I'm going to be Iron, Like a Lion, in Zion*

A frosty morning beckoned at Bryce Canyon – we woke up to a scene unchanged from the night before. A thick carpet of sparking, iced snow still clung to the roof of the hotel, coffee coloured heaps of it pushed to the sides of the car park. After a sensational breakfast just behind the lobby we headed out to pick up the trail where we’d left off the night before, starting with Natural Bridge and finishing with Inspiration Point, sliding gracelessly over icy paths and watching idiots take their own lives in their hands, inching out along snowy cornices in the hopes of a slightly better photo opportunity, hoodoos and gulches a thousand feet below.

After a brief snow fight, a somewhat lame snowman build exercise (the snow was frozen pretty well solid – it was more like trying to build one with ice than snow), me disappearing up to my thighs in a rare patch of the soft stuff (attemping to photograph trees burned black by a forest fire some years before) and an impromptu snowball fight with minor collateral damage we collected a pretty wretched cup of coffee at Ruby’s then left Bryce, headed down Long Valley for Zion National Park.

Apart from a brief bit of misfortune at a combination Buffalo farm and log cabin B&B (where we took a look at the cabins, decided they were too much at $109 for a standard cabin and $229 for a two level one, then endured the kids griping for next half hour about how much they’d like to have lived in a log cabin, despite never mentioning it before), we finally arrived at Orderville and headed west, to the eastern entrance of the park.

I’d been to Zion before, but only via Springdale to the south - heading this way in was a magical experience. We passed through a tunnel built back in the early days of the park, so narrow that modern RVs require an escort to proceed through it, while traffic from the other side has to wait. It’s an amazing engineering feat, positioned only a few metres behind the cliff faces, and has multiple bends. At the apex of each, a window framed in concrete and cut into the cliff face offers a brief, spectacular vista of the park to come. The only tragedy was that you couldn’t stop. Ultimately, with the exception of the windows, the entire drive of around ¾ of a mile is a quite dark, relentless, claustrophobic experience - even though I don’t suffer from it, there’s still a palpable sense of relief when the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel comes into view and you pop out the other side.

We continued down through switchbacks, layered rock formations, Ponderosa, Utah Juniper and Pinyon Pine and sheer cliffs, until we hit the Zion valley floor. As had been the case for the last few days, the prospect of a spectacular sunrise was looking unlikely so, after confirming there was no accommodation at Zion Lodge inside the park, we headed out to Springdale and picked up a Quality Inn room for a song.

Springdale has changed colossally since my last visit in 2004 – my impression back then was a small, scrappy town at the entrance of the park, with a small cluster of shops and old house under cottonwoods and aspen. Now, it bears a similarity to Sedona, my reference point for small towns grown large. Although it’s increased in size, it’s a rare exception to the rule in that the expansion has worked in its favour rather than against it – it’s still a small town, but the more tatty places have been swept away and replaced with art galleries, restaurants, coffee shops and a general feeling of prosperity, well being and optimism.

My own well being and optimism was swept away in a tsunami of envy when I visited the photographic gallery of David J West – the guy takes simply masterful shots of not only Zion National Park, but pretty well anywhere the guy happens to point his Linhof, Hasselblad or, no doubt, box brownie. If he has an Arca Swiss ball-head or $10K Leica Noctilux f/0.95, he’s entirely entitled to it. Just to really add insult to injury, he was at the gallery, introduced himself, and was a sensational, down to earth guy, happy to chat, share ideas and talk. To make matters worse, he’s only young – 35, maybe – and his wife, and their kid, were both in the gallery, which felt more like you were walking into someone’s home than their office. It’d be far easier to just hate him and be done with it!

With stomachs rumbling we left, passing shops selling artistic brass windmills, and headed for the Pizza and Noodle Company on the main street to carb up on a couple of pizzas and a microbrew, then had an early night, optimistic that tomorrow’s sunrise would be better than today’s.

*No, I have no idea what Bob Marley was thinking either. Dude had clearly scored some bitchin’ weed, though.