Want a Wilderness Experience in Zion Canyon? Go Where the Trams Go.

Not where they stop, mind you, but where the trams go. Zion National Park underwent a huge change in 1997 when the park service closed the upper canyon of Zion to private vehicles and instituted a system of free tramways. The change brought an end to my favorite activity of night hiking in the upper canyon, and it at first seemed inconvenient when dealing with large student groups. But it didn't take me long to deeply appreciate the changes that came about in the upper canyon as a result.

For one, the animals became far more easy to see. On summer days, every available parking spot and pullout along the road would be filled with people, and the animal life would simply hide out. Without the constant commotion, animals felt more comfortable being out, and the tram rides now offer chances to see rabbits, deer, coyotes, foxes, and turkeys, while the tram drivers report seeing other more rare animals like mountain lions and badgers.

My recent trip to Zion afforded me some extra time to explore some new places, and I took the opportunity. The day started with a normal tourist target, the Gateway to the Narrows and the Riverside Walk. It is pretty much the most popular walk in the park, and is well worth seeing, even if it is crowded.

Zion Canyon is relatively wide in the lower reaches because the layers beneath the Navajo Sandstone are easily eroded, undercutting the high cliffs and causing rockfalls. It's where the Virgin River flows entirely in Navajo that the canyon gets incredibly narrow and very deep, with vertical walls reaching 2,000 feet above the river. The Riverside Trail is a paved ADA accessible trail that follows the narrowing canyon, ending after a mile at the entrance to the Narrows, where no trails are possible, but people can explore miles upstream as long as they don't mind getting wet numerous times.

Lots of water enters Zion Canyon from cliffside springs, and the hanging gardens can be very colorful. The Columbines are some of my favorite flowers. Don't worry about the feeling that you are being watched. It's either a Mountain Lion, or one of the Rock Squirrels. I don't which one is more menacing...

The trail is just gorgeous. But if the crowds bother you, there is a neat little secret for finding seclusion in the midst of the very busy national park. Like I said, walk where the trams go. Not where they stop, but where they travel between stops. You can walk along the road, or in many places a foot path follows close to the river. A tram will pass every 10 or 15 minutes, but that will be it for the motorized noise. I had two more hours to play with so I decided to walk as far down the canyon as I could.

I first passed the empty parking lot at the Temple of Sinawava, the end of the paved highway. I remember so many harried efforts to find parking for four vans on trips in years past, with hundreds of people hanging about, unwilling to give up their precious parking spots. Today it was quiet, because the moment the tram pulls up, people get out and immediately disappear up the trail.

Walking down the road, I was immediately struck by how unfamiliar the canyon looked. Walking is slow, giving one a chance to look at cliffs from new angles and new perspectives. I never saw this sort of thing from a car window.

The cliffs seem to change character every few hundred yards, with some cliffs sheer and unbroken, and others broken up by jointing. The air was fresh and the canyon bottom was still cool as the morning sun had not yet reached the floor of the gorge.

The emerald green cottonwood trees provided a strong contrast to the reds and browns of the canyon walls, and all of it was reflected on the waters of the Virgin River. Even the sound of flowing cascades felt unfamiliar and strange, but it was delightful as well.

Zion has been compared to Yosemite, only it's red and without the glacial origin. Maybe. I like to see each park on its own terms. Zion is a beautiful and stunning canyon.

I noticed a park tram stopped in an unlabeled pullout. It turned out to be a ranger tour, and I found out about an attraction in the canyon that is not on any of the park maps. It's called Menu Falls, and it is a delightful small waterfall just a few yards from the road. There is even a trail and platform for viewing, but to get there you either have to walk like I did or take the ranger tour. The name derives from the fact that early menus at the park lodge had a picture of the falls on the cover.

I happened upon a park ranger with a spotting scope looking for California Condors. The birds were once very much on the verge of extinction, down to just 22 individuals in the 1980s, but with a captive breeding program, they are making a comeback. Today there are more than 400, with more than 200 returned to the wild. The numbers may be close to their pre-European contact population. They are truly a relict Pleistocene creature, though, and would have been far more numerous during the Ice Ages, when the larger megafauna like giant bison and wooly mammoths would have provided much more food.

I'm sorry to tease you with the picture though. It's actually a Turkey Vulture. The ranger hadn't seen any this season yet. The upper canyon is also a good place to watch for Peregrine Falcons.

