A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words. At Least.
Last week’s column was viewed by almost 20% more people than any other. We’d like to think it was the exotic prose, but more likely it was the Yellowstone slide show. Everybody likes to look at pictures of pretty places. Maybe we should convert our blog to a photographic extravaganza, but then we’d have to travel to select locations every week and we’re too old and crotchety for that. And Bill wouldn’t be able to rant about the horrible Republicans or report on the latest racing excitement or fill everyone in on the various medical woes of our many readers (Do we have anyone out there who didn’t have a medical procedure this year?). So we’ll probably have to keep on trucking with the current format. Enjoy the slide shows while you can, however. After Alaska next week, we’re out of vacations.
A Word About Zion And Bryce Canyon
National Geographic publishes a magazine called Adventure, which told us that their readers’ favorite hike of all was down the Zion Narrows, slightly edging the hike to Half Dome in Yosemite. This was pretty surprising considering the greater awareness of Yosemite and many other national parks to Zion, not to mention the latter’s location in southern Utah. Also, I note that most of my travelling friends have Zion far down on their visit lists if it’s there at all. So I just want to tell you to consider giving Zion and nearby Bryce Canyon a little more consideration. The slide show pictures will show you part of the reason. The location, only a couple hours drive from Las Vegas (a shorter trip by half than the Grand Canyon) would be another. Continuing on from Zion to Bryce, the drive East through tiny southern Utah towns is charming and a visit to Grand Staircase—Escalante National Monument is worth the trip. Also, the hike down the Narrows, described in this week’s Exciting Episode below, is incomparable. Since most of you have no desire to undertake 16 miles in a river, try approaching it from the finishing end and travelling down the river whatever distance you find comfortable. This will give you a sense of the larger experience without taxing you excessively.
Zion Canyon: A River Runs Through It
If it’s late July, it must be vacation time for Siobhan and Bill. This year’s (2006) mission, if they choose to accept it, is the 16-mile negotiation of the Zion Narrows in southern Utah, not your average, everyday hike. The route runs from the Chamberlain Ranch, outside the boundaries of Zion National Park, along the North Fork of the Virgin River—and much of the time in the Virgin River—between tall canyon walls often 1000 feet high. There are sections of the hike where the walls narrow to 18 feet apart and there is no escaping a flash flood, so checking the weather report is a clever idea. Even if you don’t, though, the park rangers who issue the 80 permits to traverse the Narrows daily do check and nobody goes in if it looks the slightest bit suspicious. Making this hike before July 15, the beginning of the rainy season in southern Utah, is recommended.
The Vegas Report
Before you can get to Utah, of course, you must ride on the great silver bird, which, especially this summer, is late a lot. Southwest Airlines has a great track record for timely departures, so, despite their dubious philosophy of No Assigned Seating, we chose them. We got to Las Vegas a mere hour late. Hewing to tradition, they lost one of Siobhan’s bags (how can you get five bags on the correct plane and not the sixth?). We waited a half-hour in the Las Vegas airport for the next plane, which delivered the final bag.
As we generally do in Las Vegas, we stayed at Caesar’s Palace in the Palace Tower. The rooms are spacious and possess giant whirlpools. Ours also possessed a smoker as a previous guest, but the optimistic bellman promised to bring in a fearsome smoke-sucking machine to relieve the problem. He would then spray the room with Magic Elixir and the place would be as good as new. Well, almost.
We went to see Mama Mia at Mandalay Bay (without reservations) the same night. Great seats, great show, structured as everybody knows by now around 22 songs by Abba, which music snobs like Larry Pilotti berate but which have sold more records in Europe than anybody but the Beatles. Siobhan saw the movie later and said there was no comparison, the Vegas show was far superior. The energy level was through the roof and the producers found actors who could really sing.
Red Rock Canyon (yep, another one)
Next day, it was hiking in Red Rock Canyon, just 19 miles outside Las Vegas. A helpful valet at Caesar’s turned us on to the better trails and we were off for an easy jaunt with little elevation. Needless to say, getting your hiking in before noon is a wise move considering the blistering afternoon temperatures at this time of year.
Same night, we intended to see Cirque du Soleil’s Zumanity at New York, New York, so we could report back to Steve Solomon on whether they had animals in the Circque yet. Alas and alack, despite advertising to the contrary, Zumanity was not playing on Thursdays. We found out too late to get into another top show so we settled for something called Splash at the Riviera in old Las Vegas.
