National Parks and Recreation

Well, it’s been a minute. I apologize.

I started this post almost 3 months ago at this point, but then BU playoff season started and segued right into Bruins playoff season (both of which ended in soul-crushing defeat), and then I was busy opening our summer beer garden for the season…but now I’m back! And what better way to make myself feel better about the devastating disappointment of all my sports’ teams than to go through some pretty pictures and reminisce about one of the best hikes I’ve ever done. Plus, looking at all the snow in these pictures is really making me feel better about the first 90 degree day in Boston today! So without further ado:

Zion National Park! …the big kahuna, the Instagram influencer’s dream, the second most popular park in the entire National Park System. We saved this one for last mostly just because it made sense with the direction we were going, but it also felt fitting to end on, by far, the most revered park of the Utah Mighty Five.

We drove straight here from Bryce Canyon and still had a couple of hours until sunset. Zion allows you to reserve campsites year round because of how popular it is so we didn’t have to worry about rushing to find a campsite. Though we did want to get our tent setup while it was still light out. This left us with enough time for one hike.

It was the perfect time for us to stop at the Canyon Overlook Trail, the first main trail you come to when you enter the park from the East. The trailhead is immediately before the Zion-Mt. Carmel Tunnel, the famous, incredibly impressive 1.1 mile tunnel that marks the unofficial entrance to the park.

The Canyon Overlook Trail is an easy one mile out and back trail that brings you under and around some giant rocks.

With an absolutely stunning payoff at the end!

As you can see, the snow also hit Zion Canyon, though not as bad as Bryce. Just enough to leave a dusting and make it very beautiful.

I was worried about how crowded this park would be. Another reason we chose to do this park last was so that we would end up there after New Years when most people’s vacations were over. And I think this mostly paid off! There were definitely a lot of people around, but we were able to find our own little corners of the trail and have some solitude.

We also never really had to sit in traffic or anything. This is why we put up with winter travel!

From the Canyon Overlook Trail, we finally got to drive through the tunnel! And bless James for holding his hand out the window in the freezing cold for over 2 minutes so he could get this shot (even though I only ended up using the last 30 seconds of it (please don’t tell him!))

But come on…totally worth it! I bet it’s even more magical on a clearer day!

And the views from the other side of the tunnel were just as cool! For example, you could see how tiny those holes in the rock look from the outside:

That seemed like such a big opening while we were inside it!

You could also see back toward the Canyon Overlook:

We were standing on top of that giant arch! If you zoom in, you can see some people up there.

From there we drove straight to the campground and set up our tent. The best part of this campground (Watchman, the only one open in winter) is that you can walk across a footbridge over the Virgin River and end up right downtown. It was about a five minute walk from our tent to the Zion Canyon Brew Pub. A dream come true for us! Plus, it was Monday Night Football and the Bills were playing so we were very excited for a nice, relaxing night of drinking beer and watching the game. Unfortunately, this was the night of the Damar Hamlin injury so that kind of ruined everything. But the beers and food we did have were amazing! Plus, nothing beats walking 5 minutes home to your “bed.”

We got up bright and early the next morning to tackle the park (and honestly the entire National Park System)’s crown jewel: Angel’s Landing. Angel’s Landing can now only be hiked if you have a permit (year round) that you have to enter a lottery to obtain. Luckily, I got my first choice in date (yay traveling in the offseason!) and we were on our way! The plan was to drive straight to the Grotto Parking area to get a spot and then eat breakfast and get ready there. However, the park had other ideas. The Zion Canyon Road was closed at the Zion Lodge due to snow removal. It barely snowed the night before, but I can’t imagine what all that entails, so I tried really hard not to be annoyed by it.

So we found a parking spot near the lodge and started making breakfast and getting ready for our hike, waiting to see if the road was going to open up. After stalling as long as we could, we decided to just bite the bullet and walk the extra half mile to the trailhead instead.

