Hiking the West Rim

The Virgin River runs through the park.

Just starting our 6 mile hike up up up!

We started out with our windbreakers on but shed them as soon as we started our climb up.  

I' m sure all the mountains have names,  there are no signs olong the way.  You can see, by the time we went 25 miles south from Kolob Canyons the skies were a beautiful blue!

Spotted a large tarantula along the path!  We also saw llizard and a snake today!

Andy was leading the way....I was huffing and puffing behind him.  There were a series of switchbacks and a series of wiggles up the very steep sections.

You can start to see how high we were going...

We had planned to hike up Angels Landing but got about a third of the way up a very steep, narrow, rocky ledge and I decided I didn't want to risk my life.  Part of the way there were chains for you to hold onto so you didn't slide off and fall hundreds of feet.  Six have died climbing it since 2004. People with short legs like me are at a disadvantage. It was not what we expected, so we went back to the turnoff and walked the Rim instead.  Hard to quit, but I got over it.

This looks down into a valley below.

Some of the path on the way back down.  We were hot and weary at the bottom but got large soft serve twist ice cream at  the Zion Lodge and were revived in no time.