Zion National Park has become the third most visited park after Great Smokies and Grand Canyon, and most visitors funnel into the one way in and out Zion valley. Most of the year you can’t drive into the valley and instead ride the excellent shuttle buses that stop along the road. However, in January you can drive in, but even then, if you don’t arrive early, parking near popular trails fill up quickly. One of the most popular hikes, and for good reason is Angels Landing trail. You start in the valley floor by crossing the Virgin River that carved the valley, looking up the tip of Angels Landing 1,500 feet up.
Angels Landing
The trail gently rises up the valley floor until you start long switch backs up one cliff side. Can you spot hikers on the far left, in the middle, and other near the top right on the trail?
At that spot on the top right of the image above, you get a nice view of the valley. From there, you go back into a hanging valley called Refrigerator Canyon.
A view from above
Looking down to where you’ve been so far
Up Refrigerator Canyon
Then you get to the engineering feat that made this trail possible—Walter’s Wiggles. Walter Ruesch, the first park superintendent directed that this series of switchbacks be constructed to allow “easy” access to Angels Landing.
Walter’s Wiggles
You then arrive at Scout Lookout where people gather before the final ascent or to take other trails or simply to enjoy the view here. A little way further up some chains with a sheer drop of hundreds of feet on either side of the trail provides an even better view into the valley.
Angels Landing is another half mile up with drops of a thousand feet on both sides of the trail. A hiker coming down said there was ice on the trail which made it “interesting.” We decided to head down and take a hike on the West Rim trail where we got a nice view of the trail up Angels Landing. Maybe you can see the tiny hikers on the trail of the second image below with Angels Landing on the left.