How to describe Splash? Well, it was something on the order of The Ed Sullivan Show on acid. An early act featured an ice-skating Russian couple with a routine far more aggressive—and scary—than Olympics performers. The woman partner’s head swung less than an inch from the ice for half the performance. After that, we had merry Hispanic jugglers, race-baiting comedians, near-nekkid dancing girls, and, just for fun, five guys doing figure-eights on motorcycles at 40 miles an hour in a transparent sphere only twelve—that’s twelve—feet in diameter. Yikes! One teeny, tiny screwup and it’s biker omelet. This was a real jaw-dropper. Lights out, motors whining like a swarm of killer bees, the participants merely a blur—just stunning.
The Trip To Bountiful. Via Moapa
Next morning, we were off in Mr. Hertz’s bright, shiny car for Utah. But first, a stop for breakfast in tiny Moapa, a wee little town just off I-15. We pulled up to a small restaurant with a couple of sheriff’s cars outside (“If the cops eat here it must be okay, right? Or was that truckers?”). Strangely, nobody was eating. Strangelier, nobody was even there. A couple of bar stools were knocked over and broken glass covered the floor, with merchandise strewn everywhere. The cops and the management were in excited conversation out back.
“Does this mean there’s going to be NO BREAKFAST???” was all Bill wanted to know.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Siobhan, who was not as hungry as Bill.
In Springdale, Utah, gateway to Zion, we pulled up at Flanigan’s Inn, easily the nicest place to stay in the area. The rooms were pleasant and spread out around a man-made creek. There was a small swimming pool with a hot tub attached close to the rooms and an adjacent, high-quality restaurant, The Spotted Dog. They even had a hill on the property with a concrete maze on top. Along with your Gideon Bible, the management also offered a book on the teachings of Buddha. Anything to rile the Mormons.
Hiking Zion
First off, we hiked to the upper pool on the Emerald Trail, a modest hike—but maybe not so modest to a middle-aged woman we confronted on the way up.
“Do you have any candy?” she pleaded. “The book said this hike was moderate, but it’s not so moderate for me.” Siobhan gave her some water, a few grapes and some chewing gum. We didn’t see her on the way down, so either she made it back or fell off into the underbrush.
Believe it or not, we promptly encountered yet another guy, younger, in lousy shape, who had the terrible trail etiquette to ask for “a bottle of water.” What?!? There’s no crying in baseball and there’s no asking for a bottle of water in hiking, especially when you’re too dumb to carry any of your own. Especially, if you look like Shamu. Siobhan, ever the tough taskmaster with rulebreakers, handed him a couple of iodine pellets and an empty Gatorade bottle. Make your own water, dipwad.
Next morning, the real hiking started, up to Observation Point, eight miles, with an elevation gain of 2000 feet to a final altitude of 6507 feet and a spectacular view of Zion Canyon. This was probably a little more strenuous than a warm-up hike for the Narrows should have been but live and learn. Hopefully.
Negotiating The Narrows
We were up the next morning at 5:30 to walk to the outfitter’s, almost next door, to catch the shuttle to Chamberlain Ranch. We had previously rented neoprene booties and water shoes (which drain), along with shoulder-high poles, about the size of broom handles, with a short rope looped through a hole about an inch or so from the top. We had purchased breakfast from the muffin lady the night before and had our motel coffee for early sustenance. The trip to Chamberlain Ranch took about an hour. We were joined on the crowded little bus by 9 other dauntless souls, some of whom would camp overnight along the river.
The first couple of miles of this hike (in relatively cool weather, about 70) was through the cow-filled meadows of the ranch, along the tiny tributaries of the river. Moving along at a healthy pace, we found ourselves 22 minutes ahead of schedule at the first mileage marker.
“Piece of cake,” says Bill. “We’ll be through in 10 hours.”
A couple of hours of leisurely strolling later, we checked in at the second marker—43 minutes behind. Since we were about a third of the way through at that stage, projecting a similar loss of time the rest of the way, we would emerge after dark, not a happy thought, even though Siobhan had her little flashlight. We picked up the pace.
