The Virgin Narrows Hike

The Virgin Narrows hike is one of the most unique hikes I've ever done. One reason for this is that for the most part, the Virgin River is the trail. Here are some pictures of the hike itself:

This picture shows a typical river crossing early in the hike. The trail often crosses from one side of the river to the other whenever a shoulder ends. At first many hikers try to avoid getting wet. It quickly becomes inevitable.

Many sections of the hike look like this - where the only trail is the river cutting through the cliffs on either side. The river is filled with many rocks and boulders that create additional challenges - especially when the river is murky and you can't see the bottom. Many underwater rocks become covered with moss, which make them particularly slippery when you walk on them.

 Often, it is easier to just hike in the river rather than climb the embankments. My uncle climbed one such embankment to get a picture of the rest of us as we trudged through the river.

Occasionally, obstacles like this fallen tree will cross the trail. Then you have to decide whether to go over, around, or under the obstacle. This particular tree was at the front of the flood about an hour after we crossed under it.

More pictures later.

The beginning of the hike

If you go on the Virgin Narrows hike from top to bottom, the starting point is Chamberlain's Ranch (outside of Zion National Park boundaries). You can either be dropped off, and have someone meet you at the bottom; or you can leave your car there, and come back for it in another vehicle. Here is a picture of the drop off point:

The cute girls are my cousins Kami and Lori (Darin's sister) who didn't go on the hike. From there, you follow an old jeep trail, crossing the Virgin River occasionally as you descend into the canyon. Near the beginning of the hike, you might see cows grazing in adjoining fields, and other occasional evidences of humans such as this abandoned tractor:



The tractor was half hidden by the brush, but inspired the addition of the car that Trey notices as he and Uncle Marvin are hiking back to Chamberlains' Ranch. A little farther on we found this cabin:

Without giving too much away, the cabin obviously inspired Brady's theory of the hideout used by the robbers. It also comes into play again as Trey and Uncle Marvin are hiking out of the canyon.

More pictures later...

The flood

If you have never experienced a flash flood, the picture in your mind, probably doesn't match reality. I always assumed that it would look like the cover of my book, The Narrows Escape. Yet in reality, you can't really see the water, only wood - though I imagine that would depend on where the flood was located. When the graphic designer designed my cover, I tried to explain this, but she explained that no one would know what it was if she did it that way. In any case, the picture I painted with words (in the book) is as accurate as I could get of what the flood looked like coming down the river. Naturally, we didn't stop to take a picture, but my uncle took some once everyone was on high ground:

 The Virgin River in Zion National Park looked like this for about an hour. Once most of the lumber was washed out, the river consisted of churning mud with the occasional log, bush, or tree:

After about three hours, the water level lowered significantly, but remained higher than normal for the remainder of the day. Here is a picture of Trevor, stranded on his island, showing how high the flood was at its highest peak:



More pictures to come in a future post!



Narrows Group

I recently received a CD with my Uncle Merlin's pictures from the Narrows hike, so I'll be posting some of them with comments. Unfortunately, the quality of some of the pictures isn't that great due to their age and the conversion process from slides to jpeg documents.

First of all, I'd like to introduce the group who went on the actual hike:

 

before picture

 

 You will notice that there were only 8 hikers instead of the 9 hikers in the book. The reason for this is because I wanted to include a female cousin into the mix, even though none of them went on the actual hike. You may also notice that my cousin Darin (aka Devin) isn't pictured. That is because he was in Australia at the time we were on the hike. However, since it was a DTB Cousin adventure, he needed to be on the hike - so I had him take the place of his brother Barry. That is one reason why I changed the names of almost all of the characters from their real names - to further emphasize the fact that the story is fictitious. Since the setting for the book is 1983, but the hike took place in 1992, we are all older than how we were portrayed in the book. By comparison, my younger brother Greg was 14 at the time of the hike - about the same age at Shane in the book. Since Brady's younger brother would have been too young to go on the hike, his spot was replaced by Uncle Arther - Devin's dad.

 

 Here is the same group at the end of the hike:

after picture

You may notice that the flash flood danger level is now listed as "extreme." Thanks for the warning - but it came a little too late. Luckily, we were all able to make it out on our own two feet - illustrating another deviation the story took from reality.

Stay tuned for more pictures.