Sinclair Snapshots: Day 38: Grand Western Adventure

Day 38: Tuesday, May 20th
Angels Landing Hike

Another fantastic (and frightening) hike in Zion.

For this hike, you take the West Rim Trail up to Scouts Landing where the trails diverge. The remaining 1.1 mile trail up to Angels Landing is extreme.

We weren't even close to the end of the trail and you can see how high up we were. Down by Natalie's left arm was the main road.

This was where the trail went CRAZY!!

The remaining .5 miles of Angels Landing looked like this and much more extreme.

The trail went up an extremely narrow spine of the mountain.

The view into the valley.

The remainder of the trail.

If you look closely, you can see hikers along the trail. Like little ants moving up and down the pass.

This trail was insane.

This was as far as I could take myself.

Natalie went a little further ahead to snap these views of the valley and the end of the trail.

There were a few chain link railings for safety, but nothing about this trail was safe. The drop offs were sheer cliffs on both side, and there was no safe place anywhere. Any fall would be fatal.

See how close the railings and trail were to the edge?

Another view of the valley from the trail.

So, not only was the trail dangerously close to the cliff edge, you had other hikers passing you going back down the trail as you were trying to go up!

Passing each other on the side of a cliff, with only a few railings!!

This really was how wide the trail was. Very narrow. Possibly 4 to 5 feet width.

Sheer drop off on either side. 1,400 feet below to the valley floor.

I may be smiling for the camera, but you can't see how much my hands were sweating and my legs were shaking here.

The wind was wicked too. I felt like I was being blown off the mountain.

Natalie on the other hand was completely in her element. She loved it.

I'm climbing back down the trail and the wind is blowing me back up.

This was where I was climbing down to.

I had to wait for others to pass going up so I could make it back down this section.

This part was rock that had hand and foot holds cut into the rockface.

I never felt like my boots were going to slip on the rocks, but I also didn't feel safe or secure with the wind blowing at us. The backpack made me feel very unbalanced and the hiking poles were no use on the solid rock.

Again, the view from the trail.

Once we found a resting place, Natalie found a friend who was very interested in our backpack.

This was our stopping place, called Scouts Lookout, where we had a snack and I recovered.

From here, we decided to check out a few miles on the West Rim Trail. There were spectacular views from here, without the dangers of the sheer cliff edges.

My kind of trail.

The West Rim Trail wanders in a northwest direction about 15 or so miles. We just wanted to see what was at the top. Then we turned back and logged about 6 miles total.