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| Hiking | 10.80 Miles |
1,908 AEG |
| | Hiking | 10.80 Miles | 5 Hrs 39 Mns | | 2.04 mph |
| 1,908 ft AEG | 21 Mns Break | 12 LBS Pack | | |
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[ show ]
| partners | | Riverside Walk 2 Miles - 75' AEG
This is actually a very scenic walk on a paved trail that leads to The Narrows. Don’t expect solitude—unless you’re on the first bus to Stop 9. Accessible to all ages and experience levels. Worth checking out when in the park, even if you don’t plan on doing The Narrows.
Zion Narrows 1 Mile 20' AEG
We brought our own water shoes and changed into them at the end of the Riverside Walk. Most people rented water socks, shoes, and wooden hiking sticks. Bring trekking poles if you have them. The water was typically calf-deep, but you couldn’t see what was below the murky surface. We only went in about half a mile, until we saw people going “nips deep” in the water—that was enough of a sample for us. Very pretty, albeit slow going. As with most of the park, don’t expect solitude.
Emerald Pools – Zion 3.48 Miles - 418' AEG
My favorite of the day. We hit the Lower, Middle, and Upper Emerald Pools. We had planned to hike from Stop 6, past the pools, to Stop 5 at the Zion Lodge, but the bridge across the river wasn’t scheduled to open for another week, so we did an out-and-back instead. In retrospect, a good hike would have been from Stop 6 to Stop 4
Upper Emerald Pool ==> [ youtube video ]
Sand Bench Trail – Zion 4.26 Miles 801 AEG
I did this as a filler hike on the way back. The namesake sand gets annoying after a while, and since the trail is also used for horseback rentals, the sand is chewed up and littered with horse apples and runoff. Go counter-clockwise if you're doing the loop, or clockwise if you're just planning an out-and-back. |
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Wildflowers Observation Isolated
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Emerald Pools |
26-50% full |
26-50% full |
| | | Lower and middle pools were not impressive. Upper pool was much larger. | | _____________________
There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."
Dave Barry  |
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Route Editor
Route Scout
Route 
. Jenaya was in charge of Connie so Jaelyn and I took the side trail that gets you next to the N Fork Virgin River. It certainly appeared to be running pretty strong. We eventually were forced to go back to the main trail by the roping. Once back to the main trail, we encountered a volunteer talking about the ferned area and water pond we were near.
We woke up early and hit the Observation Point trail and got almost to that lookout before taking the East Mesa trail to drop into upper Mystery Canyon making sure to avoid the first canyon and go in the second one. 
The canyon opens up quite dramatically before us as we head down the very steep trail down thru the Death Gully. 
The park service wants us to stick to the drainage instead of bypassing drops, so some extra rappels & bolts popped up in the upper section give the canyon over a dozen rappels. 
Thankfully we've gotten quite good and leap frogging each other on rappels and we hammered out drop after drop. We did a few short rappels in the upper section before hitting the sweet narrows section which had another 5 or so rappels in the 15-50ft range while admiring the huge sandstone walls and praying for no rain. 
A little further down canyon and we hit that amazing 110ft Mystery Springs rappel and traversed out to the anchors and dropped down to that chockstone and further down into that refreshing pool for the canyon only swimmer/wader. 
We made short work of the creek hike down to the sidewalk with people asking us if the narrows were safe for them to be in since it was raining and the creek turned brown... Huh, I'm not a ranger or know what the weather is doing upstream... Just because I'm wearing loads of gear and descended from above doesn't mean I know any more than you do! 
Speed walking on the sidewalk to the shuttles it was funny having tourists asking us what we climbed... We were canyoneering, dang it! 
