Trading Winter for Winter in SW USA

The Vitals

Date: March 25 – April 2, 2023

Location: SE Nevada, SW Utah, NW Arizona

Partners: Brittany

Photos: Brittany

The Trip

Highlights

• Rock Climbing at Red Rock Canyon
• Warm weather in Zion
• Views along the drive from Zion to the Grand Canyon
• Rim to River at the Grand Canyon (South Khaibab trail to Bright Angel)

At the end of winter in BC we thought we would take a different type of vacation than usual – one that was based around driving but still had lots of camping and outdoors activities. The week before we left we watched weather forecasts and webcams showing sub-zero temperatures across the desert and wave after wave of snow in Zion and the Grand Canyon. While not an escape from winter, the trip was still a resounding success with only one real deviation from our planned itinerary.

We flew in and out of Las Vegas, landing our first day around noon and spending the next couple of hours getting the rental car, grocery shopping, and filling our water jug before driving south of the city to Lovell Canyon. Here you can find free dispersed camping along a quiet road. There were dozens of other groups along the road but we easily found space. We finished our first afternoon hiking around the canyon in a free-form way checking out cacti, joshua trees, Woodhouse’s scrub jays, and watching the sunset on the desert horizon.

We woke up early in subzero temperatures. Our water bottles were half ice and the ground had heaved with the heavy frost. Not much to do at camp other than pack up and drive to Red Rock Canyon for our first day of climbing. We parked at the second lot and walked down into the complicated rock formations of Calico Basin trying to find a suitable warm-up area. We settled on the “Meetup Wall” that had routes from 5.7 to low 10’s. Every route had amazing holds and friction but there was also abundant evidence of holds breaking which made me glad to start so easy. The highlight route was the short, steep, hueco covered Pumpkin King.

The day had mixed weather with bouts of bright sunshine followed by black clouds and graupel. Satisfied after 7 pitches, we spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the bright red formations around Calico and looking for tortoises amongst the yellow sandstone further down the road at the quarry. That night we camped at the Red Rock Canyon campground. It wasn’t particularly interesting or pretty but it was comfortable and the camp hosts were really friendly.

Our second day was to be another day of sport climbing in the canyon but had an inauspicious start when our car failed to turn over. We had noticed it hadn’t been starting well the previous day and it appeared the battery was truly dead. Luckily we got a boost and the voltage from the alternator was looking good so we could drive ourselves back to the city to make the swap.

An hour behind schedule but in a new car, we again drove to Red Rock Canyon. This time we stopped at the visitor centre to see the tortoises we had failed to find in the wild the prior day. We also tried a new climbing area – starting with a couple of routes at Cactus Massacre before spending the rest of the day at Civilization Crag climbing 10 pitches between very easy and low 5.10, the highlights being “One Flew Over a Cactus Nest”, “Manifest Destiny”, and “Umayyad Caliphate”.

After driving around the scenic loop for a second time, we headed into Vegas for a night in a hotel and a visit to the strip. While not exactly our type of fun, it was worthwhile to experience the Vegas strip in person. We walked up and down the length, watched the Bellagio fountain, lost some money in the casino, lost some more at Caesar’s Palace, and then returned to sleep in a clean, warm bed.

Our third day was a travel day to Zion National Park. The start of the drive out of North Las Vegas was pretty boring with desert flatness all around but got more interesting after Mesquite when the highway suddenly enters the Virgin River Gorge and offered a perfect place to stop and make lunch. An hour later we reached the Zion entrance gate. It was surprising to me how hidden the canyon is when you approach from this direction. You never really get a great view until you are already inside the park.

Our plan had been to spend one night in the mega Watchman campground and then a second night in the backcountry but conditions weren’t in our favour. The Kolob canyon area was inaccessible due to a road washout, the West Rim Trail was under five feet of snow, and the south desert would turn into a mud pit in an incoming storm (according to the park ranger). We decided our best move was to do an evening hike to watch the sunset from the Watchman trail and then just hike as much of the West Rim as we could the next day.

We woke up at 5:00 am in order to pack up and get the first shuttle of the morning up the canyon to the Grotto. The West Rim trail and the world famous Angel’s Landing trail overlap for a few kilometers so it is worth getting as early of a start as possible because calling Angel’s Landing popular is an understatement. We hiked up the paved trail and continued beyond as the terrain got more and more snowy. We wore microspikes and continued for a few kilometers until we reached the end of established footsteps in the snow. We tried to poke a little bit further but we just postholed and there was some avalanche risk in the warming temperatures. The views weren’t great so we have no photos above the snow line.

