Zions in the Spring

Zion National Park has a lot of snow and mud in the spring.... which is not very conducive to canyoneering. Oh the snow wasn't inside the actual park... or the main part of the park anyway. Some friends and I went down thinking, hoping the reports that Birch Hollow was dry even in the spring were true. So we drove down late Thursday night, got up and drove to the dirt road where the entrance to Birch Hollow is. There was actually quite a bit of snow still on the up-hill side of the road and it was draining across the road in several places so we plowed through those mud spots fairly well - with Lindsey's SUV and Nate's sedan. But then we reached one mud spot... one that was not gonna let us through at all.

So we had a decision to make... it was noon and we still had another mile to go before we reached the entrance, then we had a decent little hike down a gully to the first rappel and then we'd have the canyon to go through, then the bush whacking up another gully and then a 7-mile hike on the road back to where we had to leave our cars. And the cherry on top was that the temperature was only in the mid-60s. And did I mention it was already noon? So we packed up ... a lot of stuff: warm clothes, backpacking stoves, emergency blankets, lots of food, and then all of the canyoneering gear we needed - ropes, carabiners, rappelling devices, harnesses, you name it. So we headed out down the road. 

We got started down the gully to the first rappel... and discovered that there was a ton of snow! And a little runoff stream down the middle of it... and since we were all wearing normal shoes that we didn't want to get wet, we had to bush whack on the side and through the snow. The further we went the more Lindsey and I were getting nervous since the gully had been completely dry the last time we did it. And I was sure there would be snow runoff pools in the low parts of the canyon... in which we'd have to swim. We all had dry clothes with us.... but still! That would be some very cold water. We didn't reach the first rappel until 4:00 - a very bad time to start the canyon with a big hike up a gully afterward and a 7-mile hike remaining.

Nate rappelled down the first rappel and then hiked down to the next rappel and the rest of us stayed at the top to await the verdict - if we were going to continue or turn and hike back up the gully. He came back shaking his head, "No." He said when he checked out the next rappel, which is where the canyon really narrowed into a famous slot canyon that Zion is riddled with, it was full of snow - under foot and overhead. Underfoot would be scary because we wouldn't know where the rock was and what if we broke through the snow and fell the 50 to 100 feet we would have rappelled. As for the snow bridges, they could have busted overhead. 

So Nate ascended up the rope and we packed up. We hiked back up the gully in half the time it took us to get down it, which was a very good thing because we had a few incidences on the muddy road getting back out. For those 6 hours we were playing in the gully, the snow was still melting on the road and making the mud spots we got through in the morning much worse. Nate led the way in his sedan and then we totally got stuck in the mud and it was sliding us toward the edge of the road - on the down-hill side. It took me, Rob, and Cameron to push him out because he couldn't move forward or backward. So we loaded the path under his tires with sticks and branches and then pushed with all our mights. He took Lindsey's SUV and plowed a path higher up on the road through the snow... and apparently (since I was down-hill going potty cuz I had to go so bad!!) he slid her car side ways through most of it because the snow and mud was that slick. And then we all watched nervously as he plowed his sedan through one set of the tracks he made with Lindsey's SUV - because he decided he wanted to go even higher on the road with his car than he did with Lindsey's SUV. He made it through with no problems!! We clapped and cheered the whole time!

So that was our adventure. Nate and Lindsey S left that night to return home, but Lindsey, Rob, Cameron and I stayed another day (Saturday) and did some of the classic Zion hikes: Angel's Landing and Emerald Pools. Then we drove home that night.