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We left the Venetian around 9am and set off on our first day! Our first stop is… Walmart! to get water and Gatorade supplies, as well as breakfast. Walmarts are apparently more abundant down south. We drove 3-4 hours into Utah (with a pit stop to get Burger King lunch – fast food will be a recurring theme for this trip) and arrived at Zion National Park around 1pm. During our drive we inevitably were stuck behind slow cars at times, but one incident that was noteworthy was we were stuck behind this chain of slow cars, and then suddenly there was an ostrich farm (yes, those birds that stick their heads into the ground) and everyone in front of us pulled over to see the ostriches, while we sped past them. So it became a running joke that we need an “ostrich projector” to get past slow cars :).

Zion National Park is a canyon that is “upstream” from the more famous Grand Canyon. It does, however, contain a very famous hiking trail called “Angel’s Landing” that we were going to attempt. This hike proves to be one of the most strenuous hike I’ve taken in my life, and probably will be for a long time. The hike isn’t very long, but the challenge is the elevation gain. This time I have some photos to help illustrate the trip – just a disclaimer that these photos are generally not processed (maybe a few WB and contrast tweaks) – some of them definitely should be cropped at least.
We parked at the visitor’s center and took a shuttle to “The Grotto”, where the trail for Angel’s Landing starts. This is what we are about to conquer, from the start of the trail.

After a good hike through a long windy path, we took a break (I think this would be 30 minutes or so?) and this is what the viewpoint looks like. You can see the windy trail from the base (the trail starts near the murky grey river).

To get to this first stop isn’t really easy – here’s a more detailed view of the windy path that we had to take to get up to where I was when I took the photo above.

After that fair amount of hiking I figured we must be pretty high up and close to the top – but we aren’t even half way there yet! We took a turn and went to the back of the mountain, upon which we found MORE windy paths.

(Don’t ask me why I shot this photo in f/4… think I forgot to change the settings back).
Here’s what those windy path look like from the top.

After that we are finally at Scout’s Lookout! Here’s a group photo of the 5 of us that went on this trip. Behind us you see a mountain – that’s to be the second half of this hike…. but only 2 of us in this photo are going to make it…

Scout’s Lookout is often the stopping point for most hikers as the last leg of the hike to Angel’s Landing is extremely challenging, and people do die from falling off the trail every year. We went up and down a small hill and this is what is in front of us. (The guy in blue is me)

Some sections of this hike is very steep and narrow (the hike if I remember correctly is like 0.5 miles with 700ft elevation gain – sorry I talk in imperial for these things :P). In the past decade or so the National Park system installed chains to help people along – I don’t know how I would have got up there without the chains. Here are two photos of how narrow the sections are, and me hanging on to the chains for dear life. Note the chains are only sparsely placed – it isn’t one continuous chain to the top.

Seeing how difficult this last section is, 3 people amongst the 5 of us decided to call it quits and stay at Scout’s Lookout. (You really can’t be afraid of heights to get up top) So only one guy went up with me to the top to land as “angels” rather than “scouts” (har har). (Coincidentally, this guy is the person I went skydiving with…) The view at the top is quite breathtaking. Didn’t have time to stitch a pano, but here’s one shot towards the valley where we first started out from:

It was really high up and it was also quite windy at the top. Which makes it rather scary to pose for photos and not fear falling. I guess lesson learned from skydiving is just to forget the situation you’re in and absorb the sight you’re seeing – but the mind does kick in at times and frankly, it is quite scary.

After eating a sandwich at the top, we have to take the same way back down – going back down those chains is not an easy job either. Here’s the view of the other side of the canyon. Behind me is the steep climb back down, and then up that thin mountain structure again before snaking back down the back of the mountain to the canyon floor.

After quite the strenuous hike, we took it easy and took the shuttle to 2 other viewpoints before heading back to the Visitor’s Center. The Angel’s Landing hike took around 4 hours, and we initially wanted to capture sunset over the canyon, except the sky was rather cloudy, so we gave up and started driving to our pit stop for the night, which is another 2-3 hours away.
We left Zion National Park and stopped at a small town called “Junction” (I think) where we ate at a diner that served the worst steak I could ever have had in my life. The steak was well-done when we asked for medium; and what’s worse is the crust of the steak was bitter for some strange reason. Not to mention it was super dry with no steak sauce. Urgh. The saving grace is one guy was smart enough to propose we share the 5 dishes we ordered, so no one person has to bear the risk of having a horribly cooked dinner, not to mention it was somewhat pricey (granted it was the only diner in town, it seems).
Our last stop for the day is Bryce Canyon Resort, (don’t get fooled by the “resort” name, it is more like a motel) where we have 2 rooms booked for the night. As we were heading there, there was again some significant elevation gains (though this time in the car), to a point we started seeing snow and we also ran into a snowstorm while driving. Thanks to our Canadian drivers (3 of us were Canadians and 2 of us were from Houston) we got to the resort safely, but late enough that the front desk was already closed and they just left our keys taped to the front door. The rest of the night was quite uneventful (aside from watching the story of the smoking SUV at Times Square unfold on CNN) as we really needed to rest up for Day 2.