Ever since doing Orderville a few years ago, I have been itching to go back. Manina mentioned it has been a while since we’ve done a couples trip with friends, so we combined those ideas and started making arrangements.
I reserved a Zion NP backcountry permit for six and booked a shuttle to the trailhead from Zion Adventure Company.
We found some neighbors to join us: Mike and Penny Bergeron, and KC and Hannah Stayner. The girls were a little nervous, having never done these kinds of adventures. Penny’s greatest outdoor achievement has been hiking the Y.
We drove down on Thursday and stayed the night at the Stayner’s place. We got up early on Friday and headed into the park.
We got the backcountry permit and then walked back into Springdale to Zion Adventure Company where we had booked a shuttle.
The shuttle dropped us off at 10:30am and we started hiking down the road.
That part of the hike is a little boring. But soon we started hiking down into the canyon.
It just kept getting prettier with each mile. Towering walls with trees with changing colors.
We took lots of pictures.
At about mile 8 we started seeing a little water. Mostly just up to our ankles, but then it got a little more technical. We got to the obstacle known as the guillotine and had to repel into a pool of water.
I told everyone that was the hardest obstacle we would face and it was a lot easier from there. I was wrong.
The next several obstacles were tougher than the last time I was there. The water was higher. The logs and boulders for footholds were missing, so we got much wetter than I’d expected. I had told everyone that we would probably only get wet up to our waists. Which we did, but plenty of times.
I think some people were understandably a little bit upset when we had to swim through a couple pools. The water was very cold — 54°F.
We didn’t see any other hikers the entire time we were in Orderville canyon. It was a little unnerving, but we enjoyed the solitude and having the place all to ourselves.
Eventually, we made it out of Orderville canyon and into the Narrows. The Virgin river was flowing higher than I’ve ever seen it before.
Now we knew the reason we hadn’t encountered anyone walking upstream — it would have been near impossible with that amount of water. We encountered our first other people at 6:32pm.
We finally made it to the Temple of Sinawava at about 7:30pm and we were all pretty cooked.
I recorded our hike on GPS, which is clearly not very accurate due to bouncing all over the place due to the slots, but it gives a good idea of the timing and general route.
It was an amazing trip.
MightyJohnsons 