I can’t believe that it’s taken me this long to visit a place so beautiful and relatively close. Just a few hours beyond the heat of the Las Vegas desert lies Zion National Park. In all honesty, it was a bit more developed and built out than I expected. The town of Springdale has hotels galore and a free shuttle that brings visitors to the park entrance. From there, another free shuttle runs within the park to bring patrons even deeper.
We decided we wanted to camp and Caitlyn woke up super early exactly two weeks before our trip to book the site. We had Site 6 right near the road. It was a cool place but considering how close it was to the highway, it wasn’t exactly ideal. Matter of fact, after our first night of howling winds, cars passing by and fine silt blowing throughout the tent, we decided to sleep in the car instead.
I digress, the best part of Zion was the daytime activities. Having only two days to spend at the park, we chose to hike up Angels Landing and walk upstream to the Narrows.
Angels Landing is a 2 mike hike with some intense switchbacks up to Scouts Lookout. From there it’s a 3/4 mile climb to the top. Yes. A climb. Imagine a narrow ridge with a 1,400 foot drop on both sides. Most of the trail has some kind of protective chain to give the illusion of safety but make no mistake, this part of the hike is not for the faint of heart. People die on this trail.
I’m all for being safe but I wonder if the chains give people a false sense of safety that emboldens the wrong people to take the trip. We passed plenty of people, both young and old who should not have been on that ridge.
Just 5 minutes after we got back down to Scout’s Lookout did we feel gusts of wind that must have been terrifying to those still up on the rock. Like I said, people die.
I totally recommend anybody that’s relatively fit to take the trip up and check it out.
