Zion National Park: The Kolob Terrace

We went to Zion National Park for the last two days of our trip. Jimmy had only been there for something like 6 hours before many years ago and had gone up the narrows that day. It was up to 100 or a little higher but i had started adjusting to the heat, finally. Still, we waited until around 5pm that first day and to avoid even more heat we drove up high, to the Kolob Terrace, where i wanted to show Jimmy one of my favorite sunset spots.

I love the little sidewalks you can find between layers of crossbedding. They make it so much easier.

The road to the Kolob Terrace begins well outside the park halfway to Hurricane, but anyone who has done "The Subway" would be familiar with it. Getting to my spot could be described as a backcountry wilderness hike, since there are no trails that go there. Since it is a sensitive area i'm not inclined to give directions either. As such, after a little discomfort to get there we had the whole place to ourselves and the sunset did not disappoint.

The hike is basically through a maze of hoodoos full of unexpected sights and obstacles.

Beautiful wind carved rock formations abound and should not be touched or climbed on. I took nearly identical pictures of some of these scenes 20 years ago, so i thought it would be interesting to see if some of the tiny and delicate rock strands demonstrated more erosion or damage in that time. It's really hard to tell on those old print negatives but i do see some changes.

The Kolob Terrace is an unfortunate area of Zion that was destroyed by a chain of cinder cones running from the north all the way down to the Grand Canyon and I assume the San Francisco Peaks of Arizona. The mini volcanoes burst up right in the middle of the sandstone and buried all the canyons under hundreds of feet of lava. The lava flattened out into fields of juniper sage, making the area attractive to pioneer ranchers.

Eventually we decided to go for the distant peak but we ran out of time!

Crazy at it seemed the best way over this wall was to walk along the top. It's fairly steep on both sides and very narrow.

After a bit of confusing struggle it opened back up but it's much more up down than it looks.

Seeing a dried up pool of cattails is the last thing you expect to see up here. I've been here in the past when it was full of water.

Across a lava field to another island of rock, then lava, then another island. It seems to just keep on going. The Tabernacle Dome catching the late sun in the distance.