Anna update

We camped for three nights around New Year’s in Zion National Park (Dec 30 – Jan 2).  It was great, and cold.  I think the low temp overnight was around 15 degrees.  Naturally, we only had six sleeping bags for the seven of us, so I volunteered to sleep in a mound of blankets so the girls could each have a sleeping bag.  We brought, and covered them with, extra blankets as not all of their bags are rated to temps in the teens, but I think we were all warm overall.  One key lesson: when it’s cold, don’t skimp on firewood! 

Our first full day we slept in a little bit and opted to drive about two hours to hike Wire Pass to Buckskin Gulch.  The last 8.5 miles of the drive was on a dirt road that had a decent amount of snow and ice on it.  Fortunately, some folks that had been there recently posted online regarding the condition of the road and we were confident our van would do fine, and it did.  

Buckskin Gulch is a 20+ mile long slot canyon with only a couple entrances, one being at Wire Pass.  We hiked about 2 miles on the Wire Pass trail to get to Buckskin Gulch, and there were some cool slot canyons just on Wire Pass itself.  As the Wire Pass trail joined with Buckskin Gulch, we were treated to a wide section of canyon with towering walls.  We opted to turn right, as the info online all said that was the way to go (we verified that by going about a mile up to the left after we got back; it was cool, but not as cool as the section to the right).

I forget now, but I think we hiked in Buckskin Gulch for about 3 miles and it was glorious.  In some spots, the canyon was very narrow and we had to squeeze through some slots.  In others, it was 100+ feet wide that allowed for views of the soaring walls.  As the sun descended, its light reflecting on the walls was stunning.  We knew we were at the point of needing to turn around as we wanted to be off the dirt/icy road before dark (spoiler alert: we failed), but we kept wanting to see what was around the next bend.  We’re glad we kept going as our final view was stunning, as you can see in the last picture.

The temps were pretty cold on the hike, as we were out of the sun for most of it.  There was a decent amount of cow plops/"freshies" (dung) in the canyon (not sure how the cattle squeeze through the narrow portions), that naturally led to a discussion about the freezing point of cow dung.  I mean, they looked frozen, but how could you really know?  I thought it had to do with the moisture content in the plops, with drier plops remaining unfrozen until lower temps.  Some of my children disagreed.  Thus, in an effort to expand the body of scientific knowledge, I took it upon myself to conduct an experiment by kicking a plop and seeing if it was frozen.  You’ll have to watch the video below to find out what we learned.

On our way back, we climbed up and around on the hills surrounding Wire Pass’s slot canyons.  It was really fun and just a delightful day.  The drive home was uneventful, even if we had to drive the dirt road in the dark.  The roads were clear as it hadn’t snowed for about 4 days, but there were a couple sketchy spots just outside of Zion’s east entrance that I had noticed on the way in that I was careful around.  Back in camp we started a roaring fire, devoured our dinner, and enjoyed hot chocolate.  All in all, not a bad way to spend the last day of 2020!