Canyon Country: Zion and Angel’s Landing and Slot Canyons with Cowgirl Patti – mid-October 2007

Canyon Country: Zion and Angel’s Landing and Slot Canyons with Cowgirl Patti
We spent the month of October and the first week of November in Canyon Country, part of the Southwest’s 1400-mile Grand Circle of stunning parks, national monuments, and scenic byways.

From Bryce Canyon, we headed southwest to Zion National Park, enjoying the warm weather, the bushes the color of marigolds, the pastel and gray mountains, and the smell of the outdoors. When we reached Zion, my first, and perhaps, most lasting impression was one of awe-inspiring grandeur – on a massive scale. Towering red and white cliffs, impossibly sheer, lord over the Virgin River a half-mile below. The geologic showpiece – one of the Southwest’s most dramatic natural wonders – has the world’s highest sandstone cliffs. It features stunning scenery found nowhere else on earth.

As John Wesley Powell remarked in 1895, “All this is the music of waters.” For it is true that, after having been raised from sea level with the uplift of the Colorado Plateau (about the same time as Bryce Canyon), its landmark formations were – and still are – principally sculpted by water.

We loved Zion. Its masterpieces evoke a feeling of awe and wonder, and it is revered as a spiritual place by some. The spirituality of the place is evidenced in the names of many of its formations: the Great White Throne, the Court of Patriarchs, the West Temple….

One amazing thing about Zion is that, although it truly holds awe-inspiring majesty – on a grand scale – it also holds more delicate beauty: hanging gardens, weeping rocks, mesa-top wildflowers, tiny grottoes, and riverbanks. The bold colors of Fall added a splash of color to the already beautiful landscape. Although Zion National Park is considered a desert landscape, its Virgin River attracts a diversity of plant and animal life. Zion is like a sanctuary, or canyon oasis, for plants and animals. Even its name, “Zion,” means “refuge” in Hebrew.

We hiked several trails, and all were beautiful, but the most spectacular was the Angel’s Landing Trail, which was one of the most spectacular hikes I’ve ever done, and definitely the scariest! The trail ascended a steep 1520 ft. and offered views of sliced, rocky mountain walls and magnificent panoramas. As we stopped about 2/3 of the way up at Scout’s Lookout, one man told us, “Scout’s Lookout is for the smart scouts and Angel’s Landing is for the dumb scouts!”

This was a subject debated by many hikers in Zion: whether or not they could muster the courage to hike all the way to Angel’s Landing. For the final half-mile ascent to Angel’s Landing was along a very narrow and very exposed portion of trail that dropped swiftly away on both sides, although a chain provided a measure of security for part of the way.

We decided to undertake the challenge, and when we reached the 1500-ft. bald summit, the 360-degree views left little doubt as to why Angel’s Landing was so named (although some will say that it’s not for its beauty but for those people that fall to their deaths trying to attain the summit…).

We biked southeast towards Lake Powell on the Arizona border, stopping along the way at Utah’s Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, which is a wide-sweeping expanse unique in the United States. We walked on the large, Sahara-like pink dunes, which contrasted brilliantly with the bright blue skies, steep red cliffs, and occasional greenery.

Then on to the famed slot canyons of the Vermilion Cliffs, where we met Patti at the Bureau of Land Management. Patti was a real cowgirl with real cowboy boots and cowboy hat, and even a cow-dog who herded cattle on her ranch. She met her husband online with the line: “If you don’t know the back of a horse from the front, don’t bother!” Well, Patti worked at the Bureau of Land Management, and when we stopped in to ask about biking to the slot canyons, she said she thought it would be impossible to go by bike (because of the road), but that we should stay at her house that night and she would take us the next day in her pick-up, otherwise known as her “cowboy Cadillac.”

So we walked with Patti on the sandy trail past red and white swirled slickrock and on through the Wire Pass canyons, so named because they are “narrow as a wire.” Slot canyons are rock canyons so narrow and steep that you can touch both sides with your outstretched arms. The canyon walls, some of which reached heights of over 200 ft., had brilliant contrasts in color and lighting. A single ray of sunshine would appear and magically transform a canyon into a glowing masterpiece.

The Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness where we went hiking with Patti is part of the Grand Staircase, which is a series of great geological steps – the Chocolate, Vermilion, White, Gray, and Pink Cliffs. Its name refers to the 150-mile long geological strata that begins at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and rises in steps 3500 ft. to Zion and then Bryce Canyon and the Escalante River canyons.

Spanning nearly 1.9 million acres of public land, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is located in the center of the Grand Circle and is the largest park in the Southwest. It has some of the country’s least-visited, most spectacular scenery. The region was the last place in the continental U.S. to be mapped. Bill Clinton established it by Presidential Proclamation in 1996.

We biked Hwy. 89 past the Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness (where the visitor centers had real dinosaur fossils discovered in the area!) as far as the town of Page on the corner of Lake Powell. The last 40 miles were among the fastest we had ever done. The strong tailwind (perhaps the strongest we’ve ever had!) literally pushed us, as if a hand was at our backs. With such momentum, I sometimes didn’t even have to pedal going uphill!!! Woohoo!!!