Zion National Park

Zion Is one of my favorite parks in the southern Utah region I would highly recommend spending as much time as you can here. It is located in southern Utah at Springdale. You can use this city to check the weather. There are many things you can do there, Rock climbing, hiking, and canyoneering and the most common. Transportation in the park is nice for the summer season. They have a shuttle that runs from April thru October. This runs in the upper canyon where most of the climbs and hikes are accessible. It is a good idea to get to the campground early to get a spot and walk to the visitor center from there to catch the shuttle. If you go in the off-season, it's not that busy and you don't need to worry about it. The Park map they give you at the gate will help you enough to find the trail heads. If you are going to try and go canyoneering you should check out Toms Canyoneering site. It has a lot of great maps and info from the area. The maps are easy to read and great to use. Some of the fun intro hikes that I would recommend would be the Hidden canyon trail from the Weeping Rock trailhead, Angels landing, and Orderville canyon via the narrows. These are all great day hikes. The narrows can get cold so I wouldn't recommend it in the cold seasons. The Hidden canyon trail has some exposure but there is chains to hold on to. Angels Landing is a long hike up but worth the work for the view. Another great hike that is long is if you go from the Kolob canyon past lava point to the west rim trail. It takes about four days and is about 38 miles long. You start at Lee Pass, go through Hop Valley to Lava Point, through Potato Hollow down the west rim trail to Angels Landing. The snow stays late on this trail in the spring and it's easy to lose the trail near Spendlove Knoll. If also could require a lot of post holing through the thigh deep snow. If you have questions or need to rent canyoneering gear, you should check out Zion Adventure Company. They are really cool to me every time I go there. E-mail me if you have any questions or comments.