Zion - The Narrows

This was the main reason for us going to Zion: To do "The Narrows". It's tricky what time of year to do it. In Winter it's pretty cold and in summer the timing has to be good to miss any flash floods.

Basically you hike in the Virgin River between cliffs that slowly rise around you as you continue on.
"The Narrows" is the obviously the narrowest part.

We didn't know too much about the shuttle service or how long it would take us, so we hiked it up from the Temple of Sinawava to the 10th camping place (see map). Surprisingly it only took us about 3.5hrs to there.

Now we know, we can get a shuttle to the top of Chamberlain's Ranch and hike the whole thing down in a day (gotta leave something for next time)

Since we had so much time on our hands we did the sideloop of Orderville Canyon too -which was just as amazing.

No picture will do this hike justice and initially we weren't going to take any so we wouldn't insult the canyon, but here's a few:

The water seeps through the sandstone rock and comes out as a miniature waterfall.

They say the water is thousands of years old.

This is more or less the deepest we had the water go, but at different times of the year it can get much deeper.

Another waterfall coming out of the rock. It's amazing and at certain parts of the canyon you hear an eery noise as the water comes through between the break in the cliffs.

Jacques was in his element.

The deeper you went into the narrows, the quieter it got. It's quite tricky crossing over rocks underneath you with a pretty strong current.

We crossed the river at least 51 times ONE-WAY. Those were mandatory crossings from left to right. The rest of the time we were in the middle of the Virgin River going through.

The cliffs go up so high - we couldn't even get it with the camera.

What an experience. Totally different from any normal hike on land - We can both totally recommend putting this on your list of "Things to do before I die".