(
Within hours of flying in, our group is already travelling into the deep, ancient mountains of Zion National Park, near St George in the southwest of the state. This is a place steeped in natural wonders, adventure experiences and it’s one of the very few states in America ripe for those looking to experience the outdoors in its rawest form.
We arrive at the famous Angel’s Leading Ledgewalk via ferrata in Kolob Canyon, and very quickly I understand that Utah is not the place for your average outdoorsman. For the uninitiated, via ferrata means ‘iron path’ in Italian and is a type of climbing apparatus whereby metal rungs are drilled into vertical cliff faces thousands of metres in the air. Whilst the climber is attached to a steel cable, they walk across the cliff face with nothing but empty space and a cavern below them.
This particular via ferrata is advertised as something one can do from years 8 to 80, but obviously your comfort with heights may limit that severely. While you can now do via ferratas round the United States, here in Utah it affords you two spectacular advantages. The first is that the landscape here is nothing less than jaw dropping, as you spiderman through the seemingly painted chasms like you’re in a Kate Starling painting.
The second is that you’re guided by the man who actually created this particular course. Ian Crowe’s background in engineering affords you not just the benefit to ask a bunch of probing questions, but the added security knowing that if you go down, he’s going with you.
The next morning before the sun rises, we’re at Zion Outfitters sliding on thick neoprene socks and waterproof orange hiking boots. Before long we’re marching down a river flowing freely in an extraordinary cavern with walls about 150 metres high. The idea of walking in water for five hours sounds like a particular type of machiavelian torture chamber, but in reality it is one of the most amazing earth grounding experiences you can have in the natural world.
The walls are striated in reds, golds, blacks and whites, while trees sometimes defy gravity from cracks in the surface, and the rocky outcropping afford amazing light and shadow photo opportunities.
The water in late summer for a tall person can come up to your waist, higher in spring, and even higher the further you walk upstream, but the wetness of this experience is a welcome cooldown from the Utah heat.
