Surviving the Narrows

If you are going to Zion National Park, you are probably going to hike the Narrows.  But maybe ‘hike‘ isn’t the right word…what exactly would you call walking upstream in a river for several miles?  Well, whatever it is, if you are going to do the Narrows, you first stop will be the Zion Adventure Company.  If you don’t stop at the Zion Adventure Company, I can tell you exactly what your experience will be in the Narrows…miserable.  ZAC has everything that you need to keep everything dry, warm, safe and prepared to journey the Narrows.  (And a huge thanks to the ZAC for outfitting us for this adventure!)

After arriving at the Zion Adventure Company, you will find that everyone is really friendly and looking to make you feel comfortable and safe with your river hiking experience.  We were a little nervous not knowing what to expect, so we sat down and watched the intro video, talked to them about the weather conditions, and then started picking out our gear.  It’s actually completely awesome that they have all this specialty gear to literally keep you dry and warm all day.  (Your feet are the only part of you that will get wet, but they are just wet, not cold at all.)

While picking out my moon-boot hiking shoes, I had a really tough decision.  Black and yellow, or black and yellow?  I went with black and yellow :)

So, geared up and ready to go, we headed out and suited up to start our adventure!

After squeezing my already multi-layered body into the dry suit, we set out out to conquer the Narrows.  Our mission – make it up to Wall Street and back without falling in, breaking anything or having to use the portable toilet :)

The hike is beautiful, there is no other way to put it, it is just simply breathtaking and beautiful.  It’s like nothing else that I have ever done, or probably will ever do.  You see so many beautiful different types of rocks, waterfalls, and birds.  Plus, for us, the benefit of doing this during off-season in Zion is that it was fairly quiet.  (Apparently the Narrows gets pretty busy in the Summer months.)

The hike and the whole experience of working with Zion Adventure company was great.  We felt safe, warm and definitely comfortable the whole time.  (We did see a few brave souls hiking in shorts and sneakers, with water temperatures of 41°, yikes!)

After we finished our hike, we stripped off our gear, jumped in our car (#onlyoffseason #nobusinawetsuit) and drove to drop off our gear back at the ZAC.

A funny note about our hike: as I mentioned, our goal for hiking the Narrows was to make it to Wall Street, the part of the Narrows that is no longer narrow, and back.  Supposedly this is really obvious to most hikers, but for some reason it wasn’t to us.  We continued hiking, even through neck deep water (really putting our gear to the test), past where everyone else had turned back, for quite some time.  Finally we decided, okay, guess we won’t make it to Wall Street, and so we turned around.  After getting home and looking over the map (which we accidentally left at our campsite), we found out that we actually made it past Sipping Turtle, almost to the back country portion of the hike.  Safe to say, mission accomplished.

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Although the Zion Adventure Company gifted us our hiking rentals, no financial compensation was received.  All opinions expressed and shared here are my own.