon where we viewed the excellent exhibits and a short film covering the history of the park.  We would have to do more tomorrow...

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