Narrow-minded

We awoke in absolute darkness – and out here, that really means absolute darkness – and headed into Zion National Park before the sun rose. We parked in the visitor’s lot and hustled to wait in line for the first shuttle. Today was our day to hike The Narrows, possibly the most famous hike in the entire park, and we wanted to get there early. The Narrows is a relatively shallow river wending its way between two sheer cliff faces no more than 30 feet apart but hundreds of feet tall, creating a 17-mile narrow waterway. Since the majority of this waterway is a few inches to a few feet deep, it is hiked by hundreds of visitors every day. Going from the bottom up, the most accessible way, requires a shuttle ride to the end of the line. At that point, you take the Riverside Trail and can enter the water almost immediately. Since we were trying to get a jump on the crowds, we sat in the front seats of the first bus, were the first to exit, and hurried to the trailhead while other visitors paused to put on gear or take one last bathroom break. We hiked the Riverside Trail on land and used the last river access point to enter the water.

You can hike The Narrows wearing just about anything if you’re determined enough. That said, a little bit of help from specialized gear makes the whole experience far more pleasant. Josh and I had rented full dry suits, neoprene socks, boots, and walking poles.

This combination would keep us dry and sufficiently warm to wade as far up The Narrows as we dared (on the bottom-up route, I don’t think you’re allowed to go more than 5 miles, but most people stop by the 3-mile point). We felt the dry suits were a smart move, since the water would get at least waist-deep for Josh (higher for shrimps like me) and was supposed to be mighty cold. The day before we went to The Narrows, park rangers were announcing to every group waiting for the shuttle that the water was running down from a lake high up the mountain where the temperature was nine degrees overnight, and the water saw no sunlight until it hit The Narrows (and not much even then). Risk of hypothermia was higher than usual. And, as we have heard before, your safety is your responsibility. We zipped ourselves into those dry suits without a second thought and prayed that our feet would go numb quickly. Surprisingly, we saw few other people in full dry suits. The majority had opted for dry pants with a sort of tight-lacing boot system that seemed to be different from ours. A few of the bolder ones hiked without any sort of dry pants or suits, soaking themselves to the waist or chest and trudging onward. We saw a couple in short shorts whose legs were beet red in protest of the frigid water. In our suits, we stayed surprisingly warm, and our feet did, too.

As we hiked through The Narrows, we quickly learned several things. The pole was incredibly helpful and saved us repeatedly from slipping on smooth underwater stones or stumbling in strong current. One side of the river was typically much shallower than the other, and depth of the water made the biggest difference in difficulty moving forward (moreso than current, in my opinion). Therefore, we crisscrossed the river more times than I can count to facilitate forward progress. While we typically stuck to shallower water, the dry suits were really fun and sometimes a deeper pool proved irresistible.

The other thing that was easy to forget at first, as we clumsily hiked through the river, was to look up. In the morning light, the shadows playing on the cliff walls were beautiful.

With the slipping risk, though, it was easy to sometimes look at nothing but our feet. And the final thing? Coming early was worth every bit of preparation and lost sleep. Having the place largely to ourselves was magical, something we didn’t fully appreciate until the hoards of other visitors caught up with us as we trekked back downriver in the afternoon. That kind of tranquility in the morning allowed us to watch a skittish young mule deer who had been drinking from the river scamper nervously back to its parents, all of them turning their large ears and faces towards us once they were reunited. It meant hearing the river’s rhythms underfoot, hearing only our voices echo along the walls.

After hiking about four miles upriver, we paused for an incredibly picturesque lunch and then headed back. We stopped for one side excursion to the Veiled Falls, which are about a mile up a river that joins the main river of The Narrows. While the hike to the Veiled Falls is quite pretty, getting to the actual waterfall requires either a dry suit and some serious shimmying and lifting of oneself over large rocks or squirming through a very small hole between large rocks and pushing past some roots to emerge on the other side. The waterfall was only about 12 feet tall and rather underwhelming, so we would recommend the walk but not the obstacle course required to see the actual, diminutive falls.

As we got farther and farther down the river on our way back, The Narrows exploded into a riot of color, bodies, and noise. There were people everywhere, clad in varying amounts of gear (see above) and chattering. There were visitors contorted into odd yoga poses on top of mid-river boulders, presumably photodocumenting their fears for Instagram. The Narrows no longer had that sort of sacred quiet and shadow. In the bright light of midday, the secretive nature of the place had fled.

While The Narrows had given us a full morning of adventure, it took all of our energy.

Tired, happy adventurers post-Narrows

We flopped on the shuttle bus and were revived only after a hearty lunner at Oscar’s. One of the employees at Zion Guru, where we rented our dry suits, had recommended Oscar’s as the perfect beer and burger place for a casual dinner out. We had one of our best meals of the trip there; everything we ordered was delicious. Highly recommend if you ever find yourself in the area.

Spotted: The dangers of glamping. We figured we had to try the glamping trend, if only because there were limited housing options in the Zion area. While the semipermanent stretched canvas structure, with its large bed, fuzzy pillows, and ridiculous tiny crystal chandelier provided a cozy abode for one night, there was one issue: it was mid-October in Utah. The heater placed in the tent ended up being purely decorative unless you were standing less than 2 feet from it, and it was really the six blankets we piled on the bed that kept us toasty until morning.