The Navajo Sandstone of the Kolobs Canyon from Timber Creek Overlook
1 mile round trip, 100 feet elevation gain
Difficulty: Easy
Access: Paved road to trailhead, Zion National Park entrance fee required
The hike to Timber Creek Overlook in Zion National Park's Kolob Canyons area is short but sweet, packing in views of snowy peaks and redrock cliffs into a mile of walking with minimal elevation gain. It's a good leg-stretcher for visitors who are passing through the area or a good addition to the hike to Kolob Arch for hikers in the area for a day, though I wouldn't make a dedicated trip out to this part of the park just for this hike.
This was my first hike during a recent trip to Utah- I arrived at the Kolob Canyons area of the park after picking up a rental car in Las Vegas that morning. The Kolob Canyons are removed from the main Zion Canyon area of the park; it's accessible directly off I-15 north of St. George, Utah. I reached the Kolobs Canyon area by taking I-15 north from Las Vegas past St. George to exit 40 in Utah, then turning right (heading east) once I came off the freeway ramp to head towards Kolob Canyons. I checked in show my park pass at the visitor center before driving five miles up to the Kolob Canyons Overlook, at the end of the Kolob Canyons Road. The view is already quite good at the parking lot, with Timber Top Mountain and the Kolob Finger Canyons visible directly across the Timber Creek.
From the parking lot, the trail headed to the south, passing a few picnic tables at the start. The trail generally stayed near the top of the ridge; due to recent snows, the soil was wet and the trail resembled a mudpit at points.
Trail to Timber Creek Overlook
The sparse vegetation along the trail (Utah is more or less a desert, after all) provided continuous open views of the Navajo Sandstone cliffs that define the Kolob Finger Canyons.
Kolob Canyons
After a half milfe of gentle descent, the trail ended at a rocky knob on the ridgeline. The views here were very open, with nearly a 360-panorama of the Kolob Canyons to the east and the snow-capped Pine Valley Mountains to the west. Nearby ridges of the Hurricane Cliffs were covered in low-growing pines and junipers.
Pine Valley Mountains from the Overlook
As the name of the hike suggests, the viewpoint at the end overlooks the Timber Creek watershed: the most impressive aspect of the view was flat-topped Timber Top Mountain, which towers over the Kolob Canyons. The overlook had a good viewshed to the south: I could see cliffs of Navajo Sandstone marching continuously southward, marking the western edge of the great Colorado Plateau.
View of Timber Top Mountain
The Navajo Sandstone of the Kolob Canyons was formed from massive ancient sand dunes that compacted into the rock. While most of the Navajo Sandstone at the Kolob Canyons is a beautiful burnt red, much of the same formation is white in Zion Canyon- although both colors of sandstone result from the same sand dunes, the red sandstone, which is typically lower in the formation, derives its color from a higher iron content. This sandstone is the principal formation in the White Cliffs, one of the multiple layers of the Grand Staircase that reaches from high on the Colorado Plateau's Pink Cliffs at Cedar Breaks and Bryce Canyon down to the Grand Canyon.
Despite the clear weather that day and the brevity of the trail, I saw only a handful of other hikers on the trail; of course, I arrived on a Friday during winter, so hiker density is likely higher during the summer and on weekends.
Looting at Chaco Canyon's Pueblo Bonito spurred Edgar Lee Hewett to call for the passage of the 1906 Antiquities Act
In 1901, Richard and Marietta Wetherill filed for a homestead in the forgotten, barren landscape of New Mexico's Chaco Canyon. Their claim covered some low, dusty sandstone cliffs, a saltbrush-choked wash, and the single most significant archaeological site in the United States. Instead of farming his homestead claim, Richard Wetherill set up a trading post that sold stolen artifacts from Pueblo Bonito and Chetro Ketl, two great houses that formed the heart of the Ancestral Pueblo civilization.
Between the ninth and the thirteenth centuries, the Ancestral Pueblo had built the equivalent of a city in the canyon, complete with houses five stories tall containing hundreds of rooms and communal worship areas, or kivas, that could hold hundreds. The people of Chaco completed hundreds of miles of roads leading out from the canyon to points across the Four Corners area and traded with societies as far away as what is today Mexico. Through their intimate knowledge of the skies, Chaco astronomers recorded supernovas and Chaco architects aligned their sturdily built masonry buildings with the cardinal directions. By the fourteenth century, a variety of factors, potentially including a changing climate and the arrival of hostile neighbors, had driven the Ancestral Pueblo people from the canyon, leaving behind their stunning architecture and achievements.
Wetherill had come to Chaco Canyon from Colorado's Mesa Verde; as the first European American settler to report the existence of Mesa Verde's spectacular Cliff Palace, Wetherill took the work of excavating the site into his own hands. He partnered with Gustaf Nordenskiold, a Swedish scholar passing through Colorado, to explore and document Mesa Verde's abandoned cliff dwellings. While Nordenskiold helped instruct Wetherill how to properly excavate and document the site, he also decided to load a boxcar full of artifacts from the excavation and send it back to Europe. The looters that followed had fewer academic qualifications for conducting archaelogical digs but were no less greedy in ransacking the extraordinary cultural heritage of the Ancestral Pueblo people.
In the late 1890s, Wetherill participated in an excavation at Chaco with the Hyde Expedition, sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History and led by the New York archaeologist George Pepper. While the group's work was undoubtedly academic in intent, culturally significant artifacts from the Chaco great houses still found their way out of the canyon and into the hands of private collectors around the country. This infuriated Edgar Lee Hewett, the president of the New Mexico Normal School (today the New Mexico Highlands University), who saw the need for federal protection to preserve the former dwellings of the Ancestral Pueblo people throughout the Southwest. Despite a scant background in archaeology and anthropology, Hewett was fascinated by the dwellings found on New Mexico's Pajarito Plateau and by the evidence of a civilization at Chaco. In 1902, Hewett introduced the preservation-minded Iowa congressman John Lacey to some of the archaeological sites in the Southwest, which convinced Lacey of the necessity of a process to protect these sites.
