THE Narrows (all 16 miles)

We have wanted to do the Narrows for a few years and this year the weather finally cooperated. My parents were kind enough to watch the kids for the day and my dad even dropped us off at the top of the hike and picked us up at the bottom. 

At the beginning of the hike, next to the beware flash floods sign. We saw a few clouds during the day and I was always paranoid that it was going to rain, but we had perfect weather without any rain.

It was an amazingly beautiful hike and we got some great pictures thanks to my brother carrying his awesome camera the whole hike. It took us about 12 hours to hike 16 miles, which seems slow, but when you are hiking in water for 75%  of the time it really slows you down. The water was very muddy which made hiking difficult when you couldn't see which rocks were in your path. I felt like I just tripped and fell down the river the whole time. The water level was never much deeper than knee level, it would have been a lot more difficult had it been any higher. Next time I will bring a tube along and float down. The first 6 miles were beautiful and we only saw a few people along the way. Around mile 9 or 10 we hit a little bit of a wall. It was hot and pretty open in this section, without a lot of shade. The novelty of hiking down a river had worn off, but we pushed on through and made it to some better sections of the hike. 

We stopped for a little break at Big Springs. You can hike from the bottom up to this point. It was very crowded from here on out in the hike. You don't need a permit to hike from the bottom. We had about 4 or 5 miles left to hike at this point.  

These are a few pictures I took at the beginning of the hike. We were still full of adrenaline and a little photo happy. It takes a few miles before you get into the actual canyon and there are lots of trees around.

 

Photo at the end of our hike. Tired, bruised, and battered, but happy to have accomplished such a strenuous hike!

It was such a great moment at the end of the hike to take off our neoprene socks and hiking boots. Technically we weren't quite at the end of our hike at this point. At the end of the narrows you still have a 1 mile hike out on a trail to get to the shuttles in Zion and then you have to ride the shuttles out. It was a long day and my feet and knees were seriously sore the next day, but I'm glad I had the chance to hike it. Orderville Canyon hooks up with the narrows and we didn't get much time to explore it, so maybe next time we can check out Orderville Canyon. I can't wait to go on more adventures!