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Zion's 2002 <--Page 4 Page 6 -->Tuesday we were all by ourselves and we decided to go for a hike up in Zion Canyon somewhere. I really wanted to do Hidden Canyon, but Stacey with her Asthma didn't feel up to it, so we stumbled on another great trail. Just after you enter the canyon, there is a pull off where you can hike up to the overlook for the Court of the Patriarchs. These are three stone peaks, that were named by a Methodist minister as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Here they are in succession.
Abraham:
Isaac:
Jacob:
Before embarking on our hike right at the pull off we saw two deer.
Instead of hiking up to the overlook we crossed the road, and walked adjacent to the service road up towards the actual valley that houses the three peaks. We followed a trail, but this is not really one marked on the maps and hence we saw only one other person the entire time. There is a footbridge to cross the Virgin river.
Here you can see our shadows from the bridge, one of the peaks reflects in the water on the left.
The trail at times intersected with the Sandy Bench Trail that the horses follow when they are doing horse rides out of Zion Lodge, I believe they stop these when the shuttle stops at the end of October.
As you get higher it climbs up through the oak trees towards the canyon wall.
There lots of great rocks along the way.
If Kiah and Sofi hadn't held this rock up it would have fallen over for sure.
Much of the way we followed a little stream that flowed down from the three patriarchs.
There was a lot of great cottonwoods along the trail as well.
A huge one had fallen several years ago.
Sofi had to climb up on it after Kiah did.
Here is another angle.
There was a huge almost square rock that had come tumbling down.
We posed on a couple of the rocks near the top of the trail. This one is facing the canyon wall.
This one is looking back towards the river.
