The Narrows

Today started off similar to yesterday. We woke up super early in order to get to Zion National Park in time for a parking spot. The plan was to hike the historic “Narrows”. This hike pretty much involves trudging through ankle to waist deep water while being surrounded by giant slot canyon.

We stopped by the Visitors Center first to see what sort of gear they would recommend. To our surprise they pretty much said just to go in our hiking boots equipped with some wool socks. Another critical recommendation they made was a walking stick. Walking through the Narrows can be very unstable. Some sections have small rapids and slippery rocks that lurk underneath (just ask Katie).

We rented some walking sticks from one of the nearby outfitter shops and hopped on a shuttle. The Narrows is the last shuttle stop on the line (roughly 40 minutes). To break that up, we got off about halfway at the Zion Lodge. Located here is the Emerald Pools trailhead, which was a quick 1.2 mile hike to the “lower” pools. There is also a “middle” and “upper” pool which we really wanted to see, but again these trails were closed indefinitely due to landslides a few months back.

We hopped back on the shuttle, and continued on to the Narrows. Once we got there, we had a 1 mile walk on a paved path to the Virgin River where we would be hiking. When we finally got there, we geared up our equipment and took that first step into the cold water. It was certainly a weird feeling at first, but we quickly got used to it.

About 80% of the hike involves actually walking through water. The rest of the time there are rocky banks that you can portage around some of the difficult sections. We were lucky enough to also have good weather to do this hike. Flash floods are a real threat in this canyon. The ranger was saying they can even be powerful enough to move large boulders.

The hike itself is unlike any other. The entire time you are walking between two walls with absolutely no escape.

We hiked for about 2 miles up the canyon, and reached the “Wall Street” section. Here, in some areas the slot narrows to as little as 22 ft and the canyon walls soar as high as 1500 ft. It was truly an awesome experience.

We hiked for about another half mile and turned around. Sometime along the way we had run into a group of overnight hikers equipped with massive bags. Apparently they were on a multi day trip down the canyon. They had all their overnight gear along with ropes for rappelling. Not sure I would want to be soggy for that many days, but I thought it was neat.

By the time we had gotten back to the shuttles we had hiked a total of 6 miles over the course of about 5 hours. We both were quite exhausted and could not wait to get back to our hotel for nice hot tub soak.