Zion Narrows Top Down

I recently completed this 2 day, 16 mile hike in Zion National Park. We had an awesome time. I've posted photos to my Flickr account.

Over one half of this trip is spent actually in the water, some well over 4.5 feet deep. One the first day alone, we criss-crossed the virgin River over 200 times. Needless to say, a hiking pole is a must!

Here's a shot of my friend, Curt. Follow link to see complete set.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/w9jim/tags/narrowstopdown/

Jim

Beautiful! I hiked Angel's landing an the West Rim in the springtime many years ago, and I've always wanted to go back and do the Narrows. It's been too long since I've done anything in canyon country.

I read a thread under one of the photos more or less accusing the park service of wanting to close the Narrows down if they could. I'm not sure if that's really true, but it does open up a topic for discussion here. How much should we be grateful to the park service or other govt agencies for keeping all these beautiful places open to us vs. resenting or criticizing the way they are (currently) managed?

Thanks, BigRed!

I don't think we shouldn't be grateful to the park service for much of anything, especially "keeping lands open." It doesn't belong to them, it belongs to us! I know that public lands do need to be managed to some extent, but I feel that they think they own the land and restrict it much too severely. There is too much public land that is already closed to the public (making it NOT public land in the process) and WAY too much that is only accessible on foot.

Okay, I better stop. Getting off soap box now.

I have hiked the Narrows from the Temple of Sinawava to above Big Springs and have always wanted to do it from the top down. Sounds like a great hike, thanks for posting about it.

You should also try the "Little Brother of the Narrows" hiking the East Fork of the Virgin River from near Mt Carmel Jct on Hwy 89 thru the Barracks and out near Checkerboard Mesa. Also called the Parunuweap, it is a great hike and is full of little side hiking canyons like Poverty, Mineral and Meadow,Yellowjacket, Bay Bill, Merwin, and Rock Canyon to name a few.

I liked it as there were a lot less people and lots of wildlife. We saw a Big Horn Ram in Poverty Wash's slot canyon. It was in the lower setion where the canyon was deep and had no where to go. It would run ahead of us and stop till we quietly walked up on it and it would run ahead again. Finally it found a place to get up out of the canyon. We also saw Wild Turkeys, deer, skunks and snakes.

Thanks for sharing JimDoss, nice photos. I'm glad you guys had a great time. All that time spent in the water reminds of the Jacks River Trail in GA.

Way to go!