Utah

Utah

The National Parks

Five of the world’s greatest treasures are found in southern Utah. These five jewels of the American West are the National Parks of Utah: Canyonlands, Arches, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, and Zion. This is their story.

It’s a landscape like no other on the planet; a seemingly timeless portrait carved by forces of wind, water, and erosion. This is a place of contrasts. Hostile and forbidding, yet sublimely beautiful. Some of the most exquisite natural colors on earth are found here.

Canyonlands

The Canyonlands are an almost unearthly lost world of desert maze. Deep, imposing canyons are slashed by dramatic rivers. The terrain appears tortured and twisted. Winds can be silent as a whisper yet explode with fury and violence. Some of the story of Canyonlands is told by its places: The Maze, The Needles, Cataract Canyon, Island in the Sky.

There is poetry in the Canyonlands; a symphony of nature and at times, deafening silence. In hidden places, an ancient people tell mysterious stories. Canyonlands was home to ancestral Pueblo cultures. Fossilized dinosaur tracks lead the way. A red rock canyon reveals secrets.

The great gallery of Horseshoe Canyon was painted by nomadic hunter-gatherers. The images are life-size. A story is left for imagination to decipher. Winter turns the red desert into a sea of white. Clouds race along the horizon; their destiny unknown. Heat is a distant, fleeting memory. Only the watching, shimmering sun bears witness to the desert’s usual radiance.

The confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers in Canyonlands National Park predicts turbulent rapids. Cataract Canyon can be among the most challenging river runs in North America. Power and beauty blend. The cascading river becomes a raging, liquid world of white water. Each wave possesses the power of thunder. It is the story of the Canyonlands. One moment, the scene is tranquil and serene. The next, it explodes with drama.

Canyonlands is home to desert bighorn sheep. Bighorns can be seen high on canyon walls and at river’s edge. This landscape is alive. Cryptobiotic soil carpets the desert. It’s a microscopic community of bacteria, lichens, and mosses that slows erosion. Cryptobiotic soil provides nutrition and moisture for desert plants. It may take decades to recover from a single footstep. (Arches visitor guide page 6)

A hot desert wind hisses the story of Canyonlands. Rivers snake and meander seemingly without purpose. Canyons appear endless. The sky is the bluest blue of the imagination. More stars punctuate the night than can ever be counted. The Canyonlands tell a story. It is a story of mystery and illusion. And then, only silence.

Arches National Park

Arches National Park is a geologic wonder. Erosion has carved a land of natural arches in a universe of red desert. Sculpted bridges with the arc of rainbows sit in arid sands. Each offers its own window of blue sky looking into time and space. It is a landscape of balanced rocks and fragile beauty. Native people tell stories in this world of stone. (Petroglyphs)

Landscape arch spans the desert floor in precarious fragility. In the searing heat of summer, the fiery furnace earns its name. A relentless sun inflames this fortress of stone. Sandy desert washes run like dry water through canyons sitting in an ocean of blue sky.

Delicate arch stands statuesque in its own amphitheater of red slickrock. Its existence is solitary, isolated. Its only companion, a red, searing sun. Arches are formed gradually by the erosion of sandstone fins over millions of years.

Storms rip through the valley of arches. Snow-capped peaks of the lasal mountains bear witness in the distance. Winter is a time of change. Glowing reds of summer give way to a grey landscape uncharacteristic of the great desert.

A desert hike in the more isolated northwest part of the park rewards visitors. The view is of tower arch. It is gold at the end of the rainbow.

Arches is a place of wonder. The landscape is a painting of light and shadow moving across a vastness of red. Each day is its own creation, different from any other. There is an emotion of timelessness and cleansing. And then, the blackness of night in timeless valleys.

Bryce Canyon

Bryce Canyon is a kaleidoscope of geologic colors. The amphitheater features hoodoos which are pillars of rock carved by erosion. The result is a place of imagination.

Wind, water, and erosion have carved and sculpted Bryce since the time when dinosaurs disappeared from the earth. Bryce is an ornate step in the grand staircase series of plateaus. Sweeping desert vistas are framed by pink cliffs.

Bryce Canyon’s highest elevation is more than 9,000 feet. Dense forests meet plunging, sheer desert cliffs. One of the canyon’s early settlers was Ebenezer Bryce. He reportedly said, “it’s a heck of a place to lose a cow”. Thor’s Hammer, Peekaboo, Queen Victoria, and Fairyland conjure secret, hidden places.

Deep in the canyon, below towering cliffs, is an exotic, multi-colored world.

Wall Street descends, spiraling to the canyon floor. A douglas fir tree reaches for the sky in solitary confinement. Bristlecone pine trees are silent, wind-blown sentinels of time. Some may have stood guard for a thousand years.

Prairie dogs inhabit the meadows of Bryce Canyon. They live in intricate underground tunnels. They are ever alert for the sweeping talons of a hawk. Shrill warning barks fill the meadow.

The trickle of a desert stream plays its own symphony. Light and shadow paint timeless moments.

The magic of winter turns an idyllic instant into a palace of ice and snow. A waterfall is frozen in time. The landscape is rigid and locked. Melting icicles drip with effortless grace. The unspoken promise is the renewal of spring.

