Utah Day 8

Hiking through the Virgin River in the Narrows

Orderville Canyon

Orderville Canyon

Saturday May 31^st, 2008

We set the entire day aside for the famous hike up the Narrows in Zion. There are two ways you can do this one, from the top for from the bottom. If you go from the top it’s 16 miles all the way down and takes a long time. We decided it would be better to hike from the bottom and just turn around at a certain point. Hiking the Narrows requires spending a lot of time in the water, a walking stick comes in handy too. At points the water was almost chest deep but it never got higher than that for us but if you go from the top you have to swim through many parts.

We hiked up the river for about 2.5 miles until we came to Orderville Canyon. Once there we went up Orderville for probably another 1.5 miles until we came to the spot where they make you turn around. I had the most fun doing this hike, again I felt like I did something I didn’t know I could and I was left with a little sense of accomplishment after this day. We probably spent about 6 hours in the Narrows. The whole thing was amazing but the Orderville section was particularly beautiful with all the greenery, small waterfalls/pools and plants that were there. One hiker that was coming down as we were heading in described this part of Orderville as “a little slice of heaven”.

After the Narrows we went up to Kolob Canyons and took in the view as the sun was starting to go down. We did a short 1 mile hike up to a viewpoint, saw some lizards and took pictures, then headed back to Cedar City. It was really an awesome day.