When you come to southern Utah you usually come ready to embrace the outdoors, to soak it all in, to sleep under it, hike in it, and then go home re-energized and ready for work again. If that is your goal when visiting then you are in luck as there is so much to offer people who love the outdoors, and want to experience all that there is to offer.
There’s a new and upcoming sport called canyoneering that is rapidly becoming very popular here in America, and specifically here in Zion National Park area as Zion is the meca for canyoneering. The canyons that you can experience and go down are some of the most dramatic and stunning canyons that you can find anywhere in the world. From the ever famous Pine Creek to the incredibly difficult Heaps Canyon, all of these hikes offer some of the best canyoneering you can ever experience. And for a guided canyoneering experience check out Zion Ponderosa.
There’s another offshoot canyon near Zion that I recently did with the help of Zion Ponderosa’s canyoneering tour called Yankee Doodle. You’ll find the canyon behind Silver Reef and the Red Cliffs Reserve area and as you can see from these images it offers tremendous beauty and a stunning drop into the canyon that you won’t soon forget.
Look at the beauty of those canyon walls. I remember as I was descending the rope wanting to go as slow as possible to soak in the view that I was taking in. It’s a completely different experience seeing a canyon wall up close as you’re dropping down it with the help of a rope.
There’s also something about getting off of a rope after a beautiful descent down a canyon, and then looking back up at what you’ve come down, looking at something that in a small way you’ve beaten, something you’ve overcome.
After the first major descent you’ll get to have the second part of canyoneering fun, wandering through the canyon trying to find the best ways to get through it. All with the beautiful rock walls that surround you as you go. It’s an adventure in every sense of the word. You start out with a massive drop down the wall and then you’ve got to circumvent the canyon until you run into another rappel down a shorter drop.
Depending on what time of year you go you may run into water and will have to get a little wet, but more often than not you won’t even have to get your shoes wet. The canyon itself is relatively short in comparison and before long it will open up and you’ll have a short ascent up to the road. I was shocked that it took us around 4 hours to go through the canyon, and then once you hike up and out of it you are right next to the cars. Which is just goes to show how big of a challenge these can be, and time consuming as well.
This video shows some cool shots of Zion, Arches, and other popular areas in southern Utah.
If you’re looking for an adventure you’re not soon to forget, then canyoneering in Zion is one of the best things you can do. It’s beautiful, it’s exciting, and it’s a memory you’re not soon to forget. It’s beautiful, it’s exciting, and it’s a memory you’re not soon to forget.
