After arriving at Zion Nat. Park last night I took off on a run a little before 7 AM from the campground. I ran up Zion canyon along the Pa'rus trail until it ended and then up the highway past the Grotto and partway around the base of angels landing where I turned around. I'm estimating it to be about 6 miles each way. It was such a beautiful morning as the sun started to hit the upper cliffs in the canyon. It was probably around 50 deg. to start out with a steady headwind while running up the canyon which felt nice after all the 18-25 deg. mornings the last couple of weeks. I ran up for 52 min. and back down in 45. When I went to put on my running shoes that morning, I realized I had brought two left shoes from the two pair of Saucony T3s I have. I had to wear a pair of cheap hiking shoes. They weren't terrible but I was starting to feel blisters by the turn around and got worse all the way down the canyon.
That afternoon we did the 5 mile round trip angels landing hike.It was my wife and sons first time and it was a bit scary but they loved it. Back in January the day after the Painters 1/2 we tried the hike and made it to the top of Walters Wiggles and couldn't go any farther because of snow and ice. In fact Walters Wiggles was ice packed and we barely made it up that. The last time I hiked it I was about 15 yrs old [about 33 years ago] and they didn"t have any of the chains except about 200 feet. I don't even recall seeing any other people back then. We only ran into a couple of other hikers in Jan. when we did it but now it's got a lot of people. It was still great. My feet were quite sore by the end of the day after running in bad shoes and then the steep downhill second half of the hike but I loved every minute and the weather was fantastic. In the 70s. | 