WEEKEND AT ZION
Maybe it was where I was living at the time, or maybe it was because I was just a couple months shy of the wanderlust trend…when I told people I wanted to go to Utah, I was hit with a resounding “WHY!?”
I’d done the research. I knew what I was talking about. But everybody’s skepticism started to get to me. I boarded my flight worried my big trip was going to leave me feeling super underwhelmed.
Five years ago I went to Utah and I was stunned. It was incredible …so underrated it is almost concerning.
This weekend we packed our bags for a road trip and a long overdue return to Zion National Park.
We brought the pup. They’re not allowed in the actual park but her head was hanging out the window, ears flopping in the wind, regardless. About 20 minutes outside of the park we stopped for a 4 mile hike to tire her out so we could hit the trails of Zion shamelessly while she lounged around our room.
We dropped her off and headed into the park. We were excited; off-season meant we’d probably have the place to ourselves…ish. Let me just say, not the case! There wasn’t a massive line to enter but the parking lots looked like Black Friday in the woods.
We continued to circle only to find that one of the roads had been closed due to a rock fall…coincidentally the same road we needed to access the hike we had planned. By this time it was getting close to 2oclock and in the winter that means sunset is right around the corner. We had to think quick, turning to AllTrails for an alternative hike.
We landed on one called The Triplets.
Spoiler alert; I don’t know anything about the view at the end because we didn’t make it.
I like to think of myself as a hiker but I’m humbled every time I go out into the wilderness. I think it will come with time but for now I still recognize my life as fragile.
Too many times people wander out into nature, take a wrong turn and don’t make it back. Too many times people stand on the edge for a better view or a better picture and fall hundreds of feet to their death. Too many times I read articles thinking, What the hell!?PLEASE don’t let me be that idiot that people are reading about over their morning coffees.
This one was weird because we were staring at a ‘trail’ on the app but in real life I kept wondering when we were going to get on the actual trail…because there wasn’t really one.
You know when you take cake batter from the mixing bowl and pour it into a baking pan? You smooth it with one of those baking spatulas and you’re left with the occasional slight ripple. Now if you took that pan and just raised it to an 80-degree angle…that is what we hiked up. I thought it was a joke until I saw other people doing it too.
Going up is all fine and dandy but if it’s even slightly questionable, then the real question should be can I safely get back down? And I could not stop nagging with that as we continued to climb higher and higher up. I was shocked that I was getting enough traction to step up and really worried for what would happen to my camera if I lost that traction.
Midway there was a massive frozen waterfall. It looked like we were in some sort of dream world of curvy lines and swirls. Like Willy Wonka or something. We continued up and onto the next tier of flat ground where we happened upon another frozen waterfall. So incredible. We had it to ourselves, mainly because we were exploring more than we were ‘hiking’. What a gem to just randomly come across in the middle of the woods at the top of a sandstone slide!
We carried on for about 30 more minutes until we came across what I was pretty sure were mountain lion tracks, and then we headed back.
The trick to navigating that steep zero traction incline was tiny baby steps and switchback scaling. Easier than I’d anticipated but I’m sure I owe most of the credit to my Merrells. *Shoutout to Merrell
The next morning we were up before the sun. It was freezing but I guess with the tradeoff of a spectacular landscape, the cold didn’t matter much.
We were the first in the lot and we practically sprinted up the rocks of this hike. Apparently it’s a highly trafficked hike so we were fortunate to have it to ourselves…and for sunrise at that!
It truly is incredible how raw this hike was. A half-mile, naturally carved around the edges of what is essentially a cliff, with no rails…no nothin’. Only one 20ft section of the hike was man-made and that part was probably the sketchiest part for me! A couple of planks spanning over nothing but canyon…and a husband that thinks it’s funny to jump on them when I’m halfway across…how did I get so lucky!? But yeah, seriously crazy how nonchalantly we hike around the edges of such a sheer drop! A misstep away from dying and it’s really not even on your radar. We looked like two lost ants making our way to the lookout over the main canyon…a lookout that can barely be identified from the road because the surrounding mountains swallow it in their grandeur.
Hues of pinks and yellows illuminated these giants in the distance with echoes of silence all around—and we sat in a moment of serenity.