A winter's visit to Zion National Park practically defines "sublime."/NPS
I stopped at Zion National Park on the way home from Death Valley. At first it seemed to be almost as busy as it is on a summer day. What little did I know then.
Only two loops of Watchman Campground are open right now, and I had no trouble finding a site even though it was pretty late in the afternoon. Some of the motels in Springdale displayed signs offering discounted winter rates. Rockville had replaced their town's iconic 100-watt streetlight bulbs that hang on wires across the street with red, green, blue, and yellow bulbs. Y'gotta love a town like that!
And it was c-c-c-c-c-c-cold there.
Thank goodness for electric hookups in Watchman. This time, though, instead of running my air conditioner, I was able to fight frost with an electric heater. It kept my little home pleasantly toasty.
The first thing I noticed was the contrast between the quality of maintenance in Zion's campground and what I had seen in Death Valley. Zion, for whatever reason, is far better. I don't know why, but it's very noticeable. Perhaps it's because Zion is so much more compact. Perhaps it has something to do with funding. Maybe it's because Zion's facilities are much newer. Perhaps it comes down to the people on the ground like the lady wearing an Arrowhead who had just spent about an hour cleaning the restrooms nearest my campsite.
Therese, who was reluctant to give her name because 'I'm not the only one who does this work,' certainly nailed it when she told me that she and her coworkers take real pride in what a restroom looks like when they leave it. Maybe it has something to do with the people who visit the park ' like the guy I saw using a towel to wipe down the sink he had just finished using.
Whatever it is, it's tangible and it does make a big difference.
Some major construction was taking place behind the visitor center. I asked if it was a repaving job or if they were expanding the always overcrowded parking lot. They're adding more than a hundred new parking spots. I don't like that at all. But what else can be done? About the only alternative I can see is for the Park Service to purchase some of the empty land south of Rockville, build parking lots and extend the shuttle bus routes. Fat chance of that ever happening. Then again, back in the '80s people thought there was a fat chance of shuttles ever happening. Then came a park superintendent named Falvey and Springdale mayor named Bimstein who worked together and made it happen.
A camper window view of Zion/Lee Dalton
Gee, d'ya suppose . . . . ?
I drove up into the park two days before New Years Eve. I have never seen such a crowded mess. Not even back in the '80s before the shuttles were the park roads and parking lots as crammed with vehicles as they were on December 29, 2014. I didn't even try to park so I could hike a trail or two. Cars and big RVs were stacked three deep in the Grotto parking lot. They spilled over onto the roads on both sides for several hundred yards. Most were parked half on and half off the pavement so that left just a narrow opening down the center of the road for traffic to try to maneuver. It was the same situation at Weeping Rock's parking.
As with Death Valley, most of the visitors out there were from Asia. The campground was different, with a population of what appeared to be mainly U.S. folks.
Farther down the road toward Temple of Sinawava and the Narrows Trail, the mess was downright ridiculous. I circled the dead end parking area once and headed back out but was blocked by a huge tour bus with what looked like Korean writing on the sides. At the sharp curve just east of the Temple parking area a large RV was parked halfway into the road. Cars on the other side left an almost impossibly narrow passage for the bus. I stopped and waited while some men who had gotten out of their cars near the jam helped the bus driver navigate the curve.
Then we had another problem. As the bus approached where I was waiting with a long line of cars and trucks behind me, we could see that he couldn't get into the parking lot. All the bus parking area was taken by cars and RVs. Another man and I began persuading drivers in the line to back up to make room for the bus. It was the only way we were going to get out of there. People were good natured about it and we finally managed to clear something of a path and guide an obviously fearful bus driver through the squeeze. Even though he had at least eight inches on either side of the bus, he sure looked worried about scratching it.
Every time the bus paused for a moment, more and more of its passengers bailed out and rushed toward the Gateway (aka the Riverside Walk) trail. I'll bet they knew they were on a schedule and had to see Zion in 30 minutes or less before moving on to their next park.
When I finally managed to drive out and head back down canyon, I met a law enforcement ranger headed up. I had to chuckle and thought, Good luck, friend. You're going to need it!
I decided to take a quick trip up the Zion / Mount Carmel Road through the tunnels to see if I could find some red rock and snow. The rock and snow were there, all right, but so were about a million or so people and their cars. Just beyond the upper end of the long tunnel is parking for the Canyon Overlook Trail. Jammed. Again, vehicles parked in every conceivable spot and even some that were INconceivable. Again, many were Asians, and I guess it's understandable how much they wanted to experience something they had dreamed of seeing; a place that had drawn them to travel halfway around the world.
So you can probably imagine what happened just around the first bend in the road uphill from the tunnel where ten or so bighorn sheep were putting on a real circus. It took quite awhile to weave my way though. As I did, I rolled my window down just in time to hear one of the bighorns say to another, 'Wow, Edna, look at that! We've got 'em backed up in both directions as far as you can see!'
Really!
