Photo: gillfoto / CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
The Narrows is not a trail so much as a river you walk up. From the Temple of Sinawava, the last stop on the Zion shuttle, a paved mile of Riverside Walk ends at the water. After that it is wading, over slick cobbles that roll underfoot, with Navajo sandstone rising a thousand feet on both sides. A couple of hours upstream, Wall Street pinches to twenty or thirty feet wide and daylight reaches the floor only around midday. Big Spring, the no-permit limit, is about ten miles round trip. Bottom-up needs no permit, just the $35 vehicle entrance fee, and from March through November the shuttle is the only way to the trailhead. The park closes The Narrows whenever flow tops 150 cfs, which can shut it for weeks during April and May runoff. Flash floods have killed hikers here. Never drink the river; cyanobacteria toxins have been found in it.
Canyons & deserts
Canyons & deserts
Canyons & desertsCurated guides that feature The Narrows.
15 placesThe sandstone country of the Colorado Plateau and its edges: corridors sanded smooth by flood water, arches by the thousand, hoodoo amphitheaters and thousand-foot buttes. Fifteen places, honest about which ones need a permit, a Navajo guide, or a high-clearance truck, and which you can simply walk into.
9 placesNowhere else packs this much sandstone into one state. The Mighty 5 national parks, a twelve-mile slot canyon you walk single file, the first Dark Sky Park ever certified, and a river hike between thousand-foot walls. Nine places, from drive-up overlooks to corridors ten inches wide.