Day: May 17, 2017

Pic: Zion Canyon from Angels Landing, Zion NP, UT

The problem with Utah is that pictures — especially my crappy iphone pictures — don’t do it justice. I’ve been lucky enough to visit some incredible places, but I think the top of Huayna Picchu overlooking an abandoned Incan city in the Andes is the only thing I’ve experienced that compares to being on the tip of Angels Landing. (Yes, I scrambled out past the cairns, all the way to the edge.)

After my early start and consequent early finish, I rounded out the day at the Springdale Public Library. I relaxed in a comfortable chair and watched a thunderstorm blow through the valley while backing up my laptop, catching up on email, and flipping through a book illustrating the birds of Zion. #ThanksBenFranklin

Pic: Tell me what you think about your situation. Angels Landing, Zion NP, UT

Everything went single-threaded for the last half-mile. Queues began to form before narrow, steep, and tricky sections:

Pic: Oh, good morning, Mr. Tyler. Going… _down_? Angels Landing, Zion NP, UT

I was glad for my early start, especially as I descended through droves of hikers headed up for lunch.

Most people were pretty good about letting faster folks (like me!) pass. But on a section like this with room for only one hiker at a time, there’s always a guy who comes right up to the bottom of the narrow staircase while I’m in the middle of it. I continue to descend — because what else am I gonna do? — until I’m standing right in front of him and he always looks surprised. Like, my gosh, how could I have possibly anticipated that we would be in each other’s way here? I thought maybe you would vanish, or fly off the mountain like a bird before we literally bumped into one another at this constriction.

My enthusiasm for Angels Landing in spite of all the traffic underscores what an incredible hike it is.

Pic: Don’t stop movin’ baby. Walter’s Wiggles, Zion NP, UT

No trip to Zion is complete without tackling the 4.8 mile, 1500′ round trip to the top of Angels Landing. All my friends who had visited the park told me about it. I overheard people talking about it on the shuttle and at restaurants in Springdale. It is so popular yet so can’t-miss that I did something uncharacteristic to prepare for it: I set an alarm.

I passed a couple in their thirties at the start of the Wiggles. “Look, honey, it’s John Muir!” Their kids had just finished a national parks project in school and… allegedly I looked like John Muir.

As a Californian who enjoys the outdoors, I was familiar with his general badassery, but I don’t think I’d ever seen a picture. (Now that I have: other than the beard, I’m not really seeing it.) Regardless, I posed for a photo with my new friends employing what I hoped was a wistful, John Muir-esque look.

I didn’t come on this hike for the civil engineering, but I must give a shout-out to Walter’s Wiggles for being both functional and attractive without distracting from the surrounding beauty. Turns out Walter Ruesch, who designed and lead construction on the project in 1925, was a bit of a badass himself:

The trail was built primarily by hand. Workers earned $3.50 a day to hang precariously off cliff faces and pry at sandstone with jackhammers. Horses and mules rounded out the construction crew, hauling materials endlessly up and down the trail.

Ruesch’s desire to see a trail up Angels Landing came with one caveat. He said, “Zion is God’s country; don’t make it look like hell.” As a result, the trail was build from native material and blended into the cliff.

—Angels Landing eHike[1]

[1] “eHike”? lol NPS. Oh, also it’s Flash-only. Sorry; it was the best source I could find.

After the Wiggles I arrived at Scout’s Lookout, where the real fun begins. As the park service explains:

Pic: Remain seated please. Permanacer sentados por favor. Scout’s Lookout, Zion NP, UT