After leaving gorgeous Sedona, we drove up north to the southern part of Utah, ending up in Zion national park for 3 days of camping and hiking.  We started our stay with a 7-mile roundtrip hike to Angel’s Landing.  A trek featuring amazing views of the entire canyon as well as a somewhat ‘daring’ (for you non-climbing folk) approach up a rocky spine to the summit with 1000+ foot drops on either side of you! 

Our next adventure was a two day, 14-mile trek down the “Narrows”.  The hike follows the Virgin river as it grows from a small trickle through highland cow pastures to a full- blown river cutting its way through towering canyon walls.  It is unique in that the last 7 miles are spent walking in the middle of the river while canyon walls stretch a 1000+ feet above and in some places are only about 10 feet apart!  But, like any canyoneering trek in the Southwest, the potential for flash floods add an element of suspense.  Take our trip for example…

Maria’s ‘before’ picture

Maria dwarfed by red cliffs

This last picture was taken at our campsite, a little over half-way through the trek.  The reason Maria looks so befuddled is that for the last hour we were drenched by a steady downpour of rain.  Not expecting this, everything in the upper half of our packs got wet, including Maria’s sleeping bag (seen draped over the tent).  As an even better side note, our gasoline-powered stove crapped-out on us that morning so we were unable to eat anything hot and warm us up.  The night got even more interesting as Maria became partially hypothermic and the rain continued to fall bringing with it the possibility that flooding would prevent us from being able to hike out (as the last 4 or so miles were entirely in the water without any high-ground for retreat).  Luckily however, the rain stopped by morning, though the river had indeed flooded, but not by enough to prevent a pair of sore, grumpy, bedraggled “adventurers” from hauling ass down the most scenic parts of the hike without taking so much as a minute to snap a photograph for fear of more rain catching up to us!

After our wonderful experience in Zion, we headed up north to Salt Lake and got a nice cozy motel room with a nice hot jacuzzi tub.  We spent the next morning climbing in Cottonwood Canyon and then headed north again over the next day-and-a-half to Missoula where we would spend a few days with Dad and Tess.  After showing Maria around where I grew up, we headed up to Glacier National Park for a few days of hiking…and enjoying the cozy comforts of a quaint log cabin we had rented.

After a day of driving up to the park and general sight-seeing, we had the fortune of coming upon Lake McDonald right as the sun was setting.  It made for some excellent photos!

The beautiful Lake McDonald at sunset

Our first hike in Glacier was along the Highline Trail at the top of the Going to the Sun road.  This trail actually extends for 10s of miles along the continental divide, but we didn’t feel that adventurous, so we only traversed a few.  However, we did catch some breath-taking views of west Glacier.

We did this 7-mile roundtrip hike to Iceberg Lake on our last day in Glacier and it was incredible.  We saw bighorn sheep grazing and playing on the slopes above the trail, saw a lot of bear scat, but alas, no bears.  The destination of the hike is a small, beautiful, mountain lake situated at the base of a massive headwall.  The lake is absolutely crystal clear, but has the most amazing aquamarine color (the pictures below don’t do it justice).  Unfortunately, you can’t just sit and enjoy the beauty as the giant headwall funnels all of the wind down over the lake, creating an extremely cold gust (they don’t call it Iceberg Lake for nothing). 

After wrapping up our adventures in Glacier, we headed back down south to Las Vegas for a few days of climbing in Red Rock Canyon before heading home.  Unfortunately we were so immersed in our routes, we forgot to take pictures.  Oh well, maybe next time!