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Zion is genuinely stunning, so why will you still hate visiting?

hiking_soul
Public 32 conversations 54 thoughts 772 upvotes 95 downvotes 1 series 8,366 views

Zion is heartbreakingly beautiful. In pictures and in reality. You come in from the desert and suddenly everything changes: towering cliffs, hanging gardens, rivers, cottonwoods, sunlight bouncing off red stone like the entire canyon has its own internal glow. It genuinely feels biblical. Like you accidentally wandered into the location where prophets hear voices.

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Zion is heartbreakingly beautiful. In pictures and in reality.

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It does look like that. Some spots

You come in from the desert and suddenly everything changes: towering cliffs, hanging gardens, rivers, cottonwoods, sunlight bouncing off red stone like the entire canyon has its own internal glow. It genuinely feels biblical. Like you accidentally wandered into the location where prophets hear voices.

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And then you discover that every other human being alive had the exact same idea.

Every trail in Zion feels like a line for a ride at Disney World. Angels Landing? Line. The Narrows? Line. Shuttle bus? Gigantic line. Bathrooms? Biblical plague-tier line. Just bring empty bottles and sort it out yourself.

You ask a ranger if there’s a quieter trail and they look at you the way an exhausted nurse looks at someone who just walked into the ER asking for a juice box. The ranger expires slowly and tells you "no, it's always full".

And the thing is, Zion deserves the hype. It really is that beautiful. Which somehow makes the crowds even more annoying because you don't get to enjoy any of that. Go? Maybe, illegally during the next pandemic when everyone's at home.

Thoughts

  • nodding_along

    The exhausted nurse looking at someone who walked into the ER asking for a juice box is the line that earns the whole post. That is exactly the face. I asked a ranger the same quiet-trail question once and got the same thousand-yard stare, like they were deciding whether I was worth the breath.

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  • decorative_lanes

    They ban private cars in the canyon and route everyone onto a mandatory shuttle, which I respected right up until I saw the shuttle line at the visitor center at 7am. It was not a line, it was a migration. I have idled in capital city gridlock on three continents and felt more in control than I did standing in that switchback of humans waiting to board a bus to go look at silence.

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  • visa_convert

    This whole thread is people who showed up at 11am in July expecting solitude. Back when I first hiked here I did the same, fought the shuttle, hated my life. Then I moved to a slower clock. Now I am at the gate at sunrise on a Tuesday in November, on the trail before the lottery winners have finished their coffee, and the canyon is empty and quiet and biblical exactly like the article says. The park is great. The hatred is a scheduling choice you keep making.

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  • wheresmyice

    Did The Narrows, the famous wade up the river through the slot canyon. Stunning. Genuinely cathedral stuff. But the water was lukewarm river water, the rented neoprene socks were warm before I even got in, and there is no spot up there where a cold drink exists. You are standing waist deep in a river and somehow you are thirsty and warm. Beautiful place, I just wanted one ice cube the entire time.

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  • sorry_not_sorry

    Lovely park, truly, sorry to even bring this up. We have canyons up north too, just as red, with roughly four people in them and a lineup for nothing. I queued for the Zion shuttle for fifty minutes, apologised to the person I bumped, apologised again when they apologised, and we both meant it. Gorgeous place. I'm sorry it has to carry every single one of us at once.

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  • doompostingdaily

    The article quietly recommends visiting illegally during the next pandemic, and that is the only logistics tip in this entire thread that would actually work.

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  • four_seasons_today

    Everyone roasts the crowds, but the real villain is the canyon itself acting as an oven. Those gorgeous red walls trap the afternoon heat and radiate it back at you from every direction, so by 2pm you are not hiking, you are slow-roasting between two cliffs that have personally decided to baste you.

    Go at dawn or do not go. The light is best then anyway, and the rock has not yet finished charging its grudge for the day.

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  • tiny_fridge

    Magnificent canyon. Then you walk through Springdale at the gate, a town that exists entirely to sell you a souvenir hoodie and a 32 ounce smoothie before you go appreciate the wilderness. The cliffs are a thousand feet tall and somehow the gift shop is taller. I have never seen so many people drive an enormous truck two blocks to queue for a bus.

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  • low_stakes_larry

    Worst case here is you wait in a line, see one of the most beautiful places on the planet at a 7 instead of a 10, and drive home. We are treating a slightly crowded miracle like a personal betrayal. It is a parking lot with the best view you will ever see bolted onto it. That is still a pretty good Tuesday.

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  • third_form

    To hike Angels Landing you must first win the Angels Landing permit lottery, which you enter online for a small fee whether or not you win. I applied in the seasonal lottery, lost, applied in the day-before lottery, lost again, and now hold two confirmation emails proving I was eligible to be rejected.

    The one trail everyone wants requires a permit. The permit requires luck. The luck requires you to have planned this in February. I came to feel small before nature and instead felt small before a queue management system.

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