A day in Zion National Park - blue sky and muddy feet

 From Cedar City, where we spent the night after leaving Diamond Fork, it was only about 2 1/2 hours to Zion National Park, our next destination. It went downhill for most of the way, and every few kilometres we gained another degree in heat until we were at +14 Celsius when we neared the park. That was more like it! Still, it didn't look exactly spring-like in Springdale, even though the buds on the trees were visibly swollen and looked like they were getting ready to burst into bloom any day now. There was a bit of green grass here and there, too, but pastures still looked as if they were hibernating.

Heading for the park entrance we soon realized that much had changed in the ten years since we were here last: a lot of new houses and hotels, roads a lot busier. That was especially true when we neared the park gates: slowly traffic crept through the narrow valley, slowed down even more by some construction along the way where, however, not a single working man or machine was in sight.

A volunteer at the visitor centre advised us that the scenic route was closed because its capacity for cars had been reached, and that there was no way of telling when it would open again; “maybe by 4:30,” he said, “but there is no guarantee”. He suggested a hike that started right from the visitor centre and led to an overlook, about three hours in total. The trail had just started to get a bit steeper when we met a group of hikers who stared at Johann's sandals. 'It's muddy up there,' they told us in German; funny how quickly one picks up on the mother tongue being spoken nearby in a foreign country :-) Oh well, it seemed too far to turn around now, and how bad could it be anyway? 

 

We quickly gained altitude and had good views of the gorgeous scenery that makes this park so special. Now, we saw the first cacti beside the trail: definitely this was a warmer area than the one we had just left. After hiking on dry, rocky ground for a good while we came to a bend where trees were growing, fed by a spring in a rocky niche, a good place to stop for a moment in the shade. It was here that we saw a young family approach from where we were headed, the little boy's boots muddy to the top. The melting snow and ice on the side exposed to the sun had created a layer of mud over ice, a rather slippery affair. A woman who had just traversed the mud told us it went on for a few minutes, and right when it looked like you were on dry ground again you'd encounter another section of mud; after that it was fine to the end of the trail. I started following Johann and Dorothee, but just then a big group of people came towards us, and I stayed behind to let them pass. I passed a white pair of shoes by the side of the trail: someone had decided that the shoes wouldn't survive the trail conditions. A moment later I found Johann's sandals, abandoned until his return: obviously he had decided he'd go barefoot for the rest of the way. Trying to stay out of the mud with my runners – hiking boots didn't seem essential when we set out – I decided against continuing when another group of people made it necessary to side-step when there wasn't really a place to retreat to. 

Instead, I sat on a big rock by the side of the trail, a perch from which I had a great view not only of the mountains surrounding us but also of the trail coming from below and the section where, eventually, Johann and Dorothee would emerge. Every once in awhile I saw some young guy, mostly of college age, walking by barefoot. They said their feet were just warming up again on the dry trail after they had got very cold because of the ice still hidden under the sticky reddish mud. After about half an hour I watched Johann and Dorothee traversing the muddy section again. Since we weren't all that far from the visitor centre Johann used the rest of our drinking water to clean his feet enough to slip into his sandals; the river at the bottom of the valley would do the rest.

As beautiful as this visit to Zion was, the sheer amount of people very much reduced the enjoyment for me. I imagine it didn't help that so much of the activity concentrated on only three trails because the scenic route was closed, which meant that most of the hiking trails were inaccessible for everybody else. While I enjoyed the beauty of the brown, red, beige and yellow rocks as much as last time I was here I just didn't seem to be able to connect with my surroundings in the same way. This feeling was reinforced on our way out of the park, now heading for Kanab where we would spend the night.

We wanted to do the short hike to an overlook right after the mile-long tunnel and the park gate, a place where we had also stopped when we were here the first time. First, we had to wait for about ten minutes before we could pass through the tunnel where, for some reason, only one of the lanes could pass at a time. Looking for a parking spot on the other side we had no luck, but when we stopped for a moment we saw a car just leaving the parking lot behind us. Johann turned around, thinking he could enter the parking lot from above: it was only maybe thirty metres, so what harm could be done in ignoring the sign with an arrow pointing to the right, the park gate? He hadn't quite reached the parking lot entrance when a female park ranger walked up towards us, looking very determined. “Back up right now!” she ordered, with a look on her face that told us she meant business. Johann started to say, “ we only want to go to the parking lot”, but she cut him short: “Back up!” I think had he argued any more she would have ordered him out of the car or – who knows? - pulled a gun. There was nothing for it, we had to go through the tunnel again, turned around at the first opportunity, and headed back up again, this time without any waiting time since, for some reason, now both lanes were open. We found a spot to park somewhere further up and now were finally able to start our second hike of the day.

Here, heading up some stairs at first, the trail hugs the canyon wall, slowly climbing higher. We passed through a large rock overhang that formed a cave that could well have been used by people hundreds or thousands of years ago, although there was no sign that this was the case. The views along the way were gorgeous, changing with every corner we turned, until we were at the overlook itself, offering views into the canyon but also of the surrounding rocks which, with their coloured layers, look like mounds of marble cake dough poured by a giant hand. 

The evening sun wrapped everything into a warm golden glow on our way out of the canyon, and in time we reached our pleasant 'Sun 'n Sand Motel' on the outskirts of Kanab. Unlike last time when we stayed more in the centre of Kanab ten years ago, where the bells of the Mormon church beside the motel played “ How Great Thou Art” in the evening, there was nothing to indicate that we were in Mormon country; it felt like any other motel area at the edge of a smaller town.