Wading the Narrows at Zion
Most trails go around the water. This one goes through it. The Narrows is the Virgin River itself, squeezed between walls a thousand feet high and, in places, twenty feet apart — and the hike is simply to walk up the river as far as your legs and the current allow.
The gear question, answered in Springdale
The night before, in Springdale, we did what nearly everyone does: rented the package from an outfitter — canyoneering boots with felt soles, neoprene socks, and a wooden walking stick that looks like a joke until the first time it saves you. It is not a joke. The riverbed is bowling balls all the way down, slick with algae, and the stick turns a wobble into a tripod. Total cost was about the price of a nice dinner, and it is the best money we spent in Utah.
Zion's shuttle dropped us at the Temple of Sinawava at 8 a.m. The first mile is a paved riverside walk, busy and pretty; then the pavement ends, you step into the river, and the park changes character completely.
Up the river
The first hour is ankle-to-knee water over cobbles, with grottos of maidenhair fern weeping from the walls. Past Mystery Falls — a thin sheet of water sliding down a varnished wall — the canyon starts to earn the name. The walls close in, the light goes amber and reflected, and the only sounds are the river and somebody laughing a hundred metres upstream where the water got deeper than expected. It gets deeper than expected for everyone, somewhere. Mine was a smooth, waist-deep pool I committed to before I had properly looked at it. No harm done; September water is cold but kind.
About two and a half hours in, the canyon forks at the entrance to the Wall Street section, where the walls are at their narrowest and the river runs almost wall to wall. We went a little way in, found a sunlit boulder the size of a car, and ate lunch there with our feet in the current. That was our summit. The full bottom-up route allows you up to Big Spring if you have the legs — roughly 15 kilometres round trip from the trailhead — but nobody's day was made worse by turning around on a boulder in Wall Street.
The other famous hike
We had walked partway up the Angels Landing trail the previous afternoon, as far as Scout Lookout — the chained section beyond needs a permit from the park lottery, which we did not win this time. No complaints: the view from Scout Lookout down the canyon is the photograph at the top of this section, and Walter's Wiggles, the twenty-one switchbacks below it, are a small marvel of trail building.
Practical notes
The flow gauge rules everything: the Narrows closes when the Virgin River
runs above 150 cubic feet per second, and flash-flood forecasts close it at any flow. Check the
park's current conditions the night before and again in the morning. Our day ran at about
55 cfs — pleasant wading, a friendly current.
Start time: the earlier the shuttle, the emptier the river. By noon the first
mile is a parade.
Dry bag: everything you carry will, at some point, be over waist-deep water.
Pack like it.
Next day: we drove an hour and a half to Bryce Canyon for sunrise —
that story is here.