Elissa C. Nysetvold

Good Times in Zion!

Some of you know that right after graduation, Tom and I undertook the four-day, 37-mile Trans-Zion Trek in Zion National Park. It was a fantastic and well-timed adventure; after the good times extravaganza that was graduation, the introvert in me was ready to spend four days with no one but Tom for miles around!

This was my first backpacking trip, and Tom’s first time being in charge of one. We both learned a lot. Here is the account from my perspective.

Monday

We started out hiking (hieing?) through Kolob Canyon. As you can see, it was absolutely beautiful.

After about seven miles, we stopped for the day. The next picture is the view from our campsite—it was pretty cool.

Also, the stars were amazing.

Tuesday

The day started out much like Monday—nice weather, beautiful scenery, and optimistic hikers.

“Hey, don’t take pictures of me! And no, I will NOT take my hat off!”
Tom always looks attractive. Sigh.

We walked through this pretty, wet, cow-infested place called Hop Valley. We didn’t actually see any cows, but there was definitely…evidence, and we were warned not to drink the water in the valley under any circumstances.

Here there be cattle.

Tuesday was supposed to be our hardest day at about 14 miles, mostly uphill. After we left the cows behind, we walked through a meadow and up into a forested area.

The forest was pretty, but decidedly less Zion-esque. We did see some snow, however:

We ran into a bit of a problem when one of the springs on the map was dry, but we found another that was unmarked, so we didn’t think much of it. Really, I wasn’t thinking much of anything at all toward the evening; I was distracting myself from the growing soreness in my feet by daydreaming about chicken wings (I was reaching the limit of my enjoyment of Peanut M&M’s, and besides—my mom’s chicken wings are darn good). I also told myself that according to the website, if we just made it through day 2, day 3 would be a short, leisurely 10-mile Elysium (keep reading to find out how hilariously wrong I was) (also, things I would never have considered leisurely a few years ago: 10-mile hikes).

We found a campsite near Wildcat Canyon, set up our tent, and huddled in our sleeping bags until it was dark enough to sleep. There I was faced with an unfortunate, first-world-problems-type choice: should I go to bed hungry, or climb out into the bitter cold to eat an energy bar? I stayed in the tent, a choice that was both very unlike me and probably unwise.

Wednesday

We woke up to find that the water in Tom’s Camelbak line had frozen (see? I told you it was cold!). Other than that, it was a very nice morning. The trail took us along the rim of the canyon, which was much more fun when it wasn’t windy.

 

We were both hurting a bit, and Tom was feeling a little sick to his stomach (nothing dangerous, of course). At one point when we stopped to rest, he said, “I almost want to just finish the trip today.” It would add about 5 miles onto the lovely 10-mile day I’d been fantasizing about. I made a sound like this:

In the end, though, the decision was made for us. Around 1:00 we found another dry spring, one we’d been sort of counting on. The next one was more than a mile past our campsite and only five miles from the shuttle, and we had no idea if it would even have any water. We knew it would be a rough night without any water, and by taking a shorter route, we could probably make it to the shuttle with what we had. We decided to go for it.

We didn’t take a lot more pictures after that; we were too focused on making good time. It was crucial that we made it to the main canyon before the last shuttle left, and as we didn’t know when that would be, we were hoping to be at the trailhead by 5:00 (9 miles in about 4 hours). My pace had been slowing down a lot, so it was time to bust out my secret weapon.

Okay, confession time: when I get really fatigued while hiking, the song I play in my head to keep myself going is Call Me Maybe. This is a song I would never listen to under any normal circumstances, but the tempo is just about at my ideal hiking pace. Plus, I needed to get something else stuck in my head to drive out Fellowship! The Musical. Not that there’s anything wrong with Fellowship! (I’ll be raving about it more in my next post a future post), but after 2.5 days of “Happy Birthday Bilbo,” “One Ring,” “It’s a Hobbit Thing,” and “The Balrog Blues,” I needed a break.

As we approached the last spring, we started to see other hikers coming up from the main canyon. That was encouraging. More encouraging was the fact that the spring had barely a trickle of water (it was encouraging because it meant we were making the right decision, and that we would be in civilization that night. Chicken wings ahoy!).

Now came the hardest part of the hike: a 3000-foot descent down the canyon. It was gorgeous, and under any other circumstances, I would have taken tons of pictures. As it was, I just wanted to get to the bottom as fast as possible. Our descent made it all too clear that my hiking boots were too small. I was popping ibuprofen as frequently as Tom would let me. We were getting low on water. Carly Rae Jepsen was starting to let me down, and Tom was constantly having to stop and wait for me (telling passerby about our past few days, implicitly explaining why his wife looked like a decrepit zombie). It was not one of my finer hours. And here I thought I was in shape.

At one point a nice Indian couple out for an afternoon hike took pity on us and gave us a water bottle. Indian couple, you guys are our favorite people. We will love you forever.

We reached the end of the scenic/agonizing switchbacks and caught the shuttle (the last one left at 7:00, so we needn’t have worried), and everyone who had passed us on the way down gave us a cheer. Normally that might have been a little embarrassing, but hey—we’d just hiked 36 miles in three days! Yeah, we are pretty cool!

We didn’t get chicken wings that night, but I did get spaghetti squash enchiladas (ooh lala!) and Tom got what was apparently the best burger he had ever eaten. Overall, it was a pretty good day.

And so, we reached the end of our crazy, awesome, slightly thirsty adventure in Zion. Would I do it again? Heck yes!

But next time, I think I’ll wear size-8 boots and be sure not to listen to Fellowship! for at least a month beforehand. Now, where does one go about buying chicken wings in this town?

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