The Zion Traverse

Zion Traverse at SpotAdventures

Map created by SpotAdventures:GPS Geotagging

My fiancee (Tina) and I decided to head down to Zion National Park for the week of Thanksgiving. I had thought that I'd never been to Zion before, but my mom corrected me when I told her of our plans; apparently, my family visited Zion long ago on a family vacation to the West but the three of us kids were sick of traveling and we all put our hands over our eyes and said "NO MORE ROCKS!" Interesting considering that I love rocks now and couldn't get enough of the place during our recent visit; I am super excited to return and do some climbing in the near future.

Tina had found on the internet a trip report by Karl Meltzer and Jared Campbell, who had linked up a bunch of trails for a trans-Zion traverse. We found additional information about the route on Andrew Skurka’s website and were excited to do this route and see much of Zion. We would be doing the route unsupported, meaning we’d have to bring all our food/clothing with us and get water along the way. This time of year, we’d need to bring a lot of warm clothing, especially Tina, who can’t even stay warm in our living room! Due to logistical issues we’d decided only to do about 37 miles of the true “Zion Traverse” so that we could finish our day in style – a night at the Zion Lodge. (Later in the week we finished the last 11 miles of the full route via another bike shuttle “Traverse ‘n Reverse”.)

Having only run a handful of times in the last 4 months due to post-Hardrock burn-out, I was excited just to get out and do a nice long hiking adventure in a new place. Tina had other plans; she wanted to run a lot of the route. Tina is a little Energizer Bunny and keeping up with her proved to be challenging. It is refreshing to be with somebody who has so much motivation!
On Sunday we pulled into Zion in the early afternoon and checked the weather forecast. Tina's Blackberry told us that we only had one good day of weather (Monday) and colder temperatures and significant rain were headed our way the rest of the week. We wanted to make the most of our one good day of weather, so we set up the Zion Traverse for Monday. We feared that the rest of the week would be spent sipping coffee, perusing through gift shops, and driving the tourist routes – but we later realized that the forecast we had gotten was for Zion, ILLINOIS!! The rest of the week proved to be stellar weather…

We booked a room at the Zion Lodge for Monday night, locked our bikes up, left our bike shoes and helmet and change of clothes, then headed for the town of Hurricane, where we stayed in a motel to get a good night’s sleep. Up at 4:00 am on Monday, we drove the 30 minutes to Lee Pass. Cold temperatures (29 degrees F!) and wind greeted us as we headed down from the trailhead. It was nice to be moving. We ran most of the downhill here, despite my wanting to “just hike”. The EB was on her way! After a little over an hour, we reached La Verkin Creek, then headed up the Hop Valley trail. The Hop Valley is awesome. The sun came up and light touched the red rocks, surrounding us in an amphitheater of pink. Various sections of the Traverse reminded us of different parts of the world. For example, the Hop Valley section was exactly like places I’d been in Denali NP, Alaska. The creek winded back and forth from one side of the valley to another, requiring many stream crossings. Furthermore, there was no solid trail so route finding was difficult. We finally made our way up to the southern terminus of the Hop Valley trail and we were greeted by sun on our faces.

The next section took us from the Hop Valley trail along a connector trail to the Wildcat Trail. We ran much of this as it is flat and gently rolling terrain. The West Rim trailhead is at about 23 miles into the route. The West Rim trail heads south and was not that exciting. This part of the route may as well be called the Zzzzz-ion Traverse! But eventually the route climbs ridges and the views to the west and southwest were amazing! Canyons and rock pinnacles galore! We continued to the intersection of the West Rim trail with the Telegraph Trail (closed due to recent forest fires in the area), descended sandstone cliffs that literally had the trail blasted into vertical cliffs, and made our way to below the famous Angel’s Landing. Beautiful! Finally, we descended down into the Zion Valley as the sun was setting. Total time was around 12 hours and we headed straight to the Zion Lodge for a hot meal and a good night’s sleep.

The next day we fetched our bikes from Lee Pass. This day was an adventure in itself, including a flat tire from a 1-1/2 inch screw (see photo) necessitating hitch-hiking into the town of Hurricane, biking uphill along I-15 with 30 mph headwinds, a second flat tire, hitch-hiking again along the interstate (dangerous!), and being picked up by an Air Force pilot who drives his SUV like he’s being chased by Maverick in Top Gun - even more dangerous!

All in all, it was a great adventure, but we’d recommend against doing the “Traverse ‘n Reverse” with the bikes – pretty dangerous and not that aesthetic. Definitely get a shuttle bunny (fiancée, husband, wife, or friend) to help you out with getting back to the start.

The Zion adventure to end all adventures would be: DAY 1 - start at Lee Pass, hike the 23 miles or so to the West Rim Trail (get a large portion out of the way initially), camp overnight at Lava Point (your shuttle bunny can set up camp); DAY 2 - do The Subway canyoneering route – pretty easy if you have dry suits (available for rental in the town of Springdale) and a 20 meter section of rope (your shuttle bunny can get permits and dry suits and can even join you for The Subway!), camp at Lava Point again this night (drive down to Springdale for dinner?); DAY 3 - continue on the Zion Traverse route from Lava Point to Zion Canyon, stay a night at the Zion Lodge (14 miles during this day); DAY 4 - peruse the canyon on a day off (or later on DAY 3); DAY 4/5 - finish with the stellar climb up to the East Rim Trail and to the East Rim trailhead near the east entrance to the park (11 miles this day). This would be a worthwhile Zion adventure that would take 4-5 days and would eliminate the “death march” aspect of doing this in a day!