There she is, towering above us, shrouded in fog. I did debate for a very long time over breakfast whether or not we should do this hike today. I knew it was pretty unlikely that they would even be checking permits this week and seriously considered just waiting to do the hike the next morning when the weather was going to be much clearer. But as I learned in Capitol Reef, you should always just do the damn hike. So off we went!

And I’m really glad we did! I’ve heard and seen the horror stories of people lined up for actual miles on this trail because of overcrowding, which is what lead to the permitting system to begin with. But here’s the thing about hiking in the middle of winter after a big snowstorm on a mostly cloudy/foggy day…you don’t have to worry about any of that! We only saw a handful of people the entire way up to the base of the landing.

It was a pretty easy hike up to the landing until the very last section which consisted of an incredibly steep set of switchbacks. We gratefully took the excuse to stop and rest while we put on our spikes for the rest of the hike, because these switchbacks were NO JOKE! This picture does not do it justice, I honestly think this was the most difficult part of the entire hike, and that’s saying something.

I suppose I should probably explain what Angel’s Landing is for the non-national park obsessed people. Angel’s Landing is probably the most popular trail in the entire National Park System. It is a 4.4 mile out and back strenuous hike in the heart of Zion. I would say it’s more scary and technically challenging than strenuous, but I guess it’s all the same. It is known for its chain section for the last .5 miles up to the summit. This 500 foot incline is by no means exhausting for the experienced hiker, but it does require you to hold on to chains for most of the half-mile hike.

As the picture above states, this is “not advised” in snowy and icy conditions. But I would argue that it’s easier in the snow than in the rain. Having packed snow and ice for our crampons to dig into was honestly helpful. I would not want to do it on slick, wet rock without anything to dig into. That being said, you absolutely NEED crampons to do this in snowy conditions. There are a lot of scary signs at the “rest area” before the chains section warning you that you could absolutely die on this trail, the scariest of which is a whited out and repainted sign stating that 14 people have died on this final section of the trail.

But as I told everyone hesitating here on my way back down, the first ten feet are by far the worst!

The above picture shows you that tricky section. It’s kind of hard to see where your feet are supposed to go in this picture…and in real life. This was really the only place where you were like hanging off the side of the cliff and NEEDED to clutch the chains to stay on it. I think a lot of people give up here because of this, but as far as I can remember this was the only part like this. So if you can mentally get past this first little chain section, you can totally do the whole thing! I promise! It made me really sad to see people turning around after this part, you’ve already done the hard part!

But I get it. It’s not exactly not intimidating looking at this skinny ridge you’ll be climbing with a 1,600 foot drop on either side…

Even though I think the fog really helped by keeping us from seeing down to the bottom too often. You can’t be scared of heights if you can’t tell how high up you are! Logic!

But it’s SO worth it! If you’re able-bodied and not absolutely terrified of heights, you have to do this hike someday!

It was really hard to capture on camera just how insane this hike was. Pictures just don’t do it justice and it really wasn’t smart to try filming anything when you pretty desperately needed both hands to hang on to the chains for most of it. But I think the below video does a pretty good job representing just how ridiculous this truly was! I loved every second of it!

Also, while I’m thinking of it, absolutely wear gloves if you’re doing this hike in the winter! You won’t want to grab on to the freezing cold metal chains with your bare hands, trust me.

And a huge shout out to this guy below who I do not think fully grasped (hehe) what I was getting him into when I talked about this hike. But just strapped on his spikes and followed me along the edge of this icy cliff without hesitation.

That’s love, y’all.

And we we finally made it to the top! And it was…foggy.

But that’s okay! The clouds would dissipate a little every now and then just enough to show us what we were missing. But I’ve seen all the Instagram pictures and Tik Toks so that’s basically the same thing, right?

There really isn’t a ton of wiggle room at the top. Especially in these conditions. It’s probably better in the summer when you have more options that aren’t icy patches that could yeet you off the side of the mountain at any second, but I still wouldn’t plan to spend a ton of time at the top. There was another couple and a group of 4 younger people when we got there and that was about all that could comfortably fit.

