A Trip to St. George and Zion

My oldest brother, Jeff called me midweek last week and said, "Do you know what the weather is suppose to be like in St. George this weekend?" He said that is was going to be in the mid-50s and asked if I would be interested in going down there to do a bit of mountain biking. We planned to go down after I finished my day on Friday and bike all day Saturday. We got a cheap room at the old Motel 6 and prepared to head down. When Friday arrived to my surprise and delight there were no cases at the hospital so we were able to leave early in the morning. By noon we were preparing for our first run

of the day. The weather was beautiful and warm. The first few miles of the 7 mile loop we were doing were dry and fun. However, we did not know that just the previous week St. George had had a years worth of rain in two weeks creating some huge floods and turning everything that was not rock into mud. We quickly figured this fact out as we ended up pushing and sometimes carrying our bikes about 2.5 miles. We wised up and called a local bike shop and asked which rides would be the best to take considering all the rain. The guy told us that the Church Rocks ride was pretty much the only ride the was worth doing.

On Saturday we went out to the Church Rocks which starts out with a huge drainage pipe that goes all the way under I-15. It was dry and mostly slick rock and pretty fun. Our legs were pretty shot after the previous days trudging and so about 1pm we were done. We decided to go and hike Angel's Landing in Zion National Park which was not too far away. We arrived at the park to the happy news that entrance into the park was free that day. We drove in the the nearly empty park and started to 2.5 mile rigorous hike to the top of Angel's Landing. Any of you who

have never heard of this hike need to know that it is incredible and crazy scary. Once you get to the top of the switchbacks you still have to climb a snow covered narrow trail with 1000 foot drop offs on each side of the trail. There are chain handrails along the most treacherous portions of the hike but even while hanging on it is pretty scary. We were slipping and sliding on the way up and much worse on the way down. There are many parallels that can be drawn from this hike and life and all of them pass before your mind while you hang on to a cold chain and stare 1000 feet down below your feet. It was a great hike and it was fun to hang with my brother as well.