Grandeur: a hike in Kolob Canyon, Zion NP

 

Saturday, March 12

It's hard to believe: this morning our car wore a thin coat of frost, and now I can see palm trees from the window of our motel. St. George, at a thousand metres lower elevation than Parowan, greeted us with +20 degrees when we rolled down the hill to our motel early this evening. What delighted me more than the palm trees, however, was a big tree covered in a cloud of white blossoms I spotted when we waited at a traffic light several blocks north of here. I guess I need spring to come before summer. This is not likely to happen in the next week or so: bound for Arizona we will definitely encounter summery conditions, and I won't complain a bit.

Today, however, we still got a taste of winter, even though it was strongly laced with spring. We arrived at the entrance to Kolob Canyon, just off I-15 a bit south of Cedar City, at noon. Our first stop was the visitor centre where we bought an annual 'America the Beautiful' park pass; we will need it for the other National Parks and National Monuments we hope to visit during this trip, and with any luck we can still make good use of it next year in March.

The ranger, who, upon seeing Johann's hoodie with the words 'Going Downhill Fast and Still Farming', suggested he wouldn't have associated Canada with farming (he is not the only one here in the US who has that misconception), told us that the road was closed because of a rock slide a bit further up, cutting the five-mile scenic drive short by maybe three miles. The hiking trails were also affected. Only two were open right now.

We chose the Taylor Creek hike, about five miles round trip, that leads up into a canyon and ends at the so-called 'Two Arches'. We changed into our hiking boots, I also took a hiking pole, and we were on our way. As the name implies the trail leads along Taylor Creek, and by the time we had descended to the creek our boots were muddy from the slick trail: it was warm enough that last week's snow had largely melted here, and a slow but steady flow of hikers turned the trail into a mud slide. These conditions prevailed off and on for maybe a kilometre, which didn't make for the greatest hiking conditions, but the scenery was stunning right from the beginning. The sheer red and golden cliffs rose steeply to both sides of the valley, moving ever closer together as the canyon narrowed. Asked about the creek crossings mentioned in the brochure the ranger assured us that these were easy; only at the time of snow melt the water rises above ankle depth. 'Several' turned out to be many: I forgot to count in the end, but there were easily twenty or twenty-five as the trail followed the creek sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other. Stepping stones aided in the crossings, but often enough the water was shallow enough that we could just walk through, a good way to get rid of some of the mud on the boots.

It was so warm that I soon shed my light down jacket, but as the walls of the canyon slowly closed in on us the mud gave way to first a thin layer, then probably up to three feet of snow. The trail became a trampled path, and every descent to and ascent from the creek at the crossings was icy, which, on the steeper ones, was a bit scary. Had the ranger mentioned the snow we would have brought crampons, but we had not expected these conditions at all. Inexperience, I guess. My pole was some help, however, and I was glad I had taken it along.

For the last kilometre and a half or so the sun no longer reached into the canyon and it got considerably colder. The creek was still covered in ice thick enough to walk on for the last two crossings, but even here the first pussy willows timidly peeked out of their tight brown covers. We were nearing the end of the hike, the 'Double Arch Alcove', the high red wall visible through the trees. 

One more turn in the trail, and there it rose before us in all its magnificence, an amphitheatre of enormous proportions, in rich hues of red striated with white and black, fringes of icicles hanging from ledges high above. Looking up I had an even stronger sensation of being in a cathedral: the ceiling, nature's amazing work of art, was, in its way, as magnificent as any painted by a painter of the baroque. I walked down and stood for a while in this vault, and I felt very small. Every sound was amplified, the dripping of water the most prominent noise, and even our low voices were projected back to us.

Along the high wall across from us two golden eagles slowly winged by in the distance, and a little while later, during a creek crossing, movement caught my eye only a couple of metres from my face: a wren, totally unafraid, hopping in the branches of a willow. The double arches, the biggest and the smallest of the birds of these mountains—I felt like I had been granted the full measure of things on this hike.

For a while we were the only ones at the amphitheatre, until a young hiker joined us; the whole trail wasn't very travelled on this Saturday at the threshold to spring. It likely was a very different story in the main part of Zion where even before the park closes completely for car traffic on March 15 shuttles are running on the few weekends before.

Sometimes the creek seemed to run almost golden even in the dark part of the canyon, a hue derived not from the sun but the surrounding mountains.

The trail had not improved on the way back. Once the canyon opened up the muddy sections had become even muddier, but some stretches were dry already, and if there isn't a major snowfall in the next while the trails will probably soon be in much better condition.  Again we passed the two log cabins that bear witness of early white settlers, Fife cabin about two thirds of the way up, Larson cabin about one third, both from the 1930s. What might these people have been searching for here? Were they hunters/trappers, or were they looking for gold or silver? What they found for sure was solitude and the grandeur of the nature in which they lived.

It took us nearly four hours to complete the hike, including the time spent at the double arches, which seemed rather long for a not so difficult hike. By the time we reached the trailhead it was warm enough again that we shed our jackets, and during the 45-minute drive to St. George the temperature increased steadily.

Sunday, March 13

Today it will get even warmer: we will soon be on our way to Boulder City, Nevada, a drive of a little over two hours, drive past the Hoover Dam and park our car on a parking lot a few miles south of there. Tonight we will pitch our tent at the Ringbolt hot springs.