Travel Thursdays: The Narrows in Zion National Park, Utah

I’m a little late in posting this, but a few weeks back I talked about our trip with our friends Ryan and Casey to Horse Shoe Bend in Page Arizona. This was a pit stop on our road trip from Albuquerque to LA. Next week for Travel Thursday, I’ll fill you in our entire trip and break down the days. It took a little bit of planning between the 4 of us to make the trip happen, but it was totally worth it and I’m so glad we did it!

Fun side note, National Geographic just named this hike one of America’s Best Adventures.

We woke up early at 5:45am (as much as we wish we were, we are not early risers) but we packed up our camping gear and headed to the shuttle. We took the 7:30am shuttle and took it for about 15-20 minutes to the Bottom Up hike, or the Narrows as people call it.

Here we are before we headed into the trail, with our walking sticks in hand.

Once you hop of the shuttle there is a bathroom to the right as well as a water bottle fill up station. Then there is a path you follow that is about a mile long that leads you to the trail head.

Then at the end of the path there is a couple of steps then you cross the river and start hiking! You can go for as long as you want and then can turn around, it is not a loop trail. You can also do the entire hike which is 16 miles and camp overnight but you need a permit to do that.

I was a little nervous going into it because you are walking in the water over rocks and the river pushes you at certain points. But the shoe and sock rental along with the walking sticks made me feel a lot better and safer.

Dave the consummate photographer 🙂

It is a truly beautiful place. The views are stunning and it makes you feel so small and humbled.

As you can see the water levels changed in different parts of the hike. Sometimes it was just by your ankle, other times it went up to my knees and mid-thigh. It also depends on the rain levels for the time of the year.

There was one section of the hike where the boys decided to go chest deep into the water. Boys will be boys 😉

I remember being there and fully appreciating it and taking it all in, but looking at these pictures is really amazing and mind blowing.

We each carried backpacks with snacks and water, nothing too heavy.

Dave had a dry bag to keep his camera safe.

Ryan and Casey using their swords to fight haha!

Here we are at the end of the hike, and you can see how crowded it got and how sunny it was by 1pm.

We hiked 2 and 1/2 hours in then headed back out. So we hiked for a total of 5 hours, from 8am-1pm. It was a little tiring at times, but so gorgeous and definitely worth it.

We loved this hike so much in fact, that we are doing it again this October with my brother and his new finance, and my best friend Melissa and her boyfriend Nico. It’s going to be so nice to revisit this beautiful place before we move up to Seattle this fall. Anyone else planning to be there in October?

It was a gorgeous hike and I highly recommend it to anyone who is thinking about doing it! Let me know if you have any questions about the hike, I’d be happy to answer them!

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