We hung out for a tiny bit and ate some granola bars while waiting to see if they clouds wanted to clear at all (they didn’t) before beginning our descent back down.

And then in the most predictable turn of events ever, the sun started to peak onto the landing as soon as we got back down to the bottom. C’est la vie.

I wasn’t too upset that we didn’t wait until later to do the hike, because I could tell it was only getting more and more crowded as the road opened up and that was the one thing I wanted to avoid on that hike. So I was ultimately happy with our decision.

We were honestly just happy to have some sunlight. We were pretty wet/snowy/cold at this point.

Zion Valley started to really show us what she’s made of when she’s not shrouded in fog and our spirits were up so we decided to prolong the hike back to the car and do the loop through the Emerald Pools on the way. And it wasn’t…not a bad idea.

I really need to get better at taking pictures and videos of the bad parts of our trips because the trail between Angel’s Landing and the Emerald Pools was almost unnavigably (yes, that’s a word) muddy. Like mud so deep and wide that you couldn’t even go around it.

But of course I only took pictures of the beautiful parts of the hike. Though in my defense, I would have 100% dropped my phone in a mud pit if I had tried and we were so tired and sore at this point we just. wanted. to. get. there.

They were really cool, even though they definitely weren’t “emerald” in the miserable fog and snow. But it’s never a bad time when you get to walk underneath a waterfall.

Finally, we made our way back over the Virgin River and to our car.

Since we only had very limited time in the park, we had to keep powering through, even though we were really tired, and try to see as much as possible. Now that the entire Canyon Scenic Drive was open, we took advantage of driving to the end and got this really cool look at Angel’s Landing from the other side. Now, THAT’S a sheer drop off.

A 1,600 foot tall rock wall! (Which, fun fact, is less than half the height of El Capitan. I just looked that up and it blew my mind. Damn, I can’t wait to do the California parks!)

Those three rock formations above are called the Court of the Patriarch (booo!) for Mounts Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They were all given very religious names because the holy men who discovered them were so struck by their beauty.

Zion Canyon Scenic Drive with the sun just barely peeking through was definitely a highlight of the park. You can’t beat that view.

It’s just impossible to grasp the scale of these giant rock formations throughout the valley. It’s easy to see why this is one of the most popular parks in the country.

There’s our little red rental car!

She served us well.

We decided to park her for the night and go get some firewood for a nice campfire on our last night in the national parks. So we walked back across the bridge into town and picked some up.

And the sunset continued to put on a show for us.

Not a bad sight to come home to.

We got a fire going with very minimal success. Everything was just so damp from all the snow and humidity over the past few days. But we did what we could and tried our best to stay warm. And waited for the real show to begin.

FINALLY our first clear night in the parks!

One of the Mighty Five’s biggest draw is their dark skies and amazing stargazing opportunities, but we had been cursed with cloudy nights the ENTIRE week so far and I was getting very frustrated. I had bought this new phone specifically for this trip and knew she could take magical nighttime pictures and was just anxious to test her out.

I suppose, in the end, it was fitting that our last night, in the best park, I would finally get my chance.

And man oh man was it worth the wait. I mean…

Come on! I laid on the ground for over an hour propping my phone up and finding different angles as the moon danced in and out of the clouds to get the perfect shot.

My fingers were absolutely frozen and James was looking at me like I was a crazy person, but it was so worth it. This was one of my favorite memories of the entire trip. And it serves as an important reminder to always look up before you go to bed. Even on those freezing cold nights. You don’t want to miss it!

Well, that was Zion National Park! The last of the Mighty Five and the last national park of the trip. I have one more post coming for this trip because we stopped in Page, Arizona on the way back to Phoenix and it is absolutely one of my favorite places in the country! So you can look forward to that and I promise not to make you wait another 3 months.

Happy Almost Summer, everyone! Think snowy thoughts and stay cool out there!