4.3 miles of hiking • 1250' elevation gain •
At first, entering Zion in the afternoon was a little overwhelming. Crowds, cars, no parking. Once we figured out that we just needed to find a place to park anywhere in Springdale, and that the shuttle to the park and within the park was free, we were all set. We loaded up our daypacks and set out into the park. The shuttle system was efficient, we never had to wait more than a few minutes for one to show up. Many visitors opted to cycle to car free roads with the shuttles, and I felt a little sad I had not brought my bike along for this trip.
Being too late in the day for a long hike, we opted for a quick jaunt up the West Rim Trail to see the famous Angel's Landing hike. Pretty impressive seeing the engineering that went into Walter's Wiggles, the steep switchbacks that lead up up up into the park. The trail was fairly crowded, and upon eyeing the line of hikers going up Angel's Landing, we decided we would rather not dodge inexperienced tourist hikers on steep drop offs, so we ended our journey there and headed back down in search of dinner and a place to camp for the night. Camp spots in Zion are pretty hard to come by so we opted to head out of the park and camped for the night on BLM land.