I got home and realized that I'd taken only one decent picture during the time I was in Zion. So here's the view out my bedroom window as sunrise painted the canyon that morning of one of the last days of 2014. If you want to see more of Zion at New Years, take a look at the photos elsewhere in Traveler accompanying Jim Burnett's story of the storms that hit the day I left.
Beyond that, all I'll say is this: Why in the world are we fearful that our parks are being forgotten? They sure seem to be infested with those critters that walk on two legs and travel on round rubber rings.
Are there any answers to the questions we ask and challenges we face?
I hope so . . . .
But is anyone looking?
Comments
Lee, Thank you once again for an outstanding trip report. We need more of these in which the reporter describes the quality of the park experience and the quality of services provided. It seems to me that if crowded conditions now exist in the winter months, perhaps the Zion Shuttle can be reactivated? Perhaps the NPS should begin to employ more rangers of Asian-American heritage to match the noticeably increased attention that our parks are getting from visitors from the far East? I wonder how much of this crowding was due to the Holiday season, or to what extent this your experience might apply to any day or weekend during the winter months? What you describe is certainly much more crowded than I witnessed during my last visit to Zion in early October of 2009. If the winter crowding is restricted to just the few days of the Holiday season, certainly there should be ways to staff up and re-route traffic to make the park experience as enjoyable and as impressive as it should be.
They are planning to start shuttle service quite a bit earlier and run it until November 1 next year because heavy visitation begins earlier and lasts longer. This was the Christmas break surge. I'm sure a large percentage was because of the holidays. As for re-routing traffic, remember you're talking about a 7 mile dead-end and a very narrow, winding road to Mt. Carmel that has a mile long tunnel too small for many of the vehicles that try to use it, so either an escort or traffic control rangers are needed. Rangers were handling traffic control, but I noticed that ended at about 5 p.m.
You pose all sorts of questions in your post here. All valid. All difficult. And all, unfortunately, expensive.
This reminds me uncomfortably of trying to drive through Cade's Cove on a fall weekend in 1999 (being stuck for more than two hours in a bear jam with thousands of leaf peepers -- I felt so sorry for that lone bear in the tree), and of visiting Yosemite Valley on a summer weekend in 2011 (and the disgusted fellow next to me on the Valley shuttle referring to Yosemite as Disneyland National Park). Oh, and having to make reservations in Yellowstone a year and a half in advance.
I do sometimes wonder what can be done when there's only so much space in and around our famous natural wonders and too many people who want to see them. I'm all for shuttles and other crowd-mitigating measures, but, in the end, the most famous of our parks are still just overcrowded, and there's really nothing to be done about the erosion of the experience everyone goes there to be part of in the first place.
Exactly, Mega. Now imagine yourself to be a park manager having to try to deal with that while keeping everyone everywhere happy.
A very good point megaera, there are areas where peak visitation during the high use visitor season exceeds facilities, Yosemite Valley a good example. I have attended many planing meetings on this issue, some citizens respond so what, in spite of the congestion, it is worth it. Others expect crowding, they deal it with daily in the urban areas, etc. I think you are right, the NPS managers have to deal with an almost insurmountable problem. At some point, either more facilities have to be provided or some type of visitor use capacity set. The Park experience I had in the 1950s is, in some areas, no longer available during some peak visitation periods. I remember visiting Assateague Island NS 4 years ago,
the entrance signs stated, "expect congestion".
Lee...
Thanks for taking one for the team.
I find this post disturbing. The tone is, "I have a right to be here, but what's with all these other people?"
For a website called National Park TRAVELER, you're not very tolerant of travelers. Asians in buses have as much right to enjoy Zion as Mr. Dalton does.
Bart, there was no intent of that whatsoever. I was trying to portray the extreme crowding that existed that day in Zion. The problem with the bus was not that it carried Asians -- it would have been the same story if it had been loaded with senior citizens from Pittsburgh. There was simply no room for that bus to maneuver. I still wonder how in the world it managed to get out of the parking lot at Gateway to the Narrows where it would have had to negotiate an extremely tight turn that was clogged with improperly parked vehicles of all kinds. What disturbed me was that many of the park's visitors that day (and probably that week) had come from halfway around the world to see something they had probably heard of and dreamed of visiting many times. Given the crowding, was their experience as good as it should have been? They were as trapped by the congestion as I was.
The bus driver, by the way, was an older American man.
Actually, it was fun watching and listening to the people who had encountered the bighorns above the tunnel. Even though I couldn't understand their language, there was no misunderstanding the excitement they were enjoying.
I've taken some heat here on Traveler for my opposition to charging non-Americans higher fees for park admission. I really enjoy meeting people from all around the world and trying to help them enjoy our parks in any way I can. I was just surprised by the number of Asians in the two parks I visited. Usually, when I do most of my park travel, it's Europeans I encounter. I was trying to remark on the different demographic I was seeing.
So if my article came across as xenophobic or something, I apologize. It certainly was not my intent.