Hiking the west rim trail in Zion National Park

Zion is our favorite Utah national park. It is spectacularly magnificent. We have hiked most of the trails in the canyon except the Angel’s Landing Trail because I don’t handle exposure well and Angel’s Landing has that in spades. (See this video for some idea of the challenging part of the trail.) However, the trail also leads up to the west rim, bypassing the spur route to Angel’s Landing.

We tried to get an early start, but with the drive from the motel to the park visitor center, and then the shuttle ride to the trail head at The Grotto it was nearly mid-morning. (By the way, we stay at a motel in Hurricane rather than Springdale—it’s about half the cost.)

The trail begins following the Virgin River, gently climbing toward the cliff. Then it begins switchbacking up to Refrigerator Canyon. Thankfully, this wall was still in the shade—later in the day it becomes sun-baked. After a too short walk through shady and cool Refrigerator Canyon we ascended Walter’s Wiggles—500 ft up through 21 short switchbacks. This brought us to Scout Lookout where we had lunch in the shade of pine tree near the cliff edge and watched the “crazy” people tackle the Angel’s Landing trail (the less scary part, we couldn’t see the narrow part with 1500 ft cliffs on both sides).

After lunch we headed up the West Rim Trail, only going about another half-mile—it was getting very warm. To get to the rim we probably had to climb another 1000 ft. After a fairly easy return to the trailhead we took the shuttle to the end of the road and hiked the easy 2 mile round-trip trail to the beginning of the narrows. This year the water was low enough that folks were hiking it—on previous spring trips snow melt has made the river a roaring torrent.

We closed the days activities with an early dinner on the patio at Oscar’s in Springdale—recommended.

Links
—Zion 2012 photo gallery