Zion Narrows

This hike is by various sources described as strenuous, long (15.7 miles), with streches of deep wading and possible swimming, and tricky walking on slippery rocks on the river bottom. So, some people prefer to do the trip in two days. I figured it would be OK for a one long day, and calculated with 12 hours of hiking and possible swimming (we waterproofed all our stuff in a dry bag that I had in my backpack, and trashbags which other people had in their camelbacks). Each of us had a hiking pole, though it would probably be even more helpful to have two. Hiking on the river bottom turned out to be slippery, and one could not see the rocks through muddy water. Since the water level was low, we got only up to mid-thigs deep into the water. However, we have seen several people falling into the river, and one had to swim in a deep pool, so, waterproofing stuff is definitely a must.

A few useful tips that I found on this and previous river hikes:
1. Use a walking stick for support, probing depth and obstacles in muddy water.
2. In the narrows, observe the river current and walk on that side, where is less current. Those parts are often considerably less deep.

My GPS did not do very well in the canyon, and, I accidentally turned it off at the start of the hike, so, I don't have any map on this one. But, go to Climb-Utah.com for detailed description and a good topo map.

We started at the Chamberlain Ranch in a chilly morning around 7.45am. First couple of miles go fast on a jeep road. In about an hour, the road ends and one starts hiking on a path in a river valley, that gets progessively deeper. It's mostly walking on a river bank with frequent hops across. We managed to keep our feet dry for quite some time by hopping on rocks. The river was not too high, though the water was a bit muddy. The canyon walls get steeper in about two hours into the hike, and, we reached the first narrows near the national park boundary in about 3 hours. By this time, the sun does not reach the canyon floor, and, with the wet feet, it gets chilly. Another 20 min from here is about 7 m tall waterfall, which gets bypassed by a trail through a crack on the left. Right below was about a mid-thigh deep pool, one of the deepest wades on the whole hike. The next 40 minutes to confluence with Deep Creek were quite narrow, and the most chilly. Deep Creek also added a lot of mud into the river, so, we did not see where we are stepping anymore. After the confluence, the canyon opens a bit and turns south, shade mixes with sunny spots. On one of those, we had about 30 min lunch.

Then one keeps crossing the river frequently and the canyon stays relatively wide (but still tall) until Big Spring, where we were in about 1.5 hours from Deep Creek. I used water filter, that I brought for emergency, to get some water from the spring, which tasted excellent. Below Big Spring, the canyon narrows again and the real Narrows start. In the next two hours, one spends over 50% of time in the river. We reached Orderville Canyon at 4.10pm, about 1:45 from Big Spring. At this point, the canyon is the narrowest. It opens up about 10 min. below Orderville, but still remains quite scenic all the way to the end of paved trail at Temple of Sinawawa, where we got at 5pm. The herds of people goofing in the river made the last part of the river walk interesting. It takes about another 20 min. to walk the paved trail to the shuttle bus stop.

Timings

Below are our times as compared to those posted on the NPS website:

Fotos