Things went better after that. For a while, anyway. No time lost at subsequent checkpoints and a likely daylight finish. Then, Siobhan’s knee went out. It does this from time to time, even under the best of circumstances, but never before on a hike. Slowdown time. We thought there might be an escape route at a camping spot called The Grotto, since there was a trail with the same name. Alas, not so. One of the sad Hiking Facts Of Life is that there is no reset button—if you’re out in the middle of nowhere (and this would certainly qualify—the river was, in many spots, too low for boats and the canyon walls were too close together for helicopters) you have no choice but to finagle your way out.
To our great delight, the knee began coming around. Siobhan, of course, was determined to finish on schedule so that she would not be subjected to scorn and ridicule for the rest of her life.
At the halfway point, we were still only 45 minutes behind schedule. And then, a funny thing happened. During the most difficult part of the hike through the narrowest part of the canyon where the hikers are in the water 90% of the time, we began to gain time. Perhaps the schedule we were following was weighted to the average hiker slowing down for the latter half of the hike or maybe consideration is given to the water being deeper later in the summer (it was mostly ankle-deep for us, occasionally knee-deep, only a few times above the waist). But we finally finished in 11 hours and 40 minutes, only ten minutes behind the more severe schedule and 50 minutes ahead of a second alternative. Only one of the other hikers, a 21-year-old UCLA student, emerged when we did, the rest of his party lagging an hour or so behind.
We caught shuttles back to the hotel and collapsed into the tub. I would have stayed there forever, but Siobhan insisted I get up and stagger to the restaurant for dinner. We slept very well that night.
Onward To Bryce!
Next day, it was on to Bryce Canyon National Park, a couple hours east of Zion. Siobhan got to drive because the road was very steep and winding and she is a very bad passenger in these conditions.
At Bryce Canyon, Ruby owns everything. The motel. The restaurant. The fast-food joint. The gas-station, the campground, the RV park. But maybe not the nightly rodeo across the street. Not ready for more hiking yet, we took the afternoon three-hour tram tour through the park, presided over by driver George “Spike” Brown, who lent us his binoculars so we could look out eighty miles over the Grand Staircase—Escalante National Monument (and couldn’t we come up with a little snappier name for this place?). On a clear day, said Spike, we could have seen two hundred miles! Just our doggone luck.
Not interested in waiting for the fifty people in line for dinner to be seated before us, we drove a few miles down the road to a restaurant favored by the locals called Foster’s. Bill, who almost never eats steaks, had a 14-lb. T-Bone and could probably have downed another one. We were both four or five pounds light at that stage of the game.
The final hike next day down the Navajo Loop/Queen’s Garden Trail and through the unique and famous red rock hoodoos of Bryce Canyon was beautiful and comfortable. The rocks in Bryce are sometimes very red, sometimes an unusual red-orange color, unlike anything we’ve seen elsewhere.
The following day, it was back through Zion and on to St. Georges, Utah, where we would spend the night close enough to Las Vegas to make our flight in plenty of time. I found a phone book and called ahead to St. Georges to book a couple of massages at a place called Desert Springs. We pulled in just before 2:45 p.m. and Melanie and Melissa were waiting with emergency assistance. We limped on in and bounced on out an hour later. Siobhan was amazed to discover that a massage could make that much difference—the change in our legs was remarkable—and we did not revert to being cripples later on.
The nice hotel man at Hampton House suggested dinner at a great downtown restaurant called The Painted Pony and Melanie told Bill the theater at Tuacahn at the base of the mountains was first-rate. We saw Guys And Dolls in an outdoor amphitheater and Melanie was right. We never cease to be amazed at the quality of live theater in Utah, of all places. Many of the performers we had seen in an earlier vacation in West Yellowstone were young Utah actors. Maybe it’s a rebellion against the Mormons.
The plane home, of course, landed an hour late so we didn’t hit the sack until 3:30 a.m. Siobhan nonetheless felt it was necessary to rouse Bill at 7 a.m. to feed the horses. They didn’t know we got in late, she reasoned. Or care, either, no doubt.
Next day, Siobhan related the long tale of our arduous hike down the Narrows to her brother, Stuart, who had just returned home from a more traditional vacation in comfortable Europe.
“Why do you DO it?” he wanted to know.
Well, Stuart, because it’s there.
That’s all, folks….
