best hikes at Zion National Park, plus bonus: Buckskin Gulch

Zion National Park is a small but amazing park, but the Utah Big Five campaign has had the side effect of making this a very congested place, to the point that summer is not the time to visit it. I was lucky to visit it before that.

The best hikes for me are:

The Narrows

This hike has to be done early in the morning and when the water level is low (the park service is good at publishing this information). You wait for later and you run into the dozens of tourists that are in the river just to jump into it. The father place you can go is the small springs (forget the name), they are mentioned by the park service as the turnaround point, although I doubt they police this. You are walking upstream at the start of the hike, surrounded by gigantic canyon walls.

There is a place where many people turn around; there is this gigantic boulder in the middle of the river and on both sides the water is high and many times you have to swim. But before that, the views are amazing.

I like this one, it shows how tall are the walls compared to people.

These are the springs at the turnaround point.

Angel’s Landing

This is the other popular hike and not for the faint of heart. There are two part to this hike, going up an insane number of switchbacks which will take you to Scout’s Lookout and from there you hike about .75 of a mile of a narrow ledge supported by chains.

It is dangerous, specially when full of people going up and down and with today’s crowds. Every year someone falls and dies.

Please do not let go off the chains and be aware that there are areas of no chains. There is no shame in turning around. Take a close look:

• Hidden Canyon:

There is a short chained area there, not much to see besides a nice ground level arch.

Observation Point

This is a hike with lots of sun exposure that rewards you at the end with the best view of the park. This trail is closed many times for rock falls.

Even though you reach all these hikes by bus, you can drive to the other side of the valley and get some nice views:

There are plenty of places to hike outside the park. One is the Kolob Canyon. You can take the Kolob Canyon drive and admire the views, there is a small trail at the end of the road to take you higher.

And also you can take a very long day hike to get a peek of Kolob Arch. I did this in the summer and the flies next to the creek ate me alive. The hike is exposed to the sun and I don’t recommend it in full summer.

The Subway

The Subway is a permitted area (you can get the permit via internet lottery, but you need to pic up the permit in person the day of the hike since it may get rejected due to weather conditions). The best way to hike it is from top to bottom, but that route needs you to rappel in some areas !!!! I did it from the bottom up and realized that light is very important when you arrive to the Subway. I butchered the pics, sorry.

It is extremely slippery and you will slip even though you know it.

Buckskin Gulch

A few miles south there is the city of Kanab and a few miles East there is House Rock Valley Road. This is the way to get to the famous Wave, but also the trailhead to the longest slot canyon in America: Buckskin Gulch !!

The first part of the gulch is boring, so 99% of the people use the Wirepass canyon to intersect it at the point where Buckskin becomes a proper canyon. You can see the narrow entrance to Wirepass above.

I became aware of Buckskin while googling for challenging day hikes and I came upon an article in the Backpacker website listing Buckskin Gulch as the “most dangerous hike in America”. Why ? because although no one has ever died there, if you got caught in rushing waters there is no escape and you will die. This canyon is not popular so people who hike it are aware and check the weather (people have died in other canyon in the Zion area). The canyon is so long that there is only one area where you can safely leave the canyon, leaving you no margin for error.

As I mentioned, the trailhead for Wirepass is shared with the trail to The Wave. You need a permit to hike The Wave, not for Buckskin (besides paying $5 at the parking area on a drop box). On the day I hiked it, the area was under a heat wave (120 degrees) and I liked that since the famous cesspools would probably be dry. I started at the parking area and I noticed an old couple getting ahead of me, they were going to The Wave ……. the next day at the airport I read in the newspapers a story about an old couple that got lost on the trail (there is not a real trail and the BLM does it on purpose to deny non-permitted people an easy route. But the BLM does give you a map with images when you get a permit) and died of heat exposure. I believe that was the couple that I saw that day.

I was not going to hike the whole thing, you need a shuttle to take you to the start and have your car parked at the end. I was going to attempt to hike to the middle entrance (where you can leave the canyon) and turn around. That takes you past the cesspool areas, where the canyon floor is low and gets flooded with nasty stale pools.

The canyon walls can go up 100 feet up and they get very narrow in many sections about a mile from the Wirepass intersection. You can walk and touch both walls. The cespools were completely dry and that made it easy to reach the Middle Trail and have lunch there.

You get a reminder on how high the water gets there during floods:

Remember the 120 degree weather ? Well, the canyon floor is sand and it becomes tiresome to walk on it. On the way back, the sun was hitting the canyon and I was getting tired.

I made a stupid mistake, I got lost in a canyon ……….. WHAT ? HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE ????

Well ……………. remember that you enter the canyon from the Wirepass canyon ? I was so enthralled watching the canyon that I missed it and kept hiking the area that I mentioned was boring. Well, a bit boring but I saw this:

At this point I realized I must be close to the Wirepass intersection, I noticed an area that looked like it, but it was a tall mound of dirt, which I went up, ran into a dead end and climbed back down. That made me more tired. I was now getting really tired and concluded that I passed the intersection and had to backtrack.

I finally found the intersection, after shooting past it 3 miles; yes, I added 6 miles to an already long hike in 120 degree weather.

Once at the intersection I was dead tired, I ran into a mom and her daughter exploring Wirepass. This day I decided to use Gatorade and when it gets warm, it is undrinkable, tastes horrible, so I stopped drinking it. The sand in Wirepass is extra deep and I was a mess. Then I started getting a tingling sensation on the tips of the fingers of both my hands, I though I was getting a heart attack or heat stroke. It would last a minute and then go away, so freaky. That last mile in full sun was horrible, me trying to find some shade to rest under.

But I made it !!! WOO HOO !!!!