Legislative efforts to prevent plunder at Southwestern archaeological sites had started a few years earlier, when the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) had helped draft a bill that would limit archaeological excavations to qualified academic institutions. In the following years, numerous bills with similar intent were introduced to Congress but none were passed. Hewett's vision, however, was broader than simply placing restrictions on who could conduct archaeological digs: in 1905, Hewett drafted a bill that would grant the executive branch the power to set aside land of scientific or historic interest for preservation. Lacey, the Chairman of the Committee on Public Lands, introduced the bill to the Fifty-ninth Congress as HR 11016 in January of 1906; in June, the House and Senate passed the bill without much debate and President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act into law on June 8, 1906. The passage of the act was not noteworthy at the time; I've not been able to find any mention of it in the New York Times' archives.
The heart of the new law was a sentence that would reshape the course of American public land policy:
"That the President of the United States is hereby authorized, in his discretion, to declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States to be national monuments, and may reserve as a part thereof parcels of land, the limits of which in all cases shall be confined to the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected."
Although generally unknown to today's public, the Antiquities Act has since become a monumental piece of legislation and perhaps the single most important land preservation act in American history. One key line of the legislation grants the President of the United States unilateral power to preserve federal land as a national monument, provided that the protected area is historically or scientifically important. National monuments have strict regulations against removing any natural or cultural objects; this regulation was essential for protecting the archaeological sites of the Southwest. Additionally, resource extraction is prohibited in national monuments, although recent monument designations have allowed for existing mining claims and grazing leases to be grandfathered in.
Within a year of the act's passage, Theodore Roosevelt designated Chaco Canyon National Monument, providing federal protection of the canyon's rich archaeological resources and ending the looting of the ancient pueblos. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson designated Bandelier National Monument on the Pajarito Plateau to protect the tuff cave dwellings of the Ancestral Pueblo that were near and dear to Hewett's heart. Over the next century, the Antiquities Act was invoked many times to protect Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites throughout the Southwest- it is because of this act that remote cliff dwellings such as Keet Seel and the White House Ruin are today preserved in Navajo and Canyon de Chelly National Monuments. Aztec Ruins, Chimney Rock, Hovenweep, Wupatki, Tuzigoot, and Canyon of the Ancients are only some of the many national monuments designated using the act that today preserve a piece of the Southwest's cultural heritage.
Alcove House, one of the Ancestral Pueblo dwellings on the Pajarito Plateau, was protected in Bandelier National Monument by Woodrow Wilson's invocation of the Antiquities Act
While the first few national monuments were quite small in scope- Devils Tower and Montezuma Castle National Monuments cover just hundreds of acres- Theodore Roosevelt soon took a much broader reading of the powers granted by the act. The act calls for preservation of the "smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be projected"; in cases where entire ecosystems are of scientific interest, the president is endowed the power to set aside many millions of acres as a single national monument. Roosevelt twice chose to exercise this power, creating a national monument covering some 800,000 acres at the Grand Canyon and setting aside over a million acres of rain forest and alpine mountains on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. These designations are squarely within the spirit and intent of the original act: what use is it to preserve just 640 acres of the Grand Canyon?
Seastacks rise offshore along the wilderness coast of Olympic National Park, originally protected as Mount Olympus National Monument by Theodore Roosevelt in 1909
Thirty of America's 59 national parks originated as national monuments established through executive action under the Antiquities Act. These 30 parks are today home to some of the most cherished landscapes on the continent, including the soaring sandstone walls of Zion, the wave-battered wilderness coast of Olympic, the pointed peaks of the Teton Range rising above Jackson Hole, the thousand-square mile glaciers of Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias, and the yawning depths of the Grand Canyon. In many of these cases, decisive executive action through the Antiquities Act was necessary to preserve landscapes under imminent threat of development or destruction.
The Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes are only one of many geological wonders at Death Valley, which was protected through executive authority granted by the Antiquities Act in 1933.
The California Channel Islands were designated a national monument long before gaining full national park status
National monuments that retain their original designation protect cultural and natural landscapes that are just as significant as those of their better known park brethren. President Clinton's bold designation of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah was enormously unpopular in the state at the time, but has over time brought attention to an unmatched landscape of slickrock canyons that is home to the cross-bedded red sandstone of the Wave and provides tourist dollars to nearby communities. Devil's Tower, Theodore Roosevelt's first national monument designation, protects a basalt monolith rising a thousand feet out of the Great Plains. Hanford Reach National Monument, also established by Clinton, protects the last free-flowing stretch of the Columbia River in the United States and a desolate but beautiful landscape of sand dunes and sagebrush.
The Columbia River flows through Hanford Reach National Monument, established under the Antiquities Act in 2000 by Bill Clinton
Many opponents of the law question the utility of the act and its undemocratic nature. If a piece of land is so worth preserving, they argue, is it not better for it to be protected by an act of Congress? Congressional delegations from western states- Utah in particular- have long argued that the Antiquities Act is little short of tyranny, abrogating the need to consider local input for public land policy. Similar arguments have decried national monument designations as job killers that destroy economic opportunities for resource extraction in largely rural areas.