Capitol Reef

Capitol Reef is named for the large domes which tower above the desert floor. Reef comes from the knife-like waterpocket fold which slices the terrain. The navajo called Capitol Reef “land of the sleeping rainbow” for its many colors. The landscape is a rainbow on earth.

The castle perches like a medieval fortress over the valley. Clouds march through the sky as armored knights prancing into battle. A darkening sky tortures the red desert with emotions of gloom and foreboding. And then, the sky dramatically clears as if the darkness was only a fleeting illusion.

Ancient people have left their art on sheer cliffs. The fremont chiseled petroglyphs and painted pictographs with unknown meaning. The Fremont River runs below towering cliffs with sounds of rushing water. It seemingly flows without purpose to an endless destiny. Leaves rustle in a still wind predicting what we do not know. Without warning, the river plunges down a waterfall in angry torrents.

Leaves turn brown in the grey of winter. The waterfall is a sculpture of ice. The river is restless. Ice forms and melts with a steady, monotonous drip into a steel-grey river. A cold, gripping night re-freezes the porcelain ice only to meet the sun of a new day. The goose necks of sulphur creek twist towards its rendezvous with the Fremont River.

Fruita was an historic Mormon pioneer settlement in Capitol Reef. The Fruita Schoolhouse still stands watch. Students no longer come for their lessons. The Fruita orchards are left from this era. Sweet fruit offers dramatic contrast to stark, imposing desert walls.

Chukars scurry among the rocky crags of capitol gorge. A seemingly lifeless desert is alive. The monoliths of cathedral valley rise from the desert floor as if egyptian pyramids. Erosion sculpts nature’s art from sandstone. Wind whistles through sagebrush in this seemingly alien landscape. Sweeping desert vistas of white clouds against blue skies lead to the temple of the sun and the temple of the moon.

Glass mountain shimmers in the desert. Light reflects from selenite crystals known as moonstone. The image seems as if a mirage of glass. Gypsum sinkhole collapses in the desert floor in sharp contrast to the monoliths which rise above it. The sinkhole was a gypsum deposit now dissolved from the erosion of water. It is 200 feet deep.

The landscape is a desert painting brushed with colors of the rainbow. The frame is serrated cliffs and towering white rotundas. Peaks are sharp, jagged. The desert bleeds a bloody red cleansed by purifying streams. A symphony of birds, wind, and water links this world to our own.

Zion

Zion National Park is a temple in the wilderness. Its meaning is a place of safety or refuge given by mormon pioneers. It is sanctuary. Names in Zion offer a feeling of reverence for one of the most beautiful places on earth. There are names like Cathedral Mountain, the Great White Throne, the Towers of the Virgin, and the Pulpit. The Watchman stands guard looking toward Zion’s main canyon. A steep, sometimes harrowing climb, brings one to the top of Angel’s Landing. The reward is stunning views of Zion’s main canyon. The Court of the Patriarchs is as monumental as its name implies.

In fall, wild turkeys strut confidently under a canopy of trees. Benjamin Franklin supposedly wanted the turkey as America’s mascot rather than the bald eagle. Turkeys may have as many as 5,000 feathers. They can fly at approximately 55 miles per hour.

The Virgin River flows through this canyon of sublime beauty. It is one of the last mostly free-flowing rivers in the Colorado River system. The Virgin River eventually joins the Colorado in its journey to Mexico and quest for the ocean. Dusk falls on the narrows of the Virgin River deep within the Temple of Sinawava. Slot canyons beckon with cracks to an unknown world to be explored. Streaming clouds over canyon walls race the coming nightfall.

Winter snows surround the Virgin River which runs silty grey. Reds of checkerboard mesas meet the white snow as if a welcome blanket. The peaks of kolob canyon in Zion’s northwest corner are deep in winter’s grasp. Spring tells a story of re-birth. Green new life replaces grey.

Desert bighorn sheep graze peacefully on red cliffs. A nursery of lambs are watched by adults. A clatter of hooves on rock announces their presence.

Zion’s emotions are painted by sun and clouds. Water weeps off rock faces as if tears from heaven. Waterfalls plunge from sheer heights in the red wall to the emerald pools below. Rainbows in the mist paint the canvas. It is a natural paradise. The east fork of the Virgin River flows through the wilderness of parunuweap canyon in Zion’s southeast corner.

Kolob Canyon is a painting of splendor in summer beauty. Forests of pinon (pinyon) and juniper adorn redwall cliffs. Kolob comes from Mormon theology. It means "a heavenly place close to God." A strenuous hike with numerous stream crossings, leads to the Subway. The Subway is so named for it’s unique formation. Deep in the Zion back country is a shangri-la. It is fall with colors of burning orange and flaming red.

Zion tells a story of hidden places; a land of secrets that time unlocks. It is a story of majesty, of grandeur, and reverence.

The National Parks of Utah offer an experience unique in the world. There is a poetry at work; a natural drama still to be told. The story is written upon parched sands with swirling, fiery winds leading to oceans of red desert.

The landscape appears as a mirage; a comforting dream.

The illusion is real; ever beckoning to paradise.

Visit the national Utah website for more information on this and other related programs.