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Angel’s Landing Hike


If you have any fear of heights you do not want to take this hike. Hiking three foot wide ledges, with sheer thousand foot drop-offs, is exhilarating for thrill-seekers but definitely not for the faint of heart.


Zion National Park, Utah

2013

Hiking For Thrill Seekers


In 2013 I had Zion as one stop on one of my 3000 mile National Park’s itineraries and was contemplating hiking Angel’s Landing. I say contemplating because, after looking at pictures, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do it. I don’t have a fear of heights as much as I am fascinated by them. However, they do have the ability to turn my hamstrings to jelly.


My friend Jeff, who was going to be in Sedona the week before, immediately jumped on the idea and said he would meet me in Zion and do the hike with me. Having someone who I had hiked and skied with many times to accompany me made the decision to do it easy.


So we met in Zion the night before, had dinner and planned on meeting at 6 AM to do the 5-mile hike. Our plan was to do the hike, meet our wives for lunch and then do some hiking in the eastern part of Zion.


We met the next morning and started up the trail. The hike is steadily up with an elevation gain of 1488 feet. The first 2 miles of the trail are basically paved and fairly easy hiking for the fit. The hike is rated as strenuous due to the elevation gain and the final half-mile with the chains and mind-numbing drop-offs. The first part of the hike takes you up to Refrigerator Canyon which is a nice shaded place and a welcome respite from the summer heat. When you exit Refrigerator Canyon you reach what is known as Walters Wiggles. This is a series of paved, tight switchbacks that bring you up to Scout Lookout. From up here you can look down at the canyon 1000 feet below you. It’s a nice place to relax, have a bite to eat, and enjoy the views. There is a ‘restroom’ up there that may or may not be working. I hiked to Scout Lookout with my wife in 2016 and she loved it.


If you plan on doing the full hike, which we were, you leave Scout Lookout to walk to the point where you start on the last half mile up to Angel’s Landing. This is the part of the hike that earns it the label of one of the most, if not the most, dangerous hike in America. A sign at the trailhead points out that since 2004 six people have died there. The National Park Service website officially recognizes eight fatalities where suspicious activity was not involved along Angels Landing. I read elsewhere of a park official who said after a death in 2017 that there have been 15 deaths since the trail opened. I suspect that one suspicious fatality was a woman whose family is certain her husband pushed her off… but that’s another story.


Nevertheless, this is the part of the hike where you start with the chains. From here to the end much of the trail has chains to pull yourself up to a higher point, chains strung down the middle of the trail to give you something to hold onto in places where the trail narrows and the drop offs are steep and other places where the chains are bolted to the side of the canyon and you’re walking on a narrow ledge with a 1000 foot drop.


Complicating matters these days is the heavy traffic that you find on this trail in the summer months. (I think you’d have to be crazy to hike this in the winter months where it could be icy - but some people do)


Sometimes you find people moving towards you from the opposite direction and you have to maneuver around them with both of you hanging onto that chain for dear life. Someone has to be on the outside! At one point you cross what’s called a knife-edge ridge which is about a 10 foot section no more than 3 feet wide, with a chain running down the middle, and a 1200 foot drop off on one side and an 800 foot drop off on the other.


The hike really is beautiful and exciting. The chains give you the security that you need to walk along ledges and up narrow ridges with steep drop-offs on either side. As long as you maintain your concentration and exercise caution it is quite enjoyable. You just don’t want to get cocky. You look down when you stop not while you are working your way up or along a chain. The hikers that you encounter invariably are smiling. It is a thrill-seekers thrill!   


I wore an old pair of driving gloves to use on the chains and when I got to the top the gloves were pretty much shredded.


When you reach the final stretch, for the last several hundred feet the trail flattens out and widens up to the end which is Angel’s Landing. The views are spectacular looking down the canyon and looking down at the roadway with tiny shuttle buses traveling along it.


You go back the same way that you came up and given that it was that much later in the day we encountered heavier traffic. But, everyone is cheerful, reveling in the excitement of being in such a place.   


All in all, it was a great hike, tremendously scenic, interesting to think that the park service built this trail in 1926, challenging and I’d love to and plan to do it again.



Angel’s Landing Hike Photo Gallery


Other Resources


Angel’s Landing - Wikipedia

Angel’s Landing - Utah.com

Angel’s Landing - ZionNationalPark.com

Angel’s Landing fatalities - NPS.gov


Picture of hiker on ledge holding a chain bolted to the wall of the canyon - Angel's Landing trail

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