This trip was actually a continuation of our mountain biking trip along with North Rim of the Grand Canyon. But I like to keep the posts short, and the trip was broken up by the fact that the biking tour company, Escape Adventures, dropped us off in St. George Utah. There we picked up our climbing stuff, packed the bikes and delivered them to the shipping store (they don’t fit in the plane when there are four of us plus gear).
We then headed to Springdale, UT, the small town right outside the park boundary. There are closer airports than St. George (eg. Hurricane), but you need to rent a car no matter where you go, and St. George has all the services.
Of course you don’t have to go canyoneering to enjoy Zion. Yosemite will always be my favorite National Park, but Zion is clearly number two.
First we did Angel’s Landing trail, definitely one of the best dayhikes in the nation.
Then we suited up with rented drysuits and dropped into Pine Creek Canyon. I had done this before, so I knew what it was about and whether my kids could do it. We practiced free-hanging rappels at home off an old bridge because that was the scariest part of this. The worst part turned out to be my son’s leaky dry suit. Each time he swam through a pool it would fill up with COLD water and we would have to pull on the rubber seal around his ankle to let the water out.
West Coast Flying Adventures 