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Zion's 2002 <--Page 2 Page 4 -->I have kind of started trying to do a "major" hike on each of my camping trips. Last year at Zion's I hiked up to Angel's Landing, afterwards I had a vague plan to hike up the narrows.
The Narrows is where Zion canyon becomes so narrow there is no shore and the bottom of the canyon consists only of the river and cliffs that soar thousands of feet straight up. So while I invited many others, on Saturday evening just Steve and I went and rented gear from Zion Adventure Company. This consisted of a drysuit, that could be worn full body or halfway tied at the waist, footwear which was a neoprene sock and cayoneering boot, and finally a walking stick. The dry suit sealed at your ankles and wrists, although only from the waist down was the suit truly waterproof, the upper half was water resistant. Your feet are actually wet and with the water temperature around 44 degrees, we expected to first numb our feet and then keep on hiking. But since the boot sheds water, you have the neoprene sock and your moving you don't feel the cold on your feet at all.
We woke up at 6:00 am and drove to the end of the road at the Temple of Sinawava you can see our route below.
It was just about a half hour after sunrise when we entered the canyon, so the light was low, however even throughout the day there is not much change in lighting through out much of the canyon due to the narrow tight walls. This is looking south down the Virgin River at the Orderville Canyon junction.
This is looking down Orderville Canyon, this is a much narrower canyon than proper Zion's canyon, Steve and I planned to come back and side track up this canyon if we had time, things worked out otherwise as you shall see.
As the canyon walls turn previous high water has carved all kinds of flutes and holes.
Here is a hole in the canyon wall filled with rocks that shows the height and force of previous water.
Here we stopped for our first break, you can see the waterproof backpack on the rocks, and Steve in the gear. A note about walking sticks. First of all when you first get the stick, you kind of think it a bit extemporaneous and you don't really think you are going to be needing or using it. But walking up the canyon more often than not means walking in the river, which has current and lots of round rocks covered with moss. The stick helps immensely keep your footing, acting as a third leg. Also when you come to the deeper water, it is a seeing eye stick that helps you feel the bottom, much better to know how deep then step off into a deep hole. Finally you will see other walking sticks that have nice handles and are made from light weight metal, only problem is they don't float.
Here Steve and I stopped at the first deep water. We met a father and son from Seattle area who were also hiking up the canyon.
Finally as the sun begin to hit the canyon walls we arrived our turn around point of Big Springs.
We stopped at a large rock just above Big Springs and had a snack, it had only taken us about three hours to get this far.
You can see Big Springs in the background and in the water you can see all the sediment stirring up.
After resting a bit we turned around and heading back down the canyon.
Here is the action photo of Steve crossing the river.
This far up into the canyon there were a lot of very large boulders that had eroded off the upper walls.
Because it was so late in the season the water was quite low and there were many rocky shoals.
On our way down the sun was even higher and light was starting to hit the canyon floor.
Just around the corner.
Streaking across the river bottom.
Shining down full force.
Here is the deeper waters in the sunlight.
And here Steve poses just before the great debacle, the reason that while we were making excellent time we didn't go explorer Orderville Canyon. On the way up we had come to a rock in the middle of the river, it could have been floating rock but I am not sure, the father and son from Seattle had overtaken us and choose to cross on the right side, they waded almost upto their chest and then had a large drop-off to scramble up. We choose the left hand side and with our sticks felt our way along the canyon wall, where the water was chest high but we were able to just wade through without any climbing. Coming back down this passage around the boulder was on our right, but Steve didn't cross near the canyon wall he crossed next to the boulder....
Which was way over his head and he couldn't touch, good thing we had the waterproof backpack, too bad Steve didn't have his suit zipped up and closed in back of his shoulders.
He had to swim to get out, and his suit filled with water, we emptied a ton of it just around the corner, but even when we got back to the car there must have been over a quart of water in each leg. The dry suit performed its job of keeping water in just as good as keeping water out. Because of this Steve was chilled on the hike back, and we didn't do go explore Orderville Canyon.
We left the Canyon behind, and we will have to do Oderville next year.
