Zion Narrows Hike

@RedMountainSpa

By Gene Gerstner,
Hiking Guide

When asked about my favorite hike in Southern Utah, I immediately thought of the Narrows in Zion National Park.

For 15 million years the Virgin River and its tributaries have been cutting deeper and deeper into the great Navajo sandstone plateaus leaving behind breathtaking slot canyons deep enough to hide the sun. One of the most famous of these is the Zion Narrows, a cool place in more ways than one.

For anyone who hasn't hiked a slot canyon, picture a hallway 20 feet wide, whose walls on either side climb 1,500 feet straight up. Picture as well that hallway filled with flowing water and you have the Narrows. But, this hallways runs twisting and bending for 12 miles through Zion National Park, exposing at every turn a new and unbelievable view...an alcove cut by the pounding waters of a flash flood, a rockfall dividing the river, riffles alternating with quiet pools. At times a shaft of sunlight lights a gloomy recess, Maidenhair Fern or Scarlet Monkeyflower clings to the walls here and there, or an ephemeral spring pours water down a cliff face.

While Red Mountain hikes just four miles in the Narrows, for me it is an experience like no other...mysterious and awe-inspiring. Wading on a summer's day in the cool waters of the Virgin River over sandstone cobbles and around boulders always in the shadow of sheer sandstone walls, makes the Narrows one of my favorite hikes.