We visited Zion National Park over 2 days, with the first day in Zion Canyon. Because of overcrowding, shuttle buses take visitors up the canyon road to the various trailheads and sightseeing destinations. Even the buses were crowded when we visited, with lines to get on the bus, standing room only onboard, and lots of people at each stop. The photo below shows the line when we arrived, but I’m sure it only got worse for the next couple hours.
A problem we encountered was the closure of the bridge at Zion Lodge to get across to the Emerald Pools trailhead. I had the brilliant idea that we would start our hike at The Grotto, visit the Emerald Pools, then hike past the bridge that was out of commission, and get back to the road at the Court of the Patriarchs. This added a couple miles to the hike, but how bad could it be?
It was bad. It was over a hundred degrees F, I am pretty out of shape, and the trail markings are terrible (more on that later). Luckily we brought plenty of water, including my fancy new hydration backpack, which had a bite-and-suck mechanism to drink, which doesn’t work that well when one is struggling for breath. It doesn’t work that well for me, in my opinion, but I don’t exactly have a better idea. Plus the water tasted very plasticky, despite my attempts to clean the thing beforehand.
In any case, we set off with our hiking poles and water and made it to the lower, then the middle Emerald Pools, but were pretty beat at that point. So, we started heading down the trail to the broken Lodge bridge. At that point, the heat was getting to us, but there was no way we were going back up to the Emerald Pools to get back to The Grotto. We should have.
Instead, we followed the last sign we saw on the trail. It pointed us towards the Court of the Patriarchs a couple miles away via a horse trail. We saw people wading across the river and decided we didn’t want to do that, we’d find a perfectly fine bridge after a long walk. There was a lot less shade along this trail, particularly with the midday sun overhead, so it was quite punishing. Sure there were spectacular views, but who can appreciate them when you’re exhausted?
As we traveled south, the trail finally split, with one heading left towards the river and (hopefully) the Court of the Patriarchs. No, it just had even less shade and eventually met back up with the other trail, so we made our journey a bit longer and more miserable. With the lack of signage, we had no idea how much farther we had to go. And there was no cell reception, so maps wouldn’t load. (Yes, I had downloaded the map in the National Park app, and that would have helped, but in my exhaustion, I forgot). We could see the Court of the Patriarchs by that point, and once again, there were people wading across the river at a shallow point, so we decided to do the same. Had we known that walking another 1/3 mile might have taken us to a bridge, we would have done that, but again, no signs on the trails.
We caught the shuttle back to the visitor center, with the intention of going back to the hotel to rest, but by a happy accident, we got on the wrong shuttle and went back up the canyon. We stopped off at Zion Lodge for a well deserved rest and several bottles of the most spectacular tasting expensive water ever. And the view!
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