Saturday September 18 Tanya and I went on a Zion Institute guided walk up the Zion Narrows.

We got on the 8:00 a.m. tram for the 40 minute ride to the end of the tram road and the beginning of the River Walk which leads to the starting point of the Zion Narrows river trail. There is tons ofinformation about the Zion Narrows (plan a visit) already on the net so I’ll skip most of the Narrows details. We started the day’s walk at 9:00 am and returned at 3:45 pm. Went up river to the first Y, turned right and up Orderville Canyon to the turn around point, returned to the Y and up main river to Wall Street. At Wall Street we turned around and headed down river. I’d say about 80% of the time is spend walking in the river.

It was a great day with a really nice group of people. I scheduled the hike with the Zion Institute so we’d have the opportunity to learn something and I thought it would be more enjoyable going with someone who knew what they were actually doing. We could have walked up river on our own however going with someone who had done this a couple of hundred times was much more enjoyable. Gene could read the river and picked the easiest and fastest route up and across the river 99% of the time. I didn’t see how really good Gene was until the trip down river. We didn’t encounter many people early in the morning however on the trip down river we saw hundred’s of people. Watching them stuggle to pick the route up river showed Gene’s understanding of the river.

Our Zion Institute guide was Gene (as I mentioned above). He is in his 70’s and volunteers to lead programs for the institute all year round. Gene said his wife’s father was actually born at the same location as the current Zion Museum.

We had a great day. I’ll include a couple of pictures now and maybe some more later.

This is one of the 191 pictures I took during the day.

This is most of the group.
Have a Great day, Harry