As spring arrives in Zion National Park, in Utah, so do the hikers intent on Angel's Landing. Photo / Alex Robertson
As spring arrives in Zion National Park, in Utah, so do the hikers intent on Angel's Landing. Photo / Alex Robertson
First, there's a long, hot climb to complete that will unsettle Alex Robertson as he sets out to explore Utah's Angel's Landing.
Are you hiking Angel's Landing?" Bill asks me over a plate of local trout.
"I'm planning to." I reply through delicate flakes of flavoursome fish.
"Bucket list!" Bill says emphatically, a smile curling his lips.
I nearly choked on dauphinoise. Bucket list? That's what you do before you die, isn't it? I'd heard the climb is quite a challenge, but I'm not ready to meet my maker just yet.
Angel's Landing sits slap-bang in the middle of Zion: not Hebrew Heaven, but the national park on the southwest corner of Utah. It's a place of such majesty and natural beauty that you can easily believe you've passed on.
Red sandstone cliffs soar 500m above a verdant valley of quaking aspens that hug the banks of the North Fork Virgin River, crowned by Tekhelet Blue skies. The forces that carved these deep, wide canyons from the hard, desert rock were biblical in proportion. The giant monolith got its name a century ago from explorer Frederick Fisher, who exclaimed "only an angel could land on it". The park opened three years later, in 1919, and climbers have been proving him wrong ever since.
I want to start my attempt at mid-morning, before the sun really gets working, but a wrong turn and a traffic jam (this is opening day for full Park Services at the beginning of spring) delays my travel by a few hours.
I catch an overcrowded Park Services bus to the start of the walk and am soon plodding through trees and bush on a flat, sandy path, the Temples of Sinawava - a wall of sedimentary rock formed over 150 million years - towering above me.
The initial ascent of the sheer cliff face is achieved by traversing looping zig-zags of hot and thirsty climbing that flattens out through Refrigerator Canyon, a tree-lined ravine that remains a constant, cool temperature, offering a little relief.
Then it's back to some hard yakka up Walter's Wiggles, a series of 21 man-made switchbacks named after Zion's first superintendent, Walter Ruesch. The view from the top of the Wiggles is spectacular and worth taking a breather for, but it's not a long stop at only halfway up, with the scary stuff about to begin.
From here, the trail is a narrow path of smooth sandstone worn along joints and faults, sometimes flat, sometimes angular blocks, sometimes irregular steps, but always with a sheer drop either side.
To provide comfort, a chain strung between metal posts runs along the path providing a necessary handhold when the trail slopes toward the edge and when passing other climbers at points less than 2m-wide.
For hikers trying to reach Angel's Landing, in Utah's Zion National Park, stamina is essential. Photo / Alex Robertson
There's no respite from the sun with the few trees dotted along the ridge trail both spartan and precariously perched. An emulsion of sweat and sunscreen stings my eyes and dribbles down my neck. It's not long before my hands are coated in diluted sunblock slime and grasping the chain becomes increasingly difficult.
The ridge undulates up and down and up again: this could be how it feels to be a tic working along a camel's spine from mouth to tail and back again. I understand, now, that passage from the Bible about rich men, camels and needles: the path to Heaven is a hard road with no shortcuts.
The final face rises vertically in front of me and I grab the safety chain with both hands. The post anchored into the sheer rock pulls out and the chain goes slack.
Momentarily I lose balance, my view swirls from rock to sky to tree to earth. My sunglasses start to slide over my head and I reach up and step back, catching my glasses before they fly off into space, my foot somehow finding terra-firma.
Among the biggest obstacles hikers encounter in this vertical landscape is the slippery goo that sunscreen and sweat form in the intense heat. Photo / Alex Robertson
The adrenaline is coursing through my body, now, and I clamber up the final section in double-time. Is my heart thumping from exertion or fear?
At the top the trail spreads to a plateau of spectacular views along Zion Canyon, the perspective of an angel, I'm thinking.
Now that's done would I be happy to move on to a better life?
It is bucket list, but it's only the start.
CHECKLIST
Getting there: Air New Zealand offers daily non-stop flights from Auckland to Los Angeles and San Francisco, with onward connections to Salt Lake City on airline partners United Airlines and Delta.
