National Parks - Tuesday

Instead of hiking The Narrows we decided that we were going to buck-up and take on Angels Landing. To warm-up for Angels Landing we did a short hike in the morning to the Emerald Pools (no pictures...) ate lunch at the camp site sitting on the table top with out feet on the benches to keep the caterpillars from crawling all over us and then took off to start Angels Landing.

It's called Angels Landing because when it was first seen they thought the only people that could stand at the edge of that were the angels, because they could fly up there. Little did they know all you had to do was climb about a hundred switch backs to actually reach the top.

The end of the first set of switchbacks

The first Head Ranger of Zion was named Walter, he build a bunch of switchbacks. So many that the ones up to the top are called Walter's Wiggles.

Sara climbing the Wiggles

As we were hiking we met a grandpa and his granddaughter. We did the last of the wiggles with them and it was grandpa that convinced Sara that she could climb across the chains and make it further out to the Landing. Sara got through the first set of chains and then decided to call it good. I made friends with some Germans and we went all the way to the top.

Looking south, out of the canyon

Looking north, up into Zion Canyon

Sara was back down on this ledge. She said she could see me climb in my red shirt.

It was while I was at the top of Angels Landing that I had a chance to talk to a couple that had passed us on the Riverwalk Hike on Monday and passed us on the switchbacks. Each time we passed them Sara said, "Will, they look like Ken and Cynthia Hunt from Oklahoma." When I spoke with them I said, "this may sound odd but my wife thinks you look familiar, where are you from?" It turns out it was them! I took a photo of them at the top and they took one of us back where Sara was waiting.

Back down at the lower landing

After all of that hiking we were just about done for the day. We made two short stops on the shuttle, the last one was at one of my favorite monuments, The Court of the Patriarchs. Abraham is the peak on the left, Issac is in the middle and then if you look carefully you'll see Jacob on the right but he's the white peak in the background. The one in the foreground blocking him is Mount Moroni.