Utah Trip Continued
Wednesday, April 4, 2007: In the morning we woke up at first light and I headded out in search of coffee at Jonna's favorite place in Springdale, The Mean Bean. I got a couple of bagels for us, and a large coffee. Then it was back into the park for the "money" hike, recommended by Jonna and Daniel as the hike to do in Zion: Angel's Landing. It kept saying again and again that if you're afraid of heights, this is definitely not the hike for you, as much of it takes place at great height and the last quarter mile is over rock and often exposed with thousands of feet drop offs on both sides of you. They weren't joking. I seem to be nurturing a new fear of heights lately, I'm not sure if that's related to my doing bigger and bigger hikes with David to greater heights, or if this is really a new, independent thing. We hiked up a strenuous ascent which was built by the national parks corps in the 30s and is still there today. They built this series of switchbacks called Walter's Wiggles which is pretty amazing- looks like it was just laid down recently. We were just about one of the first few people there, so we hiked up fairly fast to the part with chains and steep drop offs. I actually decided to sit the lat part out, there was this spine of stone at about 1500 feet that is very thin and I didn't feel like trying my life with that. It really is all mental- but still...
Above left is a shot looking down on Walter's Wiggles- the ascent was about 1,000 feet. The last part was over the slickrock with the chains. To the right is the path at lower elevation which was really lovely. It wasn't the best of light for a picture since the walls of the canyon you're hiking up are steep, but it was such a nice hike.
To the left here is the thin spine from the place I'm taking the picture (next to the tree in the middle picture) and it's a bit hard to tell, but there is a drop off on either side to the canyon floor which is about 1500 feet on one side and even more on the other. David hiked all the way up that crag in the distance to the very top of Angel's Landing.
southern
utah view!
a dry stump in zion at the base of the trail 
After the hike up Angel's Landing, we ate some Thai food at a restaurant near the park and, as is particular to southern utah, we had to pay cash since nobody in Springdale seems to take credit cards. Then we picked up a tired, happy pug at the daycare and drove to the cabin we decided to stay in near Bryce. We had some time after check in, so we put the dog in his kennel and drove fast to the park for sunset. We took a few pictures and we looked for photo-ops in the morning sunlight. We managed to find some pretty amazing spots and one loop in particular we wanted to do in the morning to be able to get some shots of the amazing scenic hoodoos from below.
The layers of sandstone erode at different rates, depending on the mineral composition of the layer, and they leave some pretty fantastic looking peaky spikes called "hoodoos" even down to natural arches. I was told that you can basically skip over Bryce, but to be honest, I actually liked it a bit better than Zion- mostly because you're seeing this stark landscape with wild, surreal colors like blazing reds, oranges, umber and whites mixed in with alpine trees and even bits of snow left on the ground between the trees. In the distance is just vista after vista of canyons, mountains, valleys and forest.
yah,
that's pretty much the view. Wow.