A key rationale for the Antiquities Act is the understanding that many natural and cultural resources, once destroyed or altered, can never be recovered. If the great houses of Chaco Canyon were torn down for their sandstone bricks or if the Grand Canyon were dammed for hydropower, reversing the effects of these actions would be difficult to impossible. Thus, a process for quick action to preserve lands needing protection is critical to save elements of this nation's cultural and natural heritage. Waiting for Congress to act can take far too long, as proponents of preserving the Grand Canyon found out in the early twentieth century.
Few if any Americans would challenge the idea that the Grand Canyon is a national treasure worth preserving for future generations. Over ten miles wide, a mile deep, and two hundred miles long, the Grand Canyon is an extraordinary testament to the power of erosion. Yet when Benjamin Harrison, then a senator, first drafted a bill for protecting the canyon as the nation's second national park in 1882, he was rebuffed by Congress; in fact, it took a full 37 years for Congress to finally approve the idea, establishing Grand Canyon National Park in 1919.
The establishment of the park was opposed by Arizona ranchers, prospectors, and tour operators. Ralph Henry Cameron was a champion of those who wanted the Grand Canyon to remain in private hands. As a businessman, he exploited the resources of the canyon and as a politician, he fought to prevent the preservation of what is today a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Cameron operated a copper mine in the Grand Canyon and agreed with other local prospectors that the potential mineral wealth of the canyon was too valuable to allow a park to be established. Yet Cameron was not shy about trying to fleece tourists as well: as visitors began to trickle into the area, having heard of the canyon's wonders, Cameron opened a trail into the canyon and charged tourists a toll to hike down. Cameron also expressed interest in building dams to harness hydroelectric power from the canyon, though he never initiated any work on that idea. Cameron's constant opposition to the park helped delay its establishment; however, in 1908, Theodore Roosevelt, impatient with Congressional inaction on the Grand Canyon, declared much of the canyon to be a national monument.
The canyon's national monument designation paused resource exploitation, softened opposition to the park idea, and led to a national park designation a little over a decade later. The monument designation also launched the first major challenge to the Antiquities Act: Cameron sued the government, claiming that Roosevelt's broad reading of the Antiquities Act was invalid. In 1920, the Supreme Court vindicated Roosevelt, stating definitively that the Grand Canyon was "an object of scientific interest" and that the national monument designation fell within the powers granted in the Antiquities Act.
Without broad executive authority to declare national monuments, it's unclear that the Grand Canyon would be preserved in its current form today. Waiting decades for congressional action to confer national park status is not a feasible mechanism for protecting irreplacable landscapes. Local opposition should not disqualify land preservation: areas rich in natural resources attract those who would seek the short-term economic gains of developing those resources, so it is unsurprising when those residents then oppose attempts to curb resource exploitation. When managing public lands, these short-term local economic gains must be weighed against the utility that preservation would offer to the whole nation. It is difficult to argue that the personal financial gains of any mineral prospectors in the Grand Canyon would have been worth sacrificing a landscape that has inspired awe and wonder in tens of millions of Americans and been the subject of groundbreaking geological studies.
The argument that national monument designations are purely job killers has little merit. Few states have been as openly hostile towards the Antiquities Act as the state of Utah; yet Utah records $8 billion in tourist revenue annually, driven mainly by visitation to its five spectacular national parks. Four of those parks- Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, and Arches- were first protected as national monuments under the Antiquities Act and today draw millions of visitors from every corner of the world.
The sandstone walls of Zion Canyon were first protected in Mukuntuweap National Monument in 1909
Arguments that national monument designations are locking away much of federal land from resource extraction are also misleading. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages nearly 250 million acres of land in the western states; just 30 million of those acres are currently preserved as wilderness or in national monuments. Over 150 million acres of BLM land are leased for livestock grazing and 63,000 oil and gas wells operate on this federal land. There is little evidence to argue that national monument designations on the scale of a million acres to preserve significant natural and cultural landscapes somehow represent a federal scheme to stamp out rural livelihoods. Additionally, in recent monument designations, the Department of Interior has worked to minimize impacts on key extractive industries. The newly designated Bears Ears National Monument, established by President Barack Obama to preserve a rich cultural landscape of thousands of Ancestral Puebloan dwellings and petroglyphs and a unique corner of the Utah canyonlands, was drawn with boundaries that specifically excluded a known uranium deposit. This balancing act allows local economies based on mining to continue operating while still saving most of this beautiful landscape. National monument designation now allows the federal government to protect the Ancestral Puebloan sites at Bears Ears, which have been subject to looting in recent years.
Yet this compromise has not stopped the Utah congressional delegation from mounting an attack on both Bears Ears National Monument and the Antiquities Act more broadly. Utah politicians point out the widespread unpopularity of the national monument designation in their state as evidence that the monument should be overturned. It is for these exact situations that the Antiquities Act is necessary. By nearly any measure, the landscape of the San Juan Basin is of historic and scientific interest: ask any archaeologist still discovering cliff dwellings in remote canyons on Cedar Mesa or paleontologists unearthing dinosaur bones from the Triassic near the Colorado River. These attributes of Bears Ears make it a landscape that can contribute to both scientific knowledge and recreational enjoyment, which likely outweighs the fairly meager utility gained by ranchers grazing the spare grass on its mesas.
I've yet to visit Bears Ears- here's an introduction to the new monument from Patagonia
After a series of national monument designations by Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, western states are on the offensive, trying to convince President Donald Trump and Congress to repeal or reform the Antiquities Act. Calls for reform always include stipulations that national monument designations first receive local and state approval. However, as covered with the case of the Grand Canyon and as seen in case studies of national monument designation of beloved landscapes such as Jackson Hole in Wyoming and Kenai Fjords in Alaska, getting local approval for land preservation would mean no land preservation at all. Neither the prospectors in the Grand Canyon nor the ranchers of Jackson Hole agreed to voluntarily cease their activities for the creation of a park, so a reworded Antiquities Act would have been powerless to protect these irreplacable landscapes. To be an effective tool, the Antiquities Act must remain worded as is.
