We had a great couple of days there. It really is a cool park – in some ways I didn’t find it as stunning as some of the other places we had been, but it really is spectacular in its scale and sheerness, and it was one of the best parks we have been to in terms of the stuff to do there. It is really popular for mountain climbing and canyoneering, and there are some fantastic walks there.
The view from the Canyon Overlook trail
We spent most of Monday doing a section of the Narrows trail. The walk is up the river bed of a narrow slot canyon. The full walk is generally an overnight trail of 16 miles one way, and the upper part includes some canyoneering and swimming etc rather than just hiking, but the section we did was from the bottom end and a bit less extreme. Still lots of fun though! The majority of the walk is literally up the river, so most of the time you are wading over stones in ankle to knee deep water, and in some sections it was almost up to my waist (or mid-thigh on most people!). The water felt freezing when we first started in the morning, but by the time the sun started shining into the canyon we were glad we were walking through water! Lots of other people had taken the sensible option and worn swimmers/togs, so were stopping for a swim in some the deeper sections.
The canyon itself is really impressive – in some sections the sheer walls are over 600m high and only about 13m apart. Don’t expect our photos to capture it very well because there is no way you can capture that sort of scale in a photo!
We did all the obligatory sightseeing at the other stops around the canyon, but the Narrows walk was definitely the highlight of the park for us – one of the highlights of our trip actually!
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