hey guys in this video i'm going to show you how to hike the narrows here in zion national park from the bottom up we're not going to go all the way to the end i think for most people this is the most popular route we're going to go up to elephant temple and back you'll see all the sights and uh enjoy it all now there's a lot of things to consider before you come here please go to the website hikingguy.com to check it out before we'll give you recommendations on the gear what to wear when to go when not to go how to avoid the crowds and all of that fun stuff now as you're watching the video if you like it if you can give me a thumbs up i appreciate it it helps me out a ton but uh anyway let's uh hit the trail it's not a trail it's more like a walk up the river but you will see it in a second we're going to start the hike at the end of the line for the shuttle bus the temple of sinawava and the trailhead is just at the end of the shuttle bus stop here now this is called the riverside walk and this is a pleasant paved walk for the first mile it's a little confusing right at the beginning there's this little split off on the left to a beach but we're going to go straight and head up the virgin river narrows or the virgin river gorge and you can see right away it starts to get way more narrow than the lower zion canyon that we were in you know when he took the shuttle bus up here just this river walk is pretty spectacular and here we have a young buck on the river walk just you know feet off the side checking us out but it's it's a really spectacular walk and if you don't want to get your feet wet and you still want to experience the narrows you could just do this river walk it'll be two miles out and back and it's still a very fun and beautiful experience as you can see here look it's pretty narrow there's your thousand foot cliffs it's pretty uh pretty spectacular but if you do want to go in the river when you get here this is the end of the river walker's going to go down these stairs and go into the river now you can see the river was higher you can see that ground is wet you can see the rocks this is pretty much what the river looks like when it's totally covered on this day just so you get an idea the river was 50 cfs and i'll talk about the different cfs numbers in the guide so you can understand but you can see you're basically stepping through the water over these slippery rocks and you can see some people have sticks some people don't i actually shot this video without a stick or a pull because i had the camera in my hand and it is doable to do do it that way but it's definitely easier when you have a pole now the good thing is you can cross over and when the water is low enough like it is here you can walk on land i'd say the majority of it is walking on land but when you do walk through the water this is kind of what it looks like unfortunately it's cloudy because it was raining earlier so it's hard to see the bottom when it's clear it's much easier to see but here you can see what it looks like on the bottom these big rocks here this is essentially what you're walking over you want to be sure that you have your good footing on your forward foot as you go now here we're in a section where there is no beach to walk on it's just wall to wall cliff and this is a you know a decent portion of the hike but a lot of the hike you will see there are shallow portions like this on the side that's mystery falls tumbling down on the right but this is typical you'll see a lot of people kind of funneling in to the narrower parts of the narrows here here we are we're going to cross again you can see it's a little bit deeper as we go here and then once we cross back over in front of us is the narrows alcove at the bend and the far distance there and it's a pretty massive alcove we'll be walking through it in a second but really really spectacular the video doesn't really do the experience justice i just hope to kind of convey what to expect here but here we are at the narrows alcove it's over to the left and we have another beach and trail section and you can tell that it's not always under water here because our tree is growing there is vegetation and when you are here just you know be respectful of vegetation try to walk on the established trail so you don't do too much damage to what's around here and you can see we're crossing back over and that's a lot of this hike when it's not higher than say 70 or so cfs you're going to be doing this type of thing where you cross over and you know just look for where people are crossing in front of you you could see the canyons almost touching up top there it's really a spectacular experience and you can see there's people with sticks without them if you see the streaking this is actually from minerals and bacteria that run down through the sandstone as we pass by here big boulder there's a few big boulders there's house rock and we're going up to floating rock which is where i'll recommend that we turn around on this hike now here we go it's starting to get a little bit more narrow and the big kind of attraction here is a section called wall street where it's just narrow walls there's not really any beach and you can see the walls are pretty close up here but when we get to wall street it's considered to start at orderville canyon which we'll see in a second but it sort of starts before there and you can see here as we go up it's pretty narrow it's pretty steep on the sides and when the water is higher we're going to have to go through the water here but again you can see we can avoid going up through the water by just going on the higher ground here now the big danger is flash flooding and when there's flash flooding you don't want to be here there's pretty good system in place for warning people and keeping people out of here but it does happen and bikers do get into trouble i'll talk all about that on the guide too so make sure you read that and are prepared for that but here we are coming into the beginning of the wall street section that's orderville canyon over there and you can go up about a quarter mile before you need a canyoneering permit and now we are deep in the heart of the wall street section where the cliff walls tower up like wall street you can see it's narrower and because it's narrower the water flows quicker through here and it's uh you know it's still doable you can always brace yourself on the side walls as well if you don't have poles but here we go walking up through wall street now we're going to experience this for a little bit it goes all the way up to big springs that's as far as you can go without any permit or any uh you know special permission but you can see even in the narrows the wall street section of the narrows there are beach sections this is a really good spot to stop have a break and um have a snack some water before turning around up ahead that big boulder in the middle of the narrows is called floating rock and that's where we're going to turn around up there when i say which turn around there you can keep going like i said the big springs but this type of scenery it just sort of continues but the water gets deeper so expect to get a little bit more wet but here's floating rock generally i recommend coming up to floating rock we'll take a look up the rest of the canyon right here but from here i'd say if you're not feeling anymore or you're done just turn around and go back the way you came otherwise go up to big springs and uh that's the hike all right so here we are on the hike it's an out and back so we're gonna basically go up the narrows twisting and turning around all the rock formations till we get the floating rock we could continue all the way up to big springs but we are not but you certainly welcome to but not in this video we're going to start at the shuttle stop right down here and when you get off the shuttle stop you can see there's the road we're going to go all the way up to uh the end of the river walk this is also called the uh narrows gateway this is where we hop on the river and if you want to just do something simple you could just go into the river here and go up to mystery falls which is right here i don't know how useful this is going to be because these canyons are pretty deep for google earth here but this is about three miles round trip if you just go to mystery falls it'll give you a taste for walking in the river without anything too crazy but from here you can see the general flow is that we're going to go on this winding path and as you hike up here you'll notice that you'll be coming around these big winding turns and here is that grotto that i mentioned earlier 200 foot falls up top and you can see it's it's not super useful here on um on google earth but you can see what we're doing we're basically winding up these canyons here let's go down and see if i can show you orderville canyon i can definitely show you wall street you can really see how narrow it is here this is orderville canyon the one you could go up for about a quarter of mile and if you want good views into this canyon which is a lot farther and also mystery canyon where mystery falls comes out go do the observation point hike there's some good viewpoints where you can see up there but basically going through the canyon until we get to floating rock which is right around the corner here and there you could see wall street continues all the way up to big springs which is up here but you can turn around there if you'd like and if you want to go into some deeper water and keep going in the river if you're having a good time just keep on going until you get to big springs and then turn around and that is the hike [Music] bye