Exploring Zion National Park
The traditional Paiute name for the canyons surrounding the Mukuntuweap National Monument is Oawingwa (likely pronounced as wa-wing-wa) which refers to a place where the stream flows. It was Isaac Behunin, a Mormon renegade whose family was one of the early settlers of Utah and who built a home in the upper area of the Virgin River in the late 1800s who is credited for giving the former Mukuntuweap National Monument and its surrounding canyons its name: Zion. Zion is a Hebrew word meaning refuge or sanctuary. Behunin believed that “a man can worship God among these great cathedrals as well as in any man-made church”.
In 1909, President William Howard Taft used the Antiquties Act of 1906 to set aside approximately 16,000 acres for Mukuntuweap National Monument to preserve its “labyrinth of remarkable canyons with highly ornate and beautifully colored walls, in which are plainly the geographical events of the past ages”. The highly ornate and beautifully colored walls that President Taft referred to are known as the Kayenta Formation to geologists.
The reddish brown and pink rocks that make up the former Mukuntuweap National Monument are composed of layers or iron-rich reddish-brown and pink sandstone, mudstone and siltstone deposited in streams and rivers across a drying landscape. Geologists contend that the rock layers started to form almost 200 million years ago during the Jurassic age and went through shifting climates, melting glaciers and a planet that flip-flops every several hundred thousand years.
The Virgin River, named after Thomas Virgen became a virgin and has two major tributaries. A tributary refers for a smaller river or stream joining into a larger river. Virgin River in itself is a tributary to Colorado River when it joins the the bigger river at Lake Mead in Nevada. From the north, the Virgin River starts off at Navajo Lake and flows downstream in rocky slopes from 9,000 feet above sea level through the Cascade Falls. The East Fork of the Virgin River begins upstream from the Long Valley where it flows south through the Kanab Creek. With the help of its tributaries, the Virgin River continues to be the bloodstream of the former Mukuntuweap National Monument. During floods, millions of tons of sediments carry off large boulders, cut through sandstones and trees off the ground and add up to the raging waters that continue to carve the canyons at innards former national monument.
In 1927, while the seasonally raging waters of the Virgin River continued to cut through sandstones and carve canyons from the riverbed. Meanwhile, construction workers on the eastern side of the national monument were carving the innards of a magnificent cliff of sandstones called the Great Arch with dynamites to build a 1.1 mile tunnel. The Zion Mount Carmel Highway Tunnel which is a portion of the State Route 9 was completed in 1930. The only road that is accessible to visitors connects the south and the east entrance of the park through a scenic driveway showcasing the colorful grandeur of the former Mukuntuweap National Monument.
Zion Canyon Drive is the only other road that traverses the park northward from the south entrance. The road which is only accessed by the Zion Canyon Shuttle Loop Service is where most of the iconic sites of the park are. The Court of Patriarchs which is at the 3rd shuttle service stop is a collection of peaks named Abraham, Jacob and Isaac Behunin. The Emerald Pools which are accessible at the 4th stop look like big puddles of water slowly seeping into the rocks. The 5th stop is called The Grotto followed by the 6th stop for the Weeping Rock. The Big Bend of Zion National Park at the 2nd to the last shuttle stop is more of a meadow overlooking the colorful walls of red rocks and a natural landscape of hanging gardens. Saving the best for the last stop is for the Temple of Sinawava.
To the Southern Paiute tribe, Sinawava also refers to Coyote, the mythological figure who transformed bad Legend People into the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon National Park. The Temple of Sinawava is one of the few landmarks at the park which is not inspired by the Book of Mormon, not the musical, but the holy Bible or the glorious Koran of the Latter Day Saints Church. The temple features the Riverside Walk. It highlights towering cliffs of reddish hues from pink, orange or brown adorned with yellow clementines and ferns.
The Riverside Walk Trail ended and I couldn't resist not turning around subsequently taking off my shoes to get my feet wet. Wading through the ice cold waters of Virgin River along with hundreds of visitors, some of whom, are children, I was reminded of a video footage of a flash flood at the same river that I have seen on TV some years ago. Many of the visitors instantly formed into a human chain to keep anyone from being swept away by the strong currents. To me, the footage was even more powerful by the image of Jesus Christ being baptized by John the Baptist at the Jordan River. It's close to being as powerful as the sight of young visitors huddled together as a team.
I would have hike further upstream as the river narrowed if I was not hiking barefoot. I had the Weeping Rock and the Angels Landing in mind. It was a memorable hike nonetheless having to meet random strangers who would gladly take a photo through one's cellphone upon request.
The Weeping Rock does not seem all that weepy and sad. The constantly dripping cliff is some rock formation of two different sandstone strata specifically of Kayenta and Navajo layers. The Weeping Rock is more of the park's natural sprinkler system irrigating the ferns and yellow clementines growing out from the crevices of the sandstone layers.The drippings then collect to form a small tree-lined stream trickling down the hillsides into the Emerald Pools and finally the Virgin River.
I came to the Zion National Park because of Angels Landing. I had Edmund Hillary in mind the whole time I was dreaming of bagging Angels Landing: "It is not the mountains we conquer but ourselves."
Angels Landing, previously known as the Temple of Aeolus, is some 5-mile scenic, steep hike onto a fin-like rock formation icon that has an elevation gain of 1,488 feet. I did not come to bag the peak. The previously known Temple of Aeolus became known as Angels Landing in 1916 because one hiker by the name of Frederick Fisher thought only angels could land on the peak of towering sandstone. I was not ready to look like an angel nor I did not want to look different in photo in case I would be part of the statistics of the Angel Landing's club in another world.
A woman was telling her male companion that she could not go on before she could even be past the fork leading to the lower Emerald Pools. I felt like I have already conquered myself!
I crawl upright at the rate of an inchworm with the bragging rights as my goal: been there, done that again. I kept counting my breathing. My short term goals were the shady areas of the switchbacks where squirrels beg for treats. A level trail after several uphill switchbacks felt refreshing and cool. I was looking for the The Grotto Trail sign. I must have switched to a different canyon. The switchbacks return in shorter but steeper rhythm. I went back to counting my breathing. I looked down to see if I could count the switchbacks and I saw 15 beats of ventricular tachycardia, monomorphic! I looked up and it seemed like there were more v tachs ahead. I wonder why the switchbacks are called Walter's Wiggles.
The switchbacks that could send anyone into a run of monomorphic v tach took their name from Walter Ruesch, the park's first superintendent who was instrumental in constructing the trails to the Angels Landing in 1926. Past the Walter's Wiggles is the gateway to Scouts Lookout. It was at the Scouts Lookout where I first saw the famous ZNP chains. From the Scouts Lookout, I was the saw fin-like rhythms that I would likely interpret as coarse ventricular fibrillation if I was working.
My thoughts return to Edmund Hillary and how he must have felt when he decided to turn around and unable to summit Mount Everest on his first attempt: "I will come again and conquer you because as a mountain you can't grow but as a human I can."
Comments