Up the river with a rented stick

Today we hiked the lower end of the Narrows at Zion National Park, which basically means we walked up the Virgin River until we were standing between two sandstone cliffs, 1500 feet high and 22 feet apart. I've never seen such a beautiful place. It's absolutely stunning. The Grand Canyon is awe-inspiring, but because it's so vast - you're looking at gigantic formations a mile or two or three away - it's sort of surreal. There's nothing surreal about walking in a river, watching the sunlight play off the walls and the water. Definitely the highlight of our trip so far.

Since hiking the Narrows involves negotiating a lot of rocks in a fairly fast-moving river, those in the know recommend you use a walking stick. A woman we talked to at the shuttle stop (the National Parks have an excellent free shuttle service - big thank you to Rhonda DeLong for letting me know about this ) confirmed that a stick really is a huge help, and since we're in the desert, where laying hands on a good walking stick is tougher than it is in, say, northern Michigan, we shelled out $5 each and rented sticks. They were just dowels, about 2" diameter, with a hole drilled through near the top and a piece of nylon webbing tied through it as a wrist strap. We figure about 3 minutes of labor went into turning it into a walking stick, but I'll tell ya' it was the most valuable piece of equipment on the trail. Worth every one of those 500 pennies.
Some people used aluminum hiking sticks and some sacrificed old downhill ski poles, but the low-tech wooden staffs really worked the best. I saw a guy later on the shuttle with a nice-looking aluminum pole bent almost 90 degrees. He didn't look happy.

Nick was a little apprehensive about how deep the water would be. We told him it might be waist-deep on him, and apparently he decided he was going to have to do a lot of swimming, which made for a tense morning - lots of grousing and foot-dragging.
That disappeared almost immediately when he stepped into the water and started splashing upstream. He did have a tougher go than the rest of us because his legs are shorter, but he also made no particular effort to get out of the water, preferring to wade through waist-deep water even when he didn't have to.

At one point, as we stopped for a break, Nick overheard a family trying to troubleshoot a blown-out sandal. As they walked away one of them mentioned that they could fix it with duct tape. Next thing you know, Nick grabs a full-sized roll of gorilla tape out of his pack and goes splashing after them. They were very grateful - we saw them several times up and down the trail - and we began to learn the extent of Nick's overpacking. (As it dawned on us why he kept losing his balance. He was probably carrying 20 pounds by the time he soaked everything down. In addition to his camelbak and snacks, he had a notepad, four pencils, a pen, two extra pair of socks, two hats, three flashlights, a bunch of batteries and other miscellaneous small doodads. The only thing in a waterproof case was his survival kit.

When we turned around and headed downriver, the boys floated whenever they could and stopped to swim and play in some of the deeper holes. Nick emptied his gear onto a rock and we re-packed him - the basics in his bag and all the extra junk in mine. I immediately understood why he'd been so cranky earlier. I think he learned an important lesson about packing light; I just hope the lesson wasn't "If you pack too much, Mom will carry it."

We got back to our motel a little blistered, a little sunburned and really tired, but in the best kind of way. Our gear is drying on a bench outside our room, camelbaks are hanging over the bathtub, Ziploc baggies are packed with snacky stuff for tomorrow.