Mountains and Trees: Zion - Angel's Landing

I got up on Sunday bright and early. (Wait, shouldn't that be dark and early?) Anyway, I got up at 5:30am and headed over to Denny's for breakfast. I was amused by the lady I overheard at another table talking to her friend: "I lived in San Jose for 18 years. Well, not San Jose, but Santa Clara. I loved it! It's like a big city spread out into suburbs."

Heading towards Zion, I got my first picture of true canyon country. (By the way, some of my pictures are panoramas stitched together from multiple photos. Some of those, like this one, I didn't bother to crop nicely, so they'll have an oddly shaped black border.)

Zion doesn't allow cars into the scenic areas of the park, so I parked at the visitor center and hurried to the next shuttle. It was only once we started up the hill that I realized that I'd left my sunscreen in the car. Luckily, that didn't matter too much at 7 in the morning.

My first planned hike was to Angels Landing. Here's the view from just a little ways into the hike, looking up at the first major climb.

A little further up I turned around to capture the trail, the road, and everything else.

This little fella thinks it'll be a cold winter.

After heading up some tight switchbacks, the trail entered a canyon. After another switchback or two, I took this photo back towards the mouth of the canyon. (I'm not yet so good at choosing the right exposure. I had to artificially brighten this picture to make the dark canyon features visible.)