Angel's Landing

Angel's Landing
Originally uploaded by DBC Wally World.

Come to Zion

Last March, on a visit to Moab, we purchased an annual National Parks pass. This pass costs $50.00. (We have already made back the cost of the purchase price). It will gain you admission to any national park or monument. Zion's National Park, alone, costs $20.00 to enter. We decided that while we were in the area, we may as well use our pass. So we headed out to Zion Canyon, with two cousins, Nathan and Calvin in-tow.

The temperature at Zions was in the low 40's. However, there was a nasty 10-15 mph North wind as well, which created a substantial the wind-chill factor. At first, we had planned to hike the Gateway to the Narrows trail at the northern terminus of the canyon. However, we discovered that with the low-angled sunlight (winter solstice and all, you know) that the narrows trail was completely in the shadows, and was much too chilly hike -- especially with the little ones. We decided to find a trail that had some sunshine.

We found that the trail to the Lower Emerald Pools, that starts from the Grotto area parking lot was bathed in sunlight. At the beginning of the trail, we found this spectacular view of Angel's Landing.