Earlier this week, I traveled to Zion National Park in Southern Utah, about 7 hours from home. I was accompanied by Alex Skoczen, friend and photographer.
Zion National Park shines brightest amid an impressive Southern Utah collection of National Parks and National Monuments. Zion National Park is an eight-layered sandstone masterpiece of towering cliffs and deep red canyons. It took eight-hundred-million years of Earth time to carve and mold Southern Utah. Zion NP offers a variety of slot canyons, trails, routes and backpacking possibilities to locate the treasure at the end – often a desert waterfall or high-end viewpoint to see what cannot be viewed without getting out on your own two feet. It’s located close to St. George, Utah where the state borders of Utah, Nevada and Arizona intersect.
-From Zion National Park.com
We made our first photo stop early on Monday morning, just after sunrise. We hiked the Zion Canyon Overlook Trail to our destination, a viewpoint not surprisingly named the Zion Canyon Overlook. It’s an expansive view, at 6,521 feet in elevation atop Mount Baldy. Jutting out into one of the widest sections of Zion Canyon, this observation point commands a view of nearly every major attraction in the canyon, 2,500 feet below.
From our vantage point, we had great views and several good photography opportunities, including this scene of the canyon sidewall.
The next morning, in search of more canyons we traveled to the far north end of Zion National Park, an area known as Kolob Canyon. Our morning visit was not the best timed, shooting in the direction of the rising sun. We managed to work with the conditions and we were able to get a few satisfactory shots. This picture was my best of the morning and possibly the best I got in our two days of shooting.
We chose to do some further photography in and around the canyons and were able to get a number of good images, including this picture of an unnamed peak on the north side of Taylor Creek.
I also got this picture of the remains of an Utah Juniper, balanced on a rock ledge above the trail I followed in pursuit of interesting photographs. I’m always attracted this kind of image, lots of texture and fascinating shapes.
That concludes this blog post featuring canyons, always good photographic sights. I will follow with a next post concentrating on the the Virgin River and its surroundings in the main area of the park.