Back at the road we took the shuttle bus to the end of the line so that we could see a few more of the sights including Moonlight Buttress. After taking the shuttle back to the entrance, we got ready to drive for a couple of hours east but with no fixed destination in mind. It turns out the road through the east gate is way more picturesque as we stopped numerous times to take photos of the red rocks, mesas, and some sheep.

Past the park, the drive was still beautiful as we crossed high plateaus with scrub and snow before descending to an even more arid climate as we neared Lake Powell. We attempted to camp at Lake Powell only to discover that our chosen destination was now a mile from the lakeshore. There was also a powerful wind and the rain forecast for Zion was meant to reach here as well. We continued to Page, AZ instead with a stop at the Glen Canyon dam before another night in a hotel and a really pleasant dinner at the cheesy “Gone West” restaurant. While the restaurant was dead when we arrived, it soon filled with a couple of tour buses from Korea and the beers came in frosty, frozen mugs

We woke up in the morning to rain pounding the hotel windows and felt glad we had not camped in the desert. This day was another travel day to the Grand Canyon but our first stop was the Domino’s to buy a pizza as a reward for a big day hike in our near future. The next stop was the famous Horseshoe Bend lookout – the photo spot used on wikipedia for the Colorado River.

For the next few hours we enjoyed amazing views of red mesas and wide open country with a few bouts of snow and buffeting winds. As we neared the east gate of the Grand Canyon National Park, snow restarted and the weather turned extra bleak. We were surprised at the size of the trees high on the canyon rim and stopped at the first few lookouts as a few brief spells of sun took hold.

At the Mather campground we found many big branches down and some trees uprooted. Evidently it was a truly unusual wind storm. We set up our camp and went to the gift shop to find some information regarding the shuttle schedule, availability of water, and any recent trail reports. All over the internet and the national park village are warnings to not attempt hiking from the rim to the river and back in a day but the stats are not overwhelming – a hair under 27 km and about 1500 meters of elevation to gain back.

We decided we were up to the challenge and went to bed early as a couple of inches of snow started their accumulation on the tent. The forecast was for -8 C overnight and I spent a couple of hours too cold to sleep. With an alarm at 4:45 a.m. we extracted ourselves from our sleeping bags and got to the shuttle bus to the South Khaibab trailhead.

This was not the first shuttle of the day so we weren’t the first on the trail but we descended with our spikes on and reached the first lookout moments before the sun broke the horizon. After a break to watch the day begin, we continued to descend as the temperature rose from below zero to around 15 C or so at the Colorado River. Along the way we were passed by a mule train and we observed each rock layer change with interest. The South Khaibab Trail is steeper and more exposed to the sun than Bright Angel and is the more common route to descend to Bright Angel Campground.

At the campground around 9:30 a.m., we ate a very early lunch and soaked up the tiny oasis with some birds and a few deer. The trail then followed the river for a couple of kilometers before swinging slightly uphill as we made our way up a delightful small canyon with some stands of trees. The trail got progressively more busy, muddy, and slippery as we began to climb much more steeply up switchbacks past 3 Mile Resthouse and then 1.5 Mile Resthouse. Because of the big plateau at about 2/3 depth, the views of the canyon don’t change much through this stretch with maybe just a snatch of the river visible. We were back at the canyon rim by 3:00 p.m. for a round trip time of nine hours.

We returned to camp and had a rest while we ate our Domino’s pizza. The pizza was a honestly a bit of a letdown so an elk passing by in the campground became the highlight instead.

The last day was mostly a travel day and much of the drive was uninteresting. We chose to drive a stretch of Route 66 rather than take the I-40 and we were rewarded with no traffic, some pronghorn antelope, and hundreds of prairie dogs. We also visited the Hoover Dam late in the day but the accumulated fatigue from the week was starting to wear on us. I did appreciate the Art Deco styling that is only noticed when touring the facility.

Back in Vegas we figured out our packing disaster in the back of the car in the parking lot of an In-N-Out Burger. Our flight left at 10:00 p.m. over the lights of Vegas but I slept the entire time with a grateful reunion with my own bed a little after 2:00 a.m.