Lupine blooms on a mountainside in Kenai Fjords National Park, which was first protected as a national monument when Jimmy Carter exercised the power of the Antiquities Act to protect a sweeping portion of Alaska public lands.
President Trump has taken this skeptical view of the Antiquities Act a step further, ordering a review of national monuments exceeding 100,000 acres established under the act by Obama, President George W. Bush, and Clinton dating back to the establishment of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The intent of this move is clear: the current administration plans to cut the size of existing national monuments established in the last two decades.
There is little precedent to understand the potential fallout of rollbacks in national monuments by the executive branch. Congress can act to strip national monument status, as happened at Fossil Cycad National Monument in South Dakota, where park mismanagement allowed vandals to remove all the fossils. Woodrow Wilson also unilaterally cut over half a million acres off of Mount Olympus National Monument in 1915 by executive action, a move that was unchallenged at the time. What is clear, however, is that both of these cases of national monument diminishment were tragic losses of scientifically important landscapes.
The slickrock canyons of the Escalante, the cliff dwellings of Cedar Mesa, the high peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains- these landscapes, all protected in national monuments and now potentially up for reconsideration, are all worthy of federal protection. Their future status is uncertain; if those opposed to the Antiquities Act have their way, it is not out of the question that these lands may be opened up to mining or drilling leases by the BLM or that they may be returned to the states, a transfer that is generally correlated with increased resource extraction on public lands. These lands are part of an extraordinary cultural and natural heritage that belong to all of us. The thrill of gazing up at vertical walls of a slot canyon carved into the sandstone, the sense of wonder at peoples who built a great civilization in the desert, the dusk colors of the sunset view from the San Gabriels, the awe that arises upon seeing a fossil of an organism that lived 100 million years ago- all of these belong to you and to me and to every American who comes after us, because of the Antiquities Act.
Don't let the Antiquities Act die. Save the best tool there is for saving this country's extraordinary cultural and natural heritage. Convince Congress and the president to hold onto the act that gave the Grand Canyon to the public. Defend Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante and every other national monument: call your congressperson, or call one from Utah. Better yet, call the governor of Utah or tweet at Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke and tell them how excited you are to hike to the Wave in Escalante or explore the House on Fire ruin in Bears Ears. Then lace up your boots and go. Explore the land that belongs to you. Discover for yourself the legacy of the Antiquities Act. Commit to saving these lands for every generation that will come after us.
Sunset view from San Gabriel Peak in the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument, protected by Barack Obama using the authority of the Antiquities Act in 2014.
Addendum: Despite this generally glowing overview of the Antiquities Act, I am aware of the role that land preservation policy has historically played in exacerbating inequality for indigenous peoples and for rural residents that depend on using the land for their livelihood. However, current approaches for applying the Antiquities Act now try to address both issues: the Bears Ears designation involved input from five Four Corners tribes and compromises with companies mining uranium in the San Juan Basin. Ultimately, I believe that preservation outcomes under the Antiquities Act have been a net positive for this nation, but I am open to conversations on how to further improve economic outcomes for local communities without diluting the power of the act.
14 miles round trip, 1500 feet elevation gain
Difficulty: Strenuous, many stream crossings necessary when Timber Creek is flowing
Access: Paved road to trailhead, Zion National Park entrance fee required
As of 2017, Kolob Arch is the sixth longest natural arch in the world and the second longest on the continent, second only in North America to Landscape Arch on the other side of Utah. This massive sandstone arch is hidden deep in the Kolob Canyons section of Zion National Park and is only accessible by a long day hike or an overnight backpack. This is the longest day hike in this more secluded corner of Zion National Park. The arch is impressive and the red rock scenery of the Kolob Canyons along the way is beautiful. However, the state of Utah has more picturesque arches that are more easily accessible, the Zion Canyon section of Zion National Park has scenery that is more uniquely stunning, and the length of this hike requires a full-day time investment. While Kolob Arch was a rewarding hike for me and will likely be rewarding for other hikers who choose to visit it, I wouldn't place it at the top of the list of must-do hikes in Utah for visitors arriving from outside the state.
I hiked to Kolob Arch on a trip to Zion National Park, arriving at the Kolobs Canyon section of the park after leaving Las Vegas with a rental car that morning. Kolobs Canyon is removed from the main Zion Canyon area of the park; it's accessible directly off I-15 north of St. George, Utah. I reached the Kolobs Canyon area by taking I-15 north from Las Vegas past St. George to exit 40 in Utah, then turning right (heading east) once I came off the freeway ramp to head towards Kolob Canyons. I checked in show my park pass at the visitor center before driving three and a half miles up the Kolob Canyons Road to the Lee Pass Trailhead. Parking was on the east side of the road, just south of the pass itself; the trailhead was about 50 meters north along the road from the parking lot.
The trail began by following a low ridge leading out from Lee Pass. The trail undulated through both elevation gain and loss, although the net change through this section was a descent as the ridge dropped gradually towards the valley of Timber Creek. Stunning views of the Kolob finger canyons were frequent on the left (east) side of the trail: I had glimpses into the recesses of some of these cuts into the Navajo Sandstone. The finger canyons are so named as these short canyons resemble finger-like projections into the massif of sandstone.
Kolob Canyons
Ahead of the trail were good views of Timber Top Mountain, a large cliff over 8000 feet in elevation. The trail itself was muddy in many spots, as snow from a storm earlier the week had just melted, turning the red dirt into a sticky mess.
