Last week I posted about the east side of Zion National Park, which connects to Zion Valley by road. Zion is now the 3rd most visited National Park, and most visitors are concentrated in the central Zion valley. During much of the year, you need to ride the excellent shuttle bus system to get into the valley. Ironically though, an area just off an I-15 exit, Kolob Canyon in the northwest part of the park, is much less visited. You can’t see this from the interstate, but a short drive behind a ridgeline offers a magnificent view.
Timber Top Mountain, Zion National Park, Utah
The Kolob Canyon area was first protected as Zion National Monument in 1937, and incorporated into the National Park in 1956. The view above is the southern edge of the sandstone monoliths, and the view below looks further north. These peaks reach over 8,000 feet.
Kolob Canyon panorama
Creeks have carved valleys as these rocks reach out like fingers. On the far left of the image above, Taylor Creek has created a meandering path into the Zion wilderness.
Taylor Creek
Taylor Creek trail
The trail cuts back and forth across the creek which presents some slippery hiking in January, but also presents wonderful ice displays.
I’ve never seen ice formation like the last one above. They were a mass of fragile, flaky forms carpeting above the creek. Don’t know if it was morning fog or steam rising over the water during the night or some other cause, but they’d crumble with a touch. When returning on the trail by early afternoon, they’d collapsed into mush. A small waterfall presented itself in the glow off the red sandstone.
Taylor Creek aglow
I was also surprised by the number of birds in southern Utah in January. Not the avian variety in this image, but a couple of love birds.
Dan and Melina
I wrote Tuesday about the continued assault on the protections of this land by the current administration. Yesterday, half of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, protected since 1996, was open to oil and gas drilling and exploration. Best summarized by the National Resources Defense Council:
“These plans are atrocious, and entirely predictable,” said Sharon Buccino, senior director for lands at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “They are the latest in a series of insults to these magnificent lands by the Trump administration.”