Around the next bend, the Great White Throne came into view. One of the tallest cliffs in Zion, it rises 2,300 feet above the valley floor. No trails reach the summit.

Zion is not known for Ancestral Pueblan ruins, but they are there, in a few spots. I had always seen one briefly through the car and tram windows over the years, but this walk was the first chance I ever had to photograph it. It appears to be a single granary, but was on a pretty steep cliff, so I didn't investigate further.

I reached the Weeping Rock tram stop, and time had run out. I'm pretty sure that next time I get the chance, I'll be walking down canyon from there. Who knows what else there is to discover?

Seeing Actual Daylight at Emerald Pools in Zion National Park

There is a somewhat odd relationship between me and Zion National Park. I love the place, I've been there probably 20 times in the last two decades, but I haven't seen a whole lot of the park. The problem is that I'm usually there with a large group of students, and our possibilities for exploration are therefore somewhat limited. Our visits tend to include a stop at Checkerboard Mesa on the east side of the park, a possible hike to the Zion Arch Overlook, camp, a look at the visitor center first thing in the morning followed by 4-5 hours of free time where students ride the trams to the upper canyon and hike either to the Gateway to the Virgin Narrows, or the much tougher hike to the top of Angels Landing. I opted for Observation Point one year (and was that a tough hike). But then we are on the road to Grand Canyon, and that's it.

I've seen more of the park in the last two years, as I've led a different group with a slightly more relaxed schedule, which has allowed us to explore different parts of the park. We've seen Lava Point Road, and the Kolob Canyons, for instance. But one place I haven't seen in a quarter century is a common tourist destination just a short walk up one of the side canyons: Emerald Pools. The funny thing is, I've been there a couple of times, but I haven't exactly seen it.

What happened was this. Between my first visits (aside from childhood vacations) in 1984 until 1997, we used to use the evenings after dinner for night-time explorations of the upper canyon. We took night hikes! The trail to Emerald Pools was ideal, because it was paved and could be followed in almost total darkness. A night hike is not really a night hike if you have use flashlights, after all. Mind you, in saying this, I did almost walk face first into a porcupine that was climbing in some shrubs overhanging the trail.

Those night hikes are among my most treasured memories. The stars, framed by the high canyon walls, would sparkle. Some years we watched the full moon rise over the cliffs. During a few memorable years we experienced lightning storms, the booms of thunder reverberating across the canyon walls. At night, the Emerald Pools echoed with the surprisingly loud call of frogs, and in the coolness we could smell the moisture in the air, a treat in the desert environment. And one year, a slab of rock three feet across fell from the top of the alcove, landing just a few feet from some of our students.

What changed in 1997 was the introduction of the trams in upper Zion Canyon, and the elimination of private cars. For many reasons, this was a great innovation (some reasons to be mentioned in the next post). But from the beginning the trams stopped running at 10 PM, making night hikes impossible without a very long walk down the canyon to the campground. So I haven't been to Emerald Pools since then, and I have never seen them in daylight! I couldn't really tell you what they look like. That changed finally during our trip a few weeks ago. I had a few spare hours in the late evening, so I took the tram to the trailhead and started up towards the pools.

You may notice that the features are called "pools" and not lakes. There are three sets of pools, the Upper, Middle, and Lower. The Lower Pools are reached within an easy half mile stroll, the Middle Pools are maybe a fifth of a mile farther with some climbing and steps, and the Upper Pool is up a tough sandy and rocky trail something like a half mile higher. The lower pools lie at the base of a huge alcove and aren't much to look at, but the small waterfalls coming over the lip of the alcove are a treat. The trail winds around the back of the alcove behind the two trickles of water (a wonderful sight when the full moon shines into the alcove, by the way).

I listened to the frogs for a few moments and headed up to the Middle Pools just behind the edge of the cliff at the top of the alcove (check out the guy in red for scale in the picture below; and yes, he is past the "danger" signs where he is not supposed to be).

The little pools nicely reflected the sun shining off the cliffs across the canyon. The Emerald Pools lie in a cool "micro-climate" where the sun rarely penetrates. Note the conifer trees in these pictures; they normally grow a thousand feet higher in elevation.