Timber Top Mountain
A little over a mile into the hike, the trail reached the bottom of the canyon as the ridge it had been following ended. At the base of the canyon, views of the finger canyons were much more limited, although large cliffs directly bordering on the Timber Creek were still visible from the trail. The trail crossed a stream and then climbed up to a small riparian meadow lined with cottonwoods and bushes.
Meadows along Timber Creek
Through the next mile, the trail stayed at the bottom of the canyon, crossing Timber Creek a total of 25 times. During the summer, the wash of Timber Creek is likely dry and the large number of crossings is likely not a big deal; however, during snowmelt and storms, higher flow in Timber Creek can make the sheer number of crossings a huge hassle, even if individual crossings are not difficult. When factoring the stream crossings necessary along the spur trail to Kolob Arch at the end of the hike, there are close to 60 total stream crossings in the 14-mile round trip journey when streams are flowing.
Timber Creek
Shuntavi Butte, a satellite peak of Timber Top Mountain, was one of the more impressive rock walls along the trail, rising almost directly from the wash of Timber Creek.
Navajo Sandstone of the Kolob Canyons
After the final creek crossing, the trail stayed to the east of Timber Creek and then began a steady climb up to the top of a low ridge. At the top of the ridge, I caught a nice view of some of the cliffs of the Kolob Canyons to the south.
Kolob Canyons
After crossing the low ridge about 3.5 miles from the trailhead, the trail turned east and began a gentle descent towards the La Verkin Creek canyon. Although the trail was mostly in the trees here, occasionally tree cover would break for long enough to yield views of the burnt red rock rising on either side of the canyon ahead.
La Verkin Creek Canyon
At about 4.5 miles, the trail descended to meet La Verkin Creek. For the next two miles, the trail roughly followed this stream upcanyon through many riparian meadows past great red sandstone walls. The trail here was often sandy, likely due to occasional flooding of La Verkin Creek.
La Verkin Creek
The rock walls that enclosed the La Verkin Creek canyon on both sides were cut into Navajo Sandstone, the defining rock of the White Cliffs of the Grand Staircase of Zion National Park. This sandstone formed from deposition of ancient sand dunes. The landscape that is today Zion was once a massive dunefield where accumulating sand and iron-bearing hematite formed a thick, red layer of sandstone. The origin of this rock in dunefields is responsible for the extensive crossbedding found throughout the formation.
Spires of Navajo Sandstone in La Verkin Creek canyon
At times, the trail followed the creek very closely- at one point, I hiked along a set of ledges next to La Verkin Creek in order to circle around a rockfall pile of collapsed sandstone on the north side of the canyon. The trail passed multiple campsites here and was generally easy and pleasant hiking except for stretches that were excessively sandy.
La Verkin Creek
6.5 miles into the hike, I arrived at the junction with the spur trail for Kolob Arch. I took the spur, which headed off to the left into a narrow canyon. Here, the trail shrunk down to a barely visible path: I had to scramble over rocks at multiple points. After a difficult half mile of pushing up the canyon, I came to a sign for Kolob Arch indicating that I was at the end of the maintained trail. Unfortunately, the arch was just barely visible from here through the tree cover. I followed a use path a little further, scrambling up a steep slope and following it to a ledge on a canyon wall that provided a more clear view up to the arch.
Kolob Arch
Kolob Arch looks fairly small from the viewpoint: after all, I stood at the bottom of the canyon while the arch span was composed of sandstone at the top of the canyon. It's also not the most impressive looking arch, as the span is just barely separated from the sandstone wall behind it. However, this arch is enough to be the sixth longest in the world and at one point in time a contender for first, competing with Landscape Arch for that honor before the discoveries of multiple longer spans in southern China. To the left of the arch, an arch-shaped alcove suggested an earlier evolutionary stage of arch formation.
By the time I started to head back, it was late in the day; dusk had set by the time I returned to the creek crossings on Timber Creek. The final stretch of the hike is uphill, so it's important to leave enough energy for a steady but long ascent at the end of a 14-mile hike. I finished the last two miles of the hike in darkness; by the time I returned to the car, the night sky had been splattered with many thousands of stars. While on the way back, I remembered that I had seen a mountain lion warning sign at the visitor center just that morning and cursed myself for not getting out earlier and for going on such long hikes alone; ultimately, I made it back without any misfortune. I drove off to nearby Cedar City for chile rellenos and a good night's sleep.
Great White Throne, Angels Landing, and Zion Canyon from Observation Point
8 miles round trip, 2100 feet elevation gain
Difficulty: Moderate-strenuous
Access: Zion National Park entrance fee required, Zion Canyon shuttle to trailhead
Observation Point is aptly named: the promontory juts over 2000 feet above the floor of Utah's Zion Canyon, delivering a bird's eye view of the many great cliffs of this sandstone cathedral. Observation Point is one of two hikes that brings hikers to lofty viewpoints of Zion Canyon, but provides a slightly tamer experience than nearby Angels Landing and the extreme exposure thrills encountered on the rock scramble to that summit. Instead, this hike packs in more variety, visiting not only a scenic viewpoint but also a narrow, hanging slot canyon bordered by thousand-foot overhanging rock walls. Although this trail is longer, requires more elevaiton gain, and involves more stream crossings than Angels Landing, Observation Point is arguably the easier and more accessible hike of the two for visitors weighing a decision on which hike to do.
Hikers should be aware that when the wash in Echo Canyon is flowing, the trail navigates a section that requires either hiking directly through the wash or multiple stream crossings; water levels will vary depending on conditions upstream but were shin deep during my hike. It is also important to note that flash floods may occur in Echo Canyon during storms, so hikers should avoid this trail when heavy precipitation is predicted.
