And we jumped on the top of a cliff... 

 

For the first day of hiking on our traditional Easter trip to Zions we went along the Cable Mountain trail. The first part of the trail, hiking to the top of Cable Mountain and back, was quite nice. Not a terribly difficult hike but it was somewhat long - around 8 miles round-trip. The destination of the hike takes you to the historic Cable structure that was used in the early 1900s to transport timber to the bottom of Zions Canyon. Oh and that structure sits atop a 2000+ foot vertical cliff!

 

The view from the cliff is amazing as well as somewhat dizzying. There are no guard rails to keep you away from the edge and creeping towards the edge will really take your breath away. We all only got as close as we dared, some being so bold as to lay on their stomachs to get the best view. We were all brave enough to get some nice pictures of us jumping right next to the edge.

 

On the way back we had the option to return to the cars, go back to Springdale and enjoy what I'm sure was a very nice and filling lunch. My brothers, Josh, Matt and I foolishly decided to continue along the East Rim trail down to the bottom of Zions Canyon. I really should have returned to the cars. I'm not nearly in good enough shape for what followed. After having already gone 8-9 miles we went down over 2100 feet over the next 4 miles. Most of the descent though was just 2 miles or less along some of the hardest, rockiest switchbacks that my knees have ever handled. If you look at the full set of pictures on Flickr you'll notice that there were a lot of pictures taken along the Cable Mountain trail and hardly any taken after that. I had to put the camera away and just hope that I would survive the hike. What's crazy is that I had already done the hike 10-15 years ago, and back then over the last 1000 foot descent I actually ran down to the bottom. There was no running this time, there was only PAIN!

 

You can view the rest of the photos (including larger versions) on my Zions 2009 page on Flickr.

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