TheNPS Zion twitter account has current information and trail updates. Sounds like it might take some significant work on the West Rim Trail before you can reach Angel's Landing from the canyon floor again
https://twitter.com/ZionNPS?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
So many of the US national parks seem to be works in progress - and not settled landscape!
Australia is ancient and essentially unchangingly timeless, by comparison. Outside Alice Springs you can walk up and touch rocks that are about three billion years old.
The reason the Mormon farmers who first settled and named Zion Canyon eventually sold it to the the federal governmemt for a park was the threat of flash floods. They grew tired of their crops and their homes being swept downstream every decade or so. The Virgin River is a beautiful and kind lady at all times except when she isn't. Capitol Reef Natioal Park has a similar history.
The spectacular scenery of the American West is all very much "a work in progress." Much of it is the work of run away erosion, flash floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, fires, violent weather and other catastrophes. If it were not so, it would look like Austrailia.
Australia is stunningly beautiful too of course ... just that it completed all its geological mayhem eons ago.
The trouble is the soil is so old that nutrients have leached away ... just adding water ain't enough. There are very good reasons why the original inhabitants stuck to H&G, rather than becoming farmers.
And I think Lassen Volcanic NP is the most violently crazy park we've visited.
And I think Lassen Volcanic NP is the most violently crazy park we've visited.
Its been a century since Mt. Lassen erupted. Try Volcano National Park in Hawaii now or Mt. St. Helens. Geologists can find peices of Yellowstone National Park in Texas. There are peices of the Long Valley Cauldera in California in Hudson Bay. Crystal Rapids in the Grand Canyon, the rapid that the boatmen (river guides) take most seriously, only formed in the 1960s as a result of a "debris flow." That's a flash flood violent enough to change the course of the Colorado River. Yellowstone before the 1988 fire is not the same place as it is now after the fire. Google satellite views of Everglades National Park post-Irma make the place look like it was nuked. The flooding that formed the Scablands of eastern Washingtom State at the end of the last Ice Age is unimaginable. The Snake River Gorge, I believe the deepest canyon in North America, was eroded out of flat ground in a week by another flood at the end of the last Ice Age. Before it blew up, Crater Lake may have been the tallest mountain im North America. Both the historic and pre-historic American West was a violent place.
Fortunately, we have visited every one of those except the Big Island in Hawaii. And we should mention the stewpot o\f rock and debris that is Yosemite Valley - where we were mere minutes from being squished flat by a rockslide, in 2013.
This topic has been automatically locked due to inactivity. Email community@lonelyplanet.com if you would like to add to this topic and we'll unlock it for you.