From March to October, Zion Canyon is closed to private vehicles except to those with reservations for Zion Lodge. A shuttle bus runs from the park visitor center to the Temple of Sinawava, making nine stops along the way including one at Weeping Rock, where the Observation Trail starts; although this may sound inconvenient the shuttle bus has frequent service and moves reasonably fast and will save you a lot of time that you'd otherwise spend looking for parking in this incredbily popular park. The road is generally open to cars during the winter and the trailhead has parking for about 10 cars, but will occasionally be closed to cars and only open to buses on some winter weekends.
I visited on a bright blue February weekend day when enough visitors came to the park that the road was closed. I parked at the visitor center and hopped on the park shuttle bus. I rode the bus for about half an hour to Weeping Rock, which was the 7th out of 9 stops on the shuttle route. After hopping off the bus, I walked the short distance to the Weeping Rock parking lot and the trailhead for the hike.
From the parking lot, the Weeping Rock Trail led off to the left along a wash while the Observation Point Trail instead headed to the right. I followed the paved Observation Point Trail as it began an immediate ascent up a set of switchbacks.
Snowmelt from the higher elevations of the park fed the waters of the wash in Echo Canyon, creating a seasonal waterfall with a drop of at least three hundred feet at the point where the hanging canyon met the main Zion Canyon. The flow of the waterfall at Weeping Rock is a useful indicator of the water level in Echo Canyon: if flow is torrential, Echo Canyon is probably impassable and Observation Point unreachable.
Observation Point and waterfall at Weeping Rock
A series of switchbacks along the paved trail brought me higher and higher up, yielding continually broadening views of Zion Canyon. The stern rock monuments of Angels Landing and Cathedral Mountain stood across the canyon while the Virgin River curled in a wide bend around the Organ. Observation Point and the Great White Throne rose almost vertically from the vantage point of the trail.
Angels Landing, the Organ, and Cathedral Mountain
About three-quarters of a mile from the trailhead, the trail for Hidden Canyon branched off to the right from the main Observation Point Trail and ascended via an aggressive set of switchbacks into the extremely narrow and, true to its name, hidden hanging canyon sandwiched between the Great White Throne and Cable Mountain. I stayed on the Observation Point Trail, which continued climbing via switchbacks until it made a turn into the narrow confines of Echo Canyon.
The trail here was blasted into the side of the canyon, first following the canyon walls high above the stream below, which flowed through a narrow slot canyon. As I continued through the canyon, the overhanging walls of Cable Mountain loomed larger and larger before me. A few hundred meters further on, the trail came to the level of the stream and made a sharp turn at the base of Cable Mountain. Here, the top of the cliff of Cable Mountain was vertically above the position of the trail. Shortly afterwards, the trail crossed the stream at a crossing with good stones for rock-hopping.
Cable Mountain rises over Echo Canyon
Immediately after the crossing, the trail suddenly died out in a narrow section of the canyon. Here, only two options were viable: wading through the stream itself, or making two successive crossings to reach the slightly less steep banks of the other side and then do a bit of acrobatic rock hopping to return to the trail. Neither option was particularly pleasant; I opted to stay dry and made the rather tricky stream crossings here. In dry weather during the summer, hikers likely won't need to deal with water in the wash and can walk along the bottom of the wash without getting wet; however, this part of the hike is potentially deadly during storms when flash floods may rip through the narrow extremes of the canyon.
Echo Canyon
Past the most difficult section of the hike, the trail began to ascend along the north side of Echo Canyon. Here, the the trail was once again blasted into the Navajo Sandstone making up the side of the canyon. The extremely steep and sheer walls of Zion Canyon are likely the reason why so few trails connect the top and bottom of the canyons: all trails and roads connecting the two have required some element of blasting into the canyon walls, something not even required at Yosemite, where there at least occasional gaps in the otherwise vertical cliffs around the Valley. Below the trail, the stream running through Echo Canyon continued to downcut through a slot canyon many times taller than it was wide.
Trail through Echo Canyon
Exiting the narrowest section of the canyon, the trail began climbing higher and higher above the stream, at one point crossing a bridge over a side canyon as it made its way into the higher reaches of Echo Canyon.
Upper Echo Canyon
The vegetation halfway up the canyon was different from that at the bottom of the canyon: manzanita was common at this mid-level elevation. This manzanita-dominated shrubbery was also quite different from the sagebrush that covered the landscape atop the mesas.
Manzanita along the trail
At the two-mile mark, the trail reached a branch point between the Observation Point Trail and the East Rim Trail, with the less-travelled East Rim Trail heading off to the right into the reaches of upper Echo Canyon. I stayed on the Observation Point Trail, which started a long switchback climb up the upper portion of the White Cliffs. This stretch of trail featured nice views to the east of the more open terrain of the upper part of Echo Canyon.
Echo Canyon
After an extended switchback ascent blasted into an east-facing slope, the trail straightened out and began heading west. Making a turn around a ridge, the trail swung back into the main canyon with a tremendous and jaw-dropping view of Cable Mountain, the Great White Throne, and the Virgin River flowing along the floor of Zion Canyon.
View of Zion Canyon during final climb
From here on, there were nearly continuous views of Zion Canyon. The trail leveled out after reaching the top of the layer of Navajo Sandstone that defined the canyon walls, with one section of trail hugging the canyon rim as I hiked through a narrow bench between the Navajo Sandstone and Temple Cap formations. After passing a hillock defined by a Temple Cap layer, the trail came out onto a flat mesa top. The trail flattened out about a mile prior to reaching Observation Point.
