Here's the list of who went on the hike:
Submission from Kathy Sharp:
Toni Bilyeu (Angela Bilyeu's sister) and I crammed all our stuff in her Kia Sportage Wednesday night, July 3rd, after work and headed for the campground we had made reservations at in Hurricane, Utah. It took us 7 hours to get there, including a gas, Taco Bell, and Wal-Mart stop in Flagstaff. I think it was about 2 a.m. when we started putting up Toni's tent. (She brought a house compared to my almost-two-man tent.)
Richard had camped Wednesday at Jacob Lake with the camping club and met us at our camp Thursday morning. Then we all headed for the Zion Canyon Campground just outside the south entrance to Zion National Park. We stayed at the other campground the first night because we could make reservations there. I didn't want to stay at the campgrounds in the park because I didn't want to go showerless for four hot days.
After we set up camp, we took a car ride through the park, including the more-than-a-mile long tunnel through a mountain (solid rock). Richard had never been to Zion, Toni had been there (and hiked the narrows) in June, and both Toni and I went on the hiking club trip to Zion last summer. I've been to Zion many times; it's always beautiful.
After our tour of the park, we went to the Visitor Center to get our permits for hiking the narrows. Up to 80 permits are handed out daily at 3 p.m. for the narrows hike, either as a straight-through (one-day) hike or a backpacking hike. We wanted a one-day permit, which that day turned out to be easier to get than a backpacking permit. However, the danger level in the narrows was high, and the rangers told us many times before they gave us the permit that they did not recommend doing the hike. (Last year the water danger was extreme the five days we spent at Zion, so no one could get a permit.)
After we got our permit we decided to hike Angel's Landing, since I had listed this as one of the best hikes at Zion. However, this hike has major drop-offs at the top, so Richard didn't plan to go all the way to the top. Before we had hiked too far, though, we decided the hike was too strenuous to be doing the day before we planned to do the narrows hike. So we decided to take it easy, have a good meal, get our packs and everything ready for the narrows hike, and get to bed early to prepare for the long Zion Narrows hike.
But first we hiked the Gateway to the Narrows so Toni could get one of the walking sticks there. Hiking the narrows in June, Toni had found a walking stick invaluable for crossing through rushing water on slippery rocks. Richard and I both had brought collapsible walking sticks.
We got up at daybreak Friday, which turned out to be a beautiful day. We parked Richard's truck at the Gateway to the Narrows (no overnight parking) where we would end our hike, and then Toni drove the hour-and-a-half trip, mostly on dirt road, to the Zion Narrows trailhead at Chamberlains Ranch.
We put on our packs and started hiking down a dirt road. When we got our permit, the rangers had given us a sheet of information about the hike that included a list of landmarks on the hike and the average time to reach them. Our hiking time matched the list almost exactly, even though the list didn't say when the average hikers stopped for breaks, to filter water, or to eat lunch. We reached the end of the dirt road at the correct time and shortly after that the "trail" started its criss-crossing of the Virgin River.
Eventually the canyon started getting higher and narrower. A couple of hours into the hike we reached the first narrows, where the river runs between completely vertical walls hundreds (thousands?) of feet high as little as twenty feet apart. I really enjoy hiking through narrows, and I had been wanting to hike the Zion Narrows for years.
By this time, Richard had taken his place as the hike leader, saving Toni and I a lot of wasted effort finding where to cross the river. Of course, when you're in the Narrows, there's no avoiding walking in the water. The slippery, algae-covered rocks that always seemed to be at the places where we needed to cross the river didn't help, especially with the water rushing by trying to knock you over.
However, I had expected to spend a lot more time in deeper water than we did. There was only one place on the hike where we took off our packs to jump down into a pool, the water never reached my waist, and we didn't have to swim at all. It must have been a hot day, because coldness wasn't really a problem. (Getting hypothermia is a real concern on this hike.) But I think even a little more water in the canyon would have made some of the river crossings much more difficult. For going on the hike during high water danger, we got off way easy.
The Zion Narrows were definitely beautiful, but we had a schedule to keep, so we didn't stop to enjoy the beauty for long. We wanted to finish the hike, which takes the average experienced, well-conditioned hiker more than twelve hours, before dark. (Novice or unconditioned hikers should not even think about hiking all the way through the Zion Narrows.) About ten hours into the hike, it began to feel like a really, really long hike. But it was beautiful.
We finished the hike with daylight to spare, but we were really tired. Despite several stops to take care of her feet, Toni had developed some very large blisters. Richard and I were amazed that she had done the hike with them. As we were walking back to Richard's truck, we saw that the narrows danger level had been downgraded to moderate.
The following day, Saturday, we were still recovering from the narrows hike, and it was too hot for people in our condition to be hiking. We did some shopping and went to the IMAX theater to escape the heat. Later we hiked to the Weeping Wall and the Emerald Pools.
The final day of our trip, Sunday, Richard decided to join his family at Jacob Lake, and Toni and I went to Cedar Breaks to hike in coolness and pretend that we were photographers. About 3 p.m. we started back to Phoenix, stopping at the historic Cameron Trading Post for dinner.