I could see that the sun was getting low on the western horizon (not directly of course, but from the shadows across the canyon). I knew if I wanted to see the Upper Pool I was going to have to hoof it pretty fast. I was only there once before in the dark, and wanted to see it in what passes for daylight. As I climbed higher, the view across the canyon became more and more interesting.

After a few moments I was huffing and puffing (my walking exercises have been mostly on level ground; I can go for miles but those upward steps tested my aerobic capacity). It didn't take too long to reach the Upper Pool, which was the closest thing to a "lake" along the trail. It's actually big enough to swim in, although they ask you not to.

The water is coming from the Navajo Sandstone, one of the most unique and scenic formations on the Colorado Plateau. The sandstone is porous, and groundwater migrates downwards through thousands of feet of rock. When the water encounters an impermeable layer, perhaps a lens of limestone, it moves sideways. If the impermeable rock is exposed in a canyon wall, the water will flow as springs. That's where all the water in this side canyon is coming from. You can see the springs in the cliff above the pool in the picture below.

It was getting darker, and the time was edging uncomfortably close to the departure of the last tram down the canyon. I beat a hasty retreat down the trail, stopping a moment to catch another shot of the waterfall and alcove.

The last rays of the sun were leaving the highest cliffs as I emerged into the main canyon of the Virgin River. Evidence from lava flows downstream suggest that this entire incredible canyon has been carved within the last million years. Such an extraordinary place!

One can look at this relatively small river and wonder how it could have happened so fast, but of course most of the work is done during flash floods, and mass wasting has done much of the work of widening the canyon. I crossed the bridge and headed down the canyon for a late dinner and short swim.

It's been a lot of years, but I finally know how the Emerald Pools of Zion National Park look in daylight. And so do you, but I highly recommend seeing for yourself!

A Stroll Through the Gateway to the Narrows of the Virgin River

I bet no one has ever thought to take pictures of this place before! Or not. The Gateway to the Narrows trail is only the most popular trail in one of the most visited national parks in the system. I often try to describe places off the beaten path, but sometimes it's fun to catch these popular spots and be reminded why they are so famous in the first place.

Zion National Park is the ultimate exposure of the dramatic Navajo Sandstone, which formed in early Jurassic time as a widespread "sea" of sand dunes extending from Wyoming to Arizona and Nevada. The formation is more than 2,000 feet thick at Zion, where it forms vertical red and white cliffs.

The cliffs have been exposed by the rapid incision of the region by the forks of the Virgin River. Where the river has reached the underlying Kayenta Formation, mass wasting and erosion has caused rapid cliff retreat, forming a wider valley with a flat floor that allows for the development of tourist facilities (the campgrounds and visitor centers and such). Things change at the upper end of the valley where the river is flowing exclusively in the Navajo Sandstone. The canyon is 2,000 feet deep, but in places is only a few feet wide. The Narrows of the Virgin River is a stunningly beautiful place.

At road's end at the Temple of Sinewava, an easy 1 mile paved trail provides access to the narrows. That's where I was the other day.

It is one of the more crowded spots in the park, but the mess is mitigated somewhat by the wise decision of the park service a decade or so ago to ban cars from the upper canyon. Today, the only engine noise comes from a tram every ten minutes or so. The hikers jump out, disperse, and it is quiet again.

When the lower canyon is stewing in the desert heat, the Gateway is cool and shady (no wonder it is popular). Water seems to be everywhere, in the river itself, and dripping out of the canyon walls. The Navajo Sandstone is quite permeable, but the underlying Kayenta Formation is not. Springs are often found at the contact between the two, such as at the "swamp" (our friends on the trip from the southeastern states probably snickered a bit about the name; at least we didn't have to worry about crocodiles...).

The lush greenery attracts plenty of animals, including a national park deer (i.e., they graze right next to the trail and pose for pictures).

 The springs emerging from joints in the rock produce beautiful hanging gardens with flowers of all kinds.

 The columbines are my perennial favorites...

 As the sun climbs higher in the sky, the walls of the canyon are reflected off the Virgin River.

For all the crowds, it is a beautiful and serene place.The paved trail ends at the entrance to the Narrows of the Virgin River. One can don some water shoes and explore upstream for miles. Or take a road to the isolated north end of the park and backpack downstream through the narrows. Or one can just sit somewhere and listen to the river and the birds.

More on Zion in the next post!