Atop the mesa near Observation Point
Once atop the mesa, the trail stayed slightly north of the rim of Echo Canyon as it made its way towards the promontory of Observation Point. At the junction with the East Mesa Trail, I took the left fork to stay on the trail to Observation Point. Finally, four miles from the trailhead, I arrived at the spectacular rock ledges of the hike's destination.
This spot on the canyon rim offered a nearly perfect vantage point south down the main trunk of Zion Canyon. The park road and the Virgin River both snaked along the wide bottom of the canyon, while the impressive rocks of the Great White Throne, Angels Landing, the Watchman, and the Sentinel that towered above the canyon floor were at eye-level. The full length of the remarkable narrow fin of Angels Landing was discernable from this perspective.
Great White Throne and Zion Canyon from Observation Point
A few rocks on the western edge of Observation Point offered somewhat limited views to the north as well of the narrowing canyon, while those on the eastern side of the viewpoint overlooked Echo Canyon. The many switchbacks along the early part of the trail were visible far below.
View north towards Temple of Sinawava
Although it's not Angels Landing or the Narrows, Observation Point is still one of the more popular hikes in Zion: I saw about a hundred or so hikers on the trail over the course of the day. The good views from the top and the intimate passage through Echo Canyon make this a worthwhile hike in a visit to the park.
5 miles round trip, 1500 feet elevation gain
Difficulty: Moderate-strenuous; extreme exposure in final rock scramble
Access: Zion National Park entrance fee required, Zion Canyon shuttle to trailhead
The name "Angels Landing" occupies an almost hallowed place in American hiking. The hike/scramble route to the top of this precarious sandstone fin in the heart of Utah's Zion Canyon is one of the most celebrated trails on the continent for both its stunning views of Zion and for the spine-tingling thrills of the route itself. In the last half mile of the hike, steel chains guide a rock scramble along a narrow ridge with thousand-foot dropoffs on either side, leading to a lofty destination high above the Virgin River with nonpariel views of the great walls and cliffs of Navajo Sandstone carved out by the river below. This is a popular hike because it is an extraordinary hike; both for solitude and to ensure safety through the rock scramble sections, I recommend that you visit very early in the day to avoid the masses that ascend the rock during regular tourist hours.
The dangers of Angels Landing should not be underestimated. Many hikers attempt to summit Angels Landing without sufficient water or appropriate footwear. Wear hiking boots. If you don't have shoes with good traction, realize that at multiple points along the trail, your solid footing will be the only thing preventing you from a freefall down to the Virgin River. At least fifteen hikers have died from falls on this trail; a solo hiker died after plunging off Angels Landing into Refrigerator Canyon less than a week after my visit. Hiking when there are fewer people on the fin also helps ensure safety: many parts of the rock scramble do not easily allow for two-way traffic, so it's much better to handle those parts of the hike without constantly battling a stream of hikers going the other direction. If you do not feel comfortable with rock scrambling or you have a strong fear of heights, it would be extremely foolish to try to venture past Scout Lookout towards the summit. Do not attempt to summit Angels Landing when conditions are wet or icy or when lightning is likely.
From March to October, Zion Canyon is closed to private vehicles except to those with reservations for Zion Lodge. A shuttle bus runs from the park visitor center to the Temple of Sinawava, making nine stops along the way including one at the Grotto, where the Angels Landing Trail starts; although this may sound inconvenient the shuttle bus has frequent service and moves reasonably fast and will save you a lot of time that you'd otherwise spend looking for parking in this incredbily popular park. The road is generally open to cars during the winter and the trailhead has parking for over 50 cars, but will occasionally be closed to cars and only open to buses on some winter weekends.
I drove to the trailhead on an early Monday morning, taking the road north into the park from Springdale just as the first hints of light began arriving in the dawn skies. I drove up the canyon and parked at the Grotto and started up the trail before sunrise.
The trail started on the west side of the Grotto parking area. I immediately crossed a bridge spanning the Virgin River and came to a junction between the West Rim and Kayenta Trails. The Kayenta Trail headed southwest towards Emerald Pools, so I took the right fork for the flat West Rim Trail towards Angels Landing.
The next three-quarters of trail were fairly flat as I hiked along the winding Virgin River. Towering walls of Navajo Sandstone rose around me on all sides. The most impressive of these stone faces was Angels Landing itself, a great monolith rising in the middle of the canyon. Observation Point and the Great White Throne were other notable and impressive rock features nearby.
Angels Landing and Observation Point rise above the Virgin River
The Navajo Sandstone of the walls of canyon form the main component of the White Cliffs of the Grand Staircase, a geological wonder stretching across the multi-layered Colorado Plateau all the way to the Grand Canyon. The many sedimentary layers of the Grand Staircase were laid tens of millions of years ago when this landscape was partially or completely submerged by a sea that filled the interior of the North American continent. The red and white Navajo Sandstone formed from the lithification of great sand dunes.
Vegetation in the canyon- and in the park in general- was quite varied. Juniper lined the trail, patches of prickly pear were scattered across the canyon floor, and I found copious sagebrush at higher elevations. A few days earlier, I had noticed creosote growing in the park outside the canyon; the presence of both creosote and sagebrush highlighted the ecological transition zones present in the park between the creosote-covered Mojave Desert and the sagebrush lands of the Great Basin.
Prickly pear in Zion Canyon
After a half-mile of flat hiking along the Virgin River, the trail began a gradual ascent up the lower slopes of Cathedral Mountain with the help of some switchbacks. Ahead, the trail seemed to be approaching a hanging canyon separated from the main Zion Canyon by an impassable rock wall. It was initially unclear to me how the trail would overcome this serious obstacle. The solution, it turned out, was a path blasted into the wall, with sandstone overhanging the trail through the cliff. Views from this part of the hike were already quite impressive: looking south, I could see a line of sandstone mountains rising from the canyon floor, including the Watchman in the distance and the Great White Throne directly across the canyon.
Angels Landing Trail
At the top of the cliff, the trail crossed a bridge and entered Refrigerator Canyon, about a mile from the trailhead. This narrow canyon has been cut between Cathedral Mountain and Angels Landing. The wash in Refrigerator Canyon was dry during my visit but presumably could flash flood during storms. The paved trail paralleled the wash through the cool and forested canyon.
Refrigerator Canyon
I noticed multiple small caves in the sandstone to the right of the trail. I was unsure whether these caves naturally formed in the Navajo Sandstone or whether they were created by blasting as part of constructing the trail, but either way I found them to be unexpectedly beautiful; the walls of the small caves seemed to give off their own light on that overcast morning.
Sandstone cave in Refrigerator Canyon
Towards the end of Refrigerator Canyon, the trail began to climb up the east wall of the canyon away from the wash. The grade here was fairly steep, becoming steeper as the trail made a few sharp switchbacks blasted into the rock face. As the trail rounded the fifth switchback, I found myself at the base of a series of extremely short, steep switchbacks blasted into the wall of Angels Landing. These were Walter's Wiggles: a set of twenty tight switchbacks set into the cliff that solve the problem of bringing a trail up the sheer walls of Angels Landing. The Wiggles are named after early Zion Park superintendent Walter Ruesch, who ordered the construction of the switchbacks so that visitors would have a way of accessing the views of Angels Landing. Impressively, Reusch designed these masonry-enforced switchbacks up the canyon walls without an engineering background. This is the steepest section of paved trail on this hike; while some trail guides describe this section of trail as being difficult, frequent hikers will find the grades of the Wiggles to be fairly standard fare.
Walter's Wiggles
Atop the Wiggles, the trail straightened out and soon arrived atop the narrow ridge connecting Angels Landing with the western wall of the canyon. The West Rim Trail split from the Angels Landing Trail here; two outhouses have been placed near the trail junction. A short metal railing marks the location of Scout Lookout, a viewpoint down into the canyon below and the turn-around point for many hikers who choose not to tackle the final scramble to Angels Landing.
Here, the Angels Landing Trail headed off to the south along the narrow ridge. A sign at the start of the scramble warned hikers of the risks ahead. The chains started right away, with the trail cut into the cliff face overlooking Refrigerator Canyon. The route was Class 3 scrambling, made substantially safer by the presence of the chains and footholds etched into the rock. However, the exposure on the route was still quite extreme and should be approached with much caution. It's particularly important to be patient with traffic at extremely narrow sections of trail: many areas are not wide enough to accomodate passing or two-way traffic.
Ridge scramble along Angels Landing
The trail emerged on an intermediate summit before the final climb that provided a jaw-dropping view of the fin of Angels Landing rising directly from the Virgin River below, with the towers of Zion's eastern wall rising across the canyon. Past this summit, the trail entered some of its most hair-raising segments, crossing a two-foot wide sandstone isthumus with drops of a thousand feet on both sides.
Ridge scramble on the way to Angels Landing
The final ascent was a constant scramble up the spine of the fin with constant views and continuous thrills from the precarious nature of the path itself.
Scramble route
It took me about half an hour to complete the half-mile rock scramble from Scout Lookout to the summit of Angels Landing- importantly, this time estimate came from a hike in which I ran into few other hikers and no traffic at chokepoints along the scramble.
Looking back along the fin of Angels Landing
Once atop the summit fin of Angels Landing, I followed the sandstone spine to its southern end and enjoyed views over the canyon. Observation Point and the Great White Throne lay directly across the canyon, with the Virgin River making two huge, sweeping bends around the Organ directly below. A temporary waterfall, fed by melting snow in the park's higher elevations, plunged hundreds of feet down the sandstone walls at Weeping Rock. Strong winds whipping through the canyon caused the waterfall to dance around and also made prolonged sitting at the summit of Angels Landing a somewhat cold affair.
Observation Point, the Organ, and the bends of the Virgin River
Waterfall at Weeping Rock and the Observation Point Trail
My favorite part of the view was to the north: here, the canyon walls came closer and closer together until they almost appeared to meet north of the Temple of Sinawava. There, the Virgin River emerged from the Narrows, where the wide Zion Canyon becomes a slit just a few meters wide sliced into the Navajo Sandstone. The canyon is narrow where the river still slices through the Navajo formation: this tough rock can easily form vertical cliffs. However, the underlying Kayenta formation is much softer; when the Virgin River cuts into the Kayenta formation, it erodes it much more easily, which causes the collapse of Navajo sandstone blocks above the hollowed out Kayenta layers; this mechanism is responsible for Zion's unique combination of sheer walls and a wide river canyon south of Angels Landing.
The Virgin River exiting the Narrows
View down canyon from Angels Landing
Zion's steep cliffs and wide canyon floor are remniscent of another renowned national park. In many ways, Zion Canyon seemed like a sandstone Yosemite with fewer waterfalls. However, while Yosemite's distinct U-shape and steep walls were the result of glacial erosion, Zion's U-shape derives from its unique geology.
Great White Throne
By the time I started my descent, midday hikers were already setting out up the trail. Luckily, I managed to get back to Scout Lookout before the main pack of hikers reached the scramble. I passed well over fifty hikers on my way from Scout Lookout back to the parking lot; I was glad I didn't have to be on the chained section as the same time as all the other hikers that day. Setting out early on this classic and deservedly-renowned hike certainly paid off.
