Grand Canyon North Rim 2024 – part 1

Posted on by Rich Sharples

Day 1 – Travel and Zen

This year’s south west mountain bike trip started with a few days acclimating to the heat and altitude in St George, Utah. We picked up rental bikes pretty much as soon as we got into town after the 2 hour drive from Vegas. We rented the bikes and a 4 bike rack from Red Rock Bikes in nearby Hurricane – great shop with friendly staff who helped us get everything set up. We had a longer ride planned for the next day but after a day of travel were keen to get out and ride despite the 100F+ temperatures. After a bit of driving around we found the trail head parking for the Zen Trail – a fairly short, climby, technical trail just outside St George. The trail isn’t well marked and the whole area is covered in trails and not surprisingly we went off course a little and after all the climbing I managed to split my tire and couldn’t fix it on the trail so had to waste the wonderful downhill section. Strava activity.

Day 2 – Wire Mesa

On Monday (Memorial day) we met up with David and headed to Wire Mesa – it’s a smaller, less exposed version of the better know Gooseberry Mesa and in the same general area. Getting to the parking lot is a bit of an adventure but well worth it – I could ride this kind of trail every day of the week – technical enough that you have to pay attention and choose your line, but completely rideable. The views of Zion and surrounding area were stunning – photos just don’t do it justice. We dropped the bikes back to Red Rock in Hurricane and hit River Rock Roasters for lunch. Strava Activity

Day 3 – The Narrows, Zion

It was a toss up between hiking Angels Landing and The Narrows and The Narrows won. We got to the already fairly full main parking lot about 7am and jumped on the 45 minute shuttle to the start of the river trail (Temple of Sinawava). We’d already unwittingly made our first mistake in our rush to get on the shuttle – we didn’t rent hiking staffs – only Iain had hiking poles, Brian and I had to make do with whatever improvised walking poles we could find on the river bank. Unless you’re an aquatic mountain goat – I wouldn’t recommend hiking the narrows without a staff or hiking poles.

We didn’t quite get to “Big Springs” (the end of the trail) due to high water and strong currents – we’d already swam / waded chest deep in some sections and it was becoming cold and tiring. We did explore the smaller “Orderville Canyon” on the way up – a beautiful side canyon with fewer people and no wading. In all we hiked just over 12 miles in 5.5 hours. For hike that is pretty much flat – it was pretty strenuous and difficult underfoot – I’m still surprised my weak ankles and knees held out.

Note – you can see the sections where we had to swim on Strava as it sent the Altimeter on my Apple Watch haywire.