Author: danleeth

From Here to There

Our first day’s drive was from Fruita, Colorado, to Richfield, Utah, on Interstate 70.  It’s a route we’ve taken numerous times over the 38 years we’ve lived in Colorado.  The day was sunny, the roads were dry and the speed limit once we reached the Utah border (19 miles from home) was 80 mph. 

The stretch through the San Rafael Swell west of Green River is one of the prettiest stretches of interstate highway in the West.

We spent the night in Richfield at one of the nicer Super 8 motels around.  After the typical Super 8 waffle breakfast the next morning, we hit the road.

There are two ways to get to Zion from here.  One is to continue down I-70 to I-15 and enter the park from the west.  The other is to take the more scenic U.S. Highway 89 route and enter the park from the east. 

We opted for the scenic alternative, with a stop at Butch Cassidy’s boyhood home along the way.  Lunch was going to be at the Thunderbird Lodge in Mt. Carmel Junction, famous for their Ho-made pies, but they were closed along with most other places in town. 

We backtracked a few miles to Archies Food to Die For, an off-the-road food trailer that featured delicious but artery-clogging Utah Philly sandwiches. 

Returning to Mt. Carmel Junction, we turned onto Utah Highway 9.  Thirteen miles later, we reached the park boundary. 

The drive through this part of the park was breathtaking.  The sky was blue, the air clear and snow still garnished the sandstone. 

With traffic light, we stopped for photos at virtually every turnout on the route, most of which we had entirely to ourselves.

A few hundred images later, we went through the mile-long Zion tunnel, twisted down the switchbacks to river level and turned up the Virgin River Canyon toward Zion Park Lodge.

Our cabin was part of a fourplex, one of the deluxe cabins back when they were built in the 1920s.  It had two double beds, a writing desk, a couple of chairs and a gas-log insert in the formerly wood-burning fireplace.  Flames were already blazing when we entered.

Our first night’s dinner was at the lodge’s Red Rocks Grill.  Because of Covid, masks are required to enter all federal buildings, which includes the lodge.  The menu was short, and all orders were taken and paid for downstairs.  We were given a number card to display on our table in the upstairs dining room.  The system was efficient, but we missed the personal interaction one gets when dealing with a conventional waitstaff.

Back in the room, we retired by the fire with glasses of wine, which we personally imported from Colorado.  With no TV, no cell coverage and no internet, we would have time to rest, relax and just sit back and read.  Scrolling through my Kindle, I decided this would be a perfect time to once again reread “Desert Solitaire” by Ed Abbey. 

Kolob Country

One of the things I wanted to do on this trip to Zion was to revisit the Kolob Section of the park.  Many decades ago, a friend from Reno and I came down here for a Thanksgiving weekend backpacking trip to Kolob Arch.  It was snowy and I don’t think we actually made it all the way there.  This visit would be strictly a drive-through on pavement.

The Kolob section lies northwest of the main part of Zion National Park, and getting there requires a 40-mile drive from Zion Canyon.  There are no restaurants, no gift shops and even in the summertime, far fewer visitors out here. 

A five-mile, dead-end drive from the park entrance provides views of the canyon.  Like the main part of Zion, the landscape here consists of towering cliffs, bluffs, canyons and mesas. 

As we did coming into Zion, we stopped at virtually every pull-off on the road, shooting countless megapixels of images. 

“We should come back and explore this country with backpacks!” Dianne enthusiastically suggested at one of our stops.

I’m game.  Maybe on dry ground, we can actually make it all the way to Kolob Arch.

Nude

For those of us longing to ogle Mother Nature in the nude, there are few places better than Zion in the wintertime.  Limbs of the cottonwood trees, which come fully clothed with leaves come summertime, now stand buck naked. 

Beyond tower the canyon walls with sandstone cliffs bare as a pole dancer in a Texas strip club.  Fortunately, a lap dance in this au naturel environment can be had by simply lacing up the hiking boots and setting off down a trail.

The premiere hike in Zion Canyon is up Angels’ Landing.  It’s a steep, twisty climb up to a saddle followed by a walk up a death-defying narrow ridge to the top of a cliff overlooking the Virgin River Canyon. 

Even though the Park Service has installed chains for folks to use as handholds, some still manage to fall to their deaths.  “Scariest hike in America,” one YouTube video touts. 

We did that hike ten years ago when we came to Zion to celebrate the New Year weekend.  After 38 years living and climbing in Colorado, the hike for us was a piece of cake.

This year, the route up to Angels’ Landing was snow-covered and icy, we were told.  While we did have traction cleats we could strap on, Dianne and I decided to skip the crowds and explore some of the other trails.  One of them was to the Emerald Pools.

There are actually three Emerald Pools.  Lower Emerald Pool has a nice waterfall feeding it. 

That waterfall is fed from the Middle Emerald Pool, which has its own tiny waterfall.

Upper Emerald Pool is fed by a towering waterfall dropping from a notch in the box canyon cliffs.  In summertime, this place would be swarming with people.  We shared it with maybe a half-dozen fellow hikers and a Park Service volunteer.

Another hike took us up the Sand Bench Trail, which offered lofty views down the canyon toward the tourist trap of Springdale and up Pine Creek Canyon toward the switchbacks and tunnel.  We only met one other hiker on the route.

Late on our final afternoon, we walked the paved Riverside Trail up through the lower end of the Zion Narrows where decades ago, we led a Sierra Club group down from the top. 

On this walk, we watched an avalanche of ice break off from the cliffs and land on the trail below.  A half mile beyond, the route begins to hug the near vertical cliffs.  To prevent an ice fall from bonking hikers on the head out here, Park Service has wisely closed the trail beyond.

Industrial Tourism

Maybe it’s a symptom of being a travel journalist for over half my adult life, but I have this psychological need to rank things – best this, favorite that.  I repeatedly found myself doing that on this journey to Zion. 

How does Zion National Park compare with the other members of Utah’s “Mighty Five?”

When it comes to just plain scenic grandeur, I put Zion right at the top.  The cliffs and canyons here are absolutely awe inspiring.  Only Capitol Reef comes close.  At Bryce, non-hiking visitors look down on the scenery.  One must drop below the rim to feel engulfed by the environment.  It’s much the same for Arches and Canyonlands.

While Zion may offer the grandest grandeur, it’s in fourth out of the five when I rank my favorite Utah national park to visit.  Only Arches, in my book, comes in lower.  That’s because I hate crowds.

Zion gets around 4.5 million visitors each year, making it the third most popular national park in terms of visitation.  Only the Great Smokeys and Yellowstone see more visitors. 

Zion is way too small to handle that many people.  Cars line up for blocks at the entrance stations waiting to get in.  Campsites and lodge rooms are tough to find.  Visitors cram into shuttle buses to get into the Virgin River Canyon.  Trails and sites are crowded.  We’ve been told that folks sometimes need to wait hours in line to complete the ascent of Angels’ Landing.

Arches has the same problem.  As Ed Abbey warned in “Desert Solitaire,” it’s industrial tourism at its worst.

Fortunately, winter at Zion offers nature lovers like me a chance to get away from the madding crowds.  When we checked in, there were still rooms available for drop-in guests at Zion Park Lodge, and there were many empty spots at the park’s Watchman Campground.  We had no trouble finding parking spots at trailheads, roadside pullouts or in the neighboring tourist trap of Springdale.

The downside of winter visits, of course, is the weather.  It’s cold and snow is always possible.  Trails, especially those on higher or shaded ground can be covered with snow, ice or thick, gooey mud. 

While the visitor center was open, most of the park’s museums were not open.  In town, we found many restaurants and other businesses closed for the season, making it harder to find $30 souvenir t-shirts for sale.

Personally, I’ll give all that up for the opportunity to see a place this beautiful in the raw.  Besides, I already own one of those $30 t-shirts.

Devil with a White Dress On

When we signed up for a Colorado Masochists Club hike up Devil’s Canyon, temperatures were above freezing and the ground was dry.  That changed. 

The Fruita area, which some have referred to as the Icebox of the Grand Valley, got well over eight inches of snow followed by a week of subzero temperatures. 

No worries, we thought.  It will warm up and melt before our hike. 

It didn’t.

The leader was not going to let a little of that angelic white stuff keep us from experiencing the Devil’s very own canyon, so the trip was a go.  We packed our hiking stuff, and in 14-degree temperatures under overcast skies, we made the 2.4-mile drive to the trailhead where we met the other seven members of our upcoming hike.

We put traction cleats on our boots, and after the usual introductions, we headed up the main trail, which was well packed by the footprints of numerous other hikers.  At the appropriate junction, we broke off on the D3 trail that would take us up Devil’s.  It, too, had been previously hiked and was easy to follow. 

“Red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme,” Richard Thompson sings in his tale about a 1952 Vincent Black Lightning motorcycle.  We’ll, I’m kind of partial to red rock and white snow being my favorite color scheme. 

When the sky cleared, the sun came out and the cliffs lit up.  It was absolutely beautiful.  It’s a good thing I only had my iPhone to record the scene.  If I had a real camera with me, I’d still be up there snapping images. If it snows again, I’ll come back armed with the good stuff.

We trudged up the trail to an old cowboy line shack at the end of the loop.  After lunch on the rocks, we headed back down the canyon past a hoodoo pillar that looks very much like an Easter Island moai. 

The trip ended with a slog down through the canyon with numerous crossings of the half-frozen stream.

While the hike was only a bit over seven miles, walking on snow takes a bit more energy.  We were pleasantly fatigued.  Dianne and I sat on our folding chairs and took off our traction cleats. Finally, exerting maximum willpower, we eventually got back into the car for the long (2.4 miles) drive back home.  Back in the trailer, I stripped to jammies, poured some wine and treated myself to a healthy dose of Morphine.

A long, long hot shower comes next.

Finally Skiing Again

It’s been over two years since Dianne and I last hit the slopes.  We lost the 2019-2020 season due to surgeries – rotator cuff for me and knee replacement for Dianne.  We lost the 2020-2021 season due to the Covid lockdowns.  It’s now 2022 and the slopes are beckoning.

For about a third less than what Dianne was paying for her Vail Resorts Epic Pass (I always got mine for free), we bought annual passes to Powderhorn Mountain Resort, our local ski area.  At 1,600 acres, it’s small with only four chairlifts, one of which is a beginner lift, and another is a Magic Carpet conveyor belt for the youngsters.  The two remaining lifts service an array of intermediate groomers and host of black diamond runs.  Being our first time out, we agreed to stick to the easy stuff.

It didn’t take long to realize how out of shape I was.  With Covid closing our gym, we lost that for workouts.  We did buy a rowing machine and a Total Gym for home, but they proved to be a poor substitute for a good workout center. 

Then came the move.  We spent a month just packing and preparing the house for sale.  Exercise was limited to lifting and lugging boxes.  We tried to get some exercise by walking around Strasburg for the month we were stuck there, and we’ve hit the trails out here in Fruita when we could.  Our diet hasn’t been too good, either, with a lot of dining out.  Then came the snow and bitter cold, causing us to be cooped up in our trailer.  Some days, we never even got out of our jammies.

Then we headed out to the slopes.  After two runs down on a cold, windy day, I was ready for the cafeteria.  We rested until it was time for lunch, bought some pricy, ski-area food (and brews) and rested some more.  We finally headed back up the chairlift.

After three more runs down the mountain, I called it quits.  I was suffering a fifth-stage case of TB (thigh burn).  I limped back to the car like I’d just come off one of our 50-mile, Rim to Rim to Rim hikes in the Grand Canyon. 

Back home, I kicked back on the couch while my in-house nursing staff medicated my pain with soothing cups of hot mulled wine.

Snow on the ground, drywall going up

We drove past the new house this afternoon. It’s been snowing for three days now, so the ground was covered with Colorado’s famous white stuff. That’s good because the snow covers the mud. Concrete for the driveway can’t be poured until the ground dries and thaws.

The wood covering the door has been screwed shut for the day, so we couldn’t go in. We did, however, get to peek through the dining room window.

The building crew has been busy nailing up drywall. Progress is being made!

Meeting the Developer

After a few days of rain and cold, we headed out to the property to check on this week’s progress.  About the only new thing we see is that workmen are starting to nail up the foam insulation that backs the siding. 

As we were scoping the place out from another angle, we saw a man clad in a bowler hat walking through the property with his dog.  He was obviously not one of the workers.

“Are you John?” Dianne asked. 

John is the property developer.  After identifying ourselves as the folks who would be purchasing the back unit, we chatted about construction progress and asked when we might be offered an actual contract to buy the place. 

You see, while we have spec’d out all of the house layout, features and appliances as well as modified electrical and plumbing features, we have never been given a contract to actually buy the place. 

The hang-up has been determining a completion and closing date.  Between Covid delays and winter weather (can’t pour concrete on frozen ground), John cannot firmly determine a completion date.  Although the contract closing date can always be extended, he says he doesn’t like to do that. 

We explained to him that we have a trip planned from March 1st through April 15th.  If the place cannot be finished by mid-February, we’d like a mid-April closing.  He said that using that as a completion date would not be a problem.  He’ll get with the realtor and a contract should be coming our way soon.

Of course, that means we’ll need to pony up some earnest money and perhaps need to pay for some of the out-of-pocket upgrades (like our 48-bottle wine cooler) we ordered.  But at least we’ll finally have a house legally on order, and that’s encouraging.

Who is Dan Leeth?

Dan Leeth was a full-time travel writer and photographer whose words and images have graced newspapers, magazines and books across the United States and Canada. 

Growing up in the American West, Dan developed an early love of the outdoors and wild places.  He has hiked, camped, backpacked, floated, crawled and climbed into and out of wilderness canyons, deserts and mountains around the world.  In the winter, Dan is an avid downhill skier.

Dan was bitten by the travel bug early as a child.  As a teenager, he put 60,000+ miles on his first new car in less than two years.  Since then, he has visited, photographed and written about travel experiences on all seven continents.  His specialties include Antarctica, adventure, skiing, city walks, historical sites, natural places, road trips and sharing the lighter side of travel.

Dan has nurtured a love of photography since he was knee high to a lens cap.  Largely journalistic in style, his work has graced nearly every article he has had published.  His stock images may be purchased through Alamy.com.

Escaping from the Denver metropolitan area, Dan and his wife, Dianne, now reside in Fruita, Colorado.