Trail to Peak: The Adventurous Path
Hiking, Exploring, Travel & Adventure
If You Go to Zion National Park
Zion National Park is a hiking Mecca in southwest Utah… one of those places that if you like hiking and scrambling, and if you LOVE canyons, you’ve just GOT to go! 
The sandstone, with its deeply carved slot canyons and its incredible streaks of colour, is amazing to see… but the sheer size and scope of the landscape steals your breath away (or is that the step slopes you need to climb to see those vistas and take it all in!?)!!
We hiked 18km on our first day there… on what was supposed to be a half day hike, just to settle in… but we got totally caught up in the beauty and couldn’t stop going and climbing and exploring. The canyons are unbelievable!
You can see this in the places where chains are in place to guide you where the drop-offs are extreme. Look at the wall marks in the photo below, and the deep channel etched in the photo above.
As a result, most of the trails in the park are paved to protect them from the passage of millions of pairs of feet a year.
Don’t let this stop you from enjoying the place though! There are plenty of long hikes you can do into some pretty rugged and astonishing places. 
There are deep slot canyons, wide open spaces with incredible vistas, steep drop offs, narrow ridges to traverse, waterfalls that you can walk behind, heart-stopping uphill climbs to summit and incredible pools to hike through. And most of the time, on many of the hikes, you are quite quickly in the views!
It flows through chasms and seeps out of massive walls. Water is the master artist in this special place (well, water, tectonic forces and salt, if truth be told, geologically speaking).
HOWEVER…. and here’s the unfortunate part… it is overrun with tourists.
If You Go…
Do not go on a weekend. Do not go during anyone’s spring break. Do not go over Easter, a very important family time in Mormon Utah. Seeing so many families there, clearly enjoying themselves and each other is a beautiful thing, but the crowds are insane. Go mid week… and a rainy day makes the hiking atmospheric and scares away a lot of fair-weather hikers. It is still spectacularly beautiful (wet sandstone is not slippery).
SHUTTLE BUS SYSTEM:
There is a shuttle bus system in place to keep the road through the canyon from becoming a traffic jam. Private cars can only go as far as the turn off to the Canyon Overlook/back road to Bryce Canyon, and to the museum.- There is also a second shuttle bus system in town that will take you to the park gates. Both are free.
- Do not even think about driving into or to the park. The traffic jams to get into and out of town are horrendous. The line ups at the park gates are insane.
- There is ONE EXCEPTION to this. If you want to do a popular hike, like Angel’s Landing (***the one in the crowd photo above), drive to the park in time to take the park’s first shuttle bus at 7am. The shuttles from town to the park gate do not start until after 8am, so you must drive. Then, you will have to swallow the steep $20 parking fee PLUS the park entry fee. Next, HOOF IT… not so that you get the hike to yourself (you won’t)…. high tail it so that you get up in time to not get caught in a backlog of people on the way down. (This was the advice of a wonderful Tennessee couple we met who did the first shuttle, and still got caught, taking forever, to come down the chains and get off the ridge line.)
- The park’s shuttle busses run every 10-15 minutes. When you go to leave your trail head after a hike, intending to hop on the shuttle bus and go to the park gate, GO THE WRONG WAY! Hop on the bus in the direction that takes you to the end of its run, deeper into the park. It’s not a long ride. Otherwise, many shuttle busses will pass you, full of standing, sandwiched people, and you will not be able to get on. Do this on very busy days, like Saturdays.
If you do want to drive in the park, it is possible to drive up to the Canyon Overlook trail in your own vehicle… something I highly recommend. However, do this during “normal” time, and you will be in a parking jam with nowhere to park up top. And the traffic jam into and out of a tunnel up there is crazy enough for there to be personnel and a barrier to stop and start and control the flow of cars up the road.
- The park gates open at 7am, but they do not close the park’s entrance barrier as it is still a backroad through to Bryce Canyon. So you can still enter the park before it opens. We did a spectacular sunrise hike when we were there, with headlamps, timing it to see the warm light of the sun peak over the horizon at our backs, and bathe the canyon walls in front of us in spectacular warmth and colour. Not a morning person? Suck it up, buttercup. And do this. Once.
- Someone we met also said it is magical to ride the park by bike, at night, with headlamps, after it closes… something we will need to return to do.
- Springdale is the nearest town to the park gates. There are no other nearby towns. Bring groceries with you to Zion. The one grocery store in town, Sol Foods, is exceptionally over priced. It’s also sort of like a Whole Foods, in that it seems to stock expensive, exclusive items… organic almost everything, and sweet potato cut chips, etc. A 750mL container of plain yogurt is $8 US, a small package of dried fruit is $9, etc. Any salty snacks (nuts, chips, bars) are crazily over-priced, even for this Canadian, who is used to overpriced grocery items! See for yourself…
- Then, take your own water bottle and fill it with tap water. You won’t die.
FOOD IN THE PARK:
Bring your own food and drink with you. The only place to purchase food is at a restaurant in an exclusive hotel that is half-way through the park. The lineups there looked insane. I can only imagine what the prices were like. So pack up a lunch, bring enough to drink, make sure you have something salty in your pack to replenish your salt after sweating and haul it all in with you, on your back.- There is no water at trailheads. There are only pit toilets.
- Oh… and bring extra snacks, so that IF you happen to get sidetracked with an “I wonder what’s up around that corner” impulse, and you set off on a hike that is far longer than you planned, you won’t have a hangry hiking partner (not to mention any names! Heh heh heh).
ONE LAST THING…
- You cannot get lost on the trails. They are very well signed, and the paths are paved, so you cannot go astray. There are also maps at each trailhead’s shuttle bus stop. And where you check in at the park entrance, there are large signs that advertise each hike with their bus stop numbers, little descriptions and some enticing photos. No maps, no photocopied trail descriptions in your pack, and no GPS co-ordinates are necessary. This is so not back country hiking… but it is so very, very worth it!
Read More About our Time In Zion
23 Comments on “If You Go to Zion National Park”
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Trail to Peak: The Adventurous Path 
I love Zion! I did the Zion Half Marathon a few years ago and had a blast. Afterwards, I hiked Angel’s Landing and saw so many people there wearing the race shirt, which was really fun! It was crazy busy due to the race so I’d love to go back someday when there aren’t so many people.
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A marathon there… wow! Good for you! Where did the race course take you?
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Ah. You found the Zion’s crowd. Zion and Yosemite are loved to death, but they also, not coincidentally, on top of my favorites. I want to go back to Zion at some point but it’ll have to be off-season. I forgot to ask who takes care of Seamus while you are enjoying the US Southwest.
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We’re here without our kids… so they (mostly our daughter) are caring for him while we’re gone. It’s very strange, hiking without him!
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Thank you so much for your detailed post and advice. And great photos!
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Thanks, Linda. There’s a few more Zion posts to come. It’s really hard to take a bad photo of such a beautiful place!
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I’ve driven through Zion on my way to Arches and Canyonlands (primarily). I do not like lines -especially in National Parks, so we’re always out in the shoulder (non-crowded) months. I’d rather deal with rain and snow than crowds and lines. Glacier is another NP that gets lines on trails… ugh! …along w/ half a dozen others. Moab would be the exception, but that’s no NP… problem solved. You’ve gotta expect lines for cold beer/tacos in Moab during peak season… about 5-6 months minimum!
Don’t know your schedule, but the North Rim of Grand Canyon via Kanab to the NP is great for sunrise, followed by breakfast in the lodge. We drove in middle of the night… best to get a room for the night before.
Great ‘If You Go…’ tips above! Thx for the post!
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Thanks, Mike. One of these days we will get to the Grand Canyon. We’ve only ever been as far as Flagstaff (to climb) Thanks for that tip.
As for lines, I am totally with you! For years we traveled always in the off season wherever we went. This trip, we came at a time that worked for the others we were meeting. It’s been rather a shock… the line ups!
I suppose that the bright side of this sees that so many people are getting outdoors and experiencing these phenomenal places.
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It looks very nice place and the photos are spectacular!
Also, it’s great all the info you provide on how to go, when to go and where to go for groceries.
Thanks for sharing.
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Thank you! I wonder if one day you will follow me yourself over here hiking through it… the summits might not be high enough to satisfy you, given the kind of hikes and the mountaineering you tend to do! 😉 But it is a spectacular place and a wondrous landscape.
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I would really like to come for some hikes for that side of the bowl.
Although winter mountaineering and alpine climbing is my favorite, I enjoy any kind of mountaineering activity.
Actually, when I go to a new area/country, I much more prefer to go for trekking so I can see and explore more.
Enjoy your upcoming trips and I’ll be checking out your blog for more trip reports.
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We stayed at the lodge once (mid-week, with rain in the forecast) – nice but crowded with folks from tour buses. The upside is that staying there let’s you park your car there – no shuttle needed. We did some classic hikes (Angels Landing, Observation Point) from the lodge and they weren’t TOO crowded. Other times we escaped the crowds by hiking the East Rim Trail, the Virgin River through the Narrows (from Chamberlain Ranch to Temple of Sinawava), and the Left Fork of North Creek through The Subway (when you could still camp up there). There are less crowded places in Zion but they now require more effort to reach.
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Great tips. Thank-you!
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Lovely detailed post! I don’t know if I would have the nerves for the chained rope parts of the trail. I would have to avoid the crowded times as you mentioned.
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Thanks for coming along, virtually! It’s far less crowded that way and the chains won’t stop you from seeing what the whole hike is like. 😉
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“If” you go to Zion National Park? More like “When”!? Zion and its neighbouring national parks in southern Utah ranks pretty much near the top of my travel bucket list. We’re planning on going next fall. Thanks for the helpful tips on avoiding the crowds and advice around groceries.
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Glad you enjoyed it! Stay tuned for more detail about on specific hikes we did there.
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Good pointers. I was only at Zion once, back in ’77, sounds like the crowds have gotten a lot worse. I’d have to say I liked the Utah canyons better than the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon is spectacular, but it’s so huge it’s not as intimate as the Utah canyons (although I’m sure there are spots…). Are you going to Bryce? I liked that place even more than Zion.
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Sadly, Zion was a quick detour en route to Red Rocks. We’ll have to do Bryce another time. It’s on The List.
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That looks like an amazing place to hike. Sadly, I think my fear of heights means I will just have to enjoy it from your photos.
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Then there’s more enjoyment to come soon, Ann! Enjoy the armchair travelling.
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Lovely place!
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It’s really quite special. Thanks for stopping by!
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