The Zion Canyon road ends at a spot appropriately called The Narrows. The Virgin River (not the new Netflix series) has carved the valley through the red Navajo Sandstone. Downstream, the River has cut through all that sandstone to the softer Kayenta shale which then undercuts the harder sandstone which collapses into the valley as it widens. In the Narrows, it hasn’t yet reached the shale, so the widening hasn’t begun. After the road ends, an easy trail continues along the river for a mile. At that point the canyon narrows even more and you need to walk in the water to continue up the valley. The image below looks back upstream to the wider valley with Angels Landing in the far distance.
Zion Canyon, Zion National Park, Utah
The trail continues upstream.
Narrows Trail
The colors of the water contrast nicely with red rocks that it carves.
The Mississippi River drops about an inch every mile. The Virgin is much shorter at 160 miles long but drops 7,800 feet in that distance, or about 71 feet every mile in the park. It is a pretty steady drop, but there is one nice small waterfall along the Narrows trail.
