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Home > Archive > Jul 26, 2007

Zion National Park: Always a Different Delight
By Sharon May
Managing Editor
Every time I visit Zion National Park, I’m impressed once again by its towering streaked walls, the sheer mammoth sandstone faces, delicate blooms and flashing cottonwoods.
No matter how many times I visit Zion – and in the nine years I’ve lived here, it probably numbers well over a hundred times – I never fail to find myself sucking in my breath at the canyon’s beauty.
And I always find myself amazed at a different beauty – a new trail or one revisited in a different season, a new weather phenomenon gracing sky and rock, an animal sighting (a cougar flashed by my car at the canyon junction one dusk), or fragile blooms spraying unexpected color across a meadow.
I love the canyon. And I’ll never tire of spending time in her serene magnificence.
Recently, with fire and summer monsoons limiting my venturing, I headed to Zion as to a favorite friend. This time, I decided to drive past canyon junction and continue through the tunnels and revisit the east side of the park.
The east side offers such different scenery than in the main canyon – swirls and ridges of petrified sand dunes once thicker than the Sahara’s, I’ve heard guides and rangers say. Here, the ancient windswept dunes eroded by the downhill flow of rain and snowmelt resulted in the remarkable crosshatching famous on Checkerboard Mesa.
Vanilla-sweet ponderosa dot the ridges of sandstone hardened to pinkish slick rock, and mahogany-bark manzanita, silvery roundleaf buffaloberry, and bright maples decorate the colorful rock.
In the wash (which reads as Clear Creek on my Trails Illustrated map), white sand pillows over maroon and pink slick rock shorelines. Pebbles and boulders fill the bottom with a stunning array of colors, from yellow and golds to burnished reds and blues and teal. Portions of the wash slip between high black-streaked walls, giving hikers a slot canyon experience – the wet smell of damp sand and rock, the whisper quiet of silent rock. Lizards scurry from underfoot, sunning themselves in patches of hot sun on the dappled sand.
One can walk the wash below the roadway from the tunnels almost to the park’s east entrance. It’s easy hiking, with just a few scrambles over low rock piles and fallen tree trunks. And even in the height of summer visitation, a hiker can soak in the solitude of stone walls, passing few, if any, fellow hikers.
An interesting side trip is located off this wash, a place informally called Petroglyph Canyon. To find this site, travel 1.3 miles past the last tunnel. Here, a wooden-rail fence, with place to park along the roadway, marks the start of a short sandy path downhill to the main wash. At the bottom of the hill, a more narrow sandy wash branches off the main wash to the farthest right. Follow this narrow wash through the masonry arch, passing under SR-9. In just a quarter mile from the top of the trail, two cairns mark a footpath leading a few yards to the base of a tall reddish sandstone wall, where a trail box and signage indicate the petroglyph site. There are two panels, to the left and right.
Signs state that people have occupied the Zion area for around 7,000 years. Archaic inhabitants include “Ancestral Puebloans (Anasazi/Fremont) and ancestors of the Southern Paiute.”
The panel to the left shows dozens of faded and eroded glyphs of bighorn sheep and other animal-like figures, as well as a squiggly line that suggests water, perhaps.
Looking around, I wondered, why here? It seems an unusual place for petroglyphs, not large enough for a village or encampment, and also facing north, not the usual south direction. Perhaps, the little wash was once a flowing stream, where game stopped to drink, and the glyphs were symbols of their hoped-for hunting success. As always, my imagination suggested answers to the mystery petroglyphs always present.
Another panel is to the right, behind a metal bar. This panel shows three tiny figures, seemingly wearing backpacks. Could they be the seed-carrying mythic figure of the Southwest? A human-like figure – with its mirrored image joined upside down – is also intriguing.
Although the figures may urge you to reach out and physically touch these relics of ancient time, please resist. Photograph or sketch the figures only. You may think one little touch of your finger cannot matter, but multiply that touch by over 2 million park visitors – even maybe 10 percent who will see this rock art site – and that makes over 200,000 fingers leaving an oily residue on the glyphs. Please don’t rub, wet, cast or otherwise disturb these treasures.
Filled with another dose of Zion wonder, and with thunder rumbling overhead and lightning flashing, I figured it was time to head back to my Jeep. Zion Canyon wasn’t finished with me, though, and on my return to the main canyon, the summer rainstorm was plunging off the rocky cliffs in long plumes of waterfalls. Everywhere, chocolate, rock-tumbling water churned from the walls and streamed downhill.
How can you not love such a marvelous and surprising place?


When You Go

Length: .50 miles roundtrip from trailhead to petroglyph site
Elevation gain: negligible
Difficulty: easy
Payoff: Miles of nontechnical wash hiking in either direction, with portions of slot canyon walking; interesting petroglyph side trip
Getting there: Once inside Zion National Park, take Highway 9 through the tunnels. After exiting the last tunnel, continue 1.3 miles to a wooden fence on the right side of the roadway: park here. Go through the opening in the fence and walk downhill to the wash bottom, where a narrower wash forks to the right from the main wash. Follow this narrow wash, which passes through a masonry culvert below the highway. At .25 miles from the roadway, two cairns mark a sandy path leading a few yards to a trail box, signage and a high reddish cliff. The petroglyph site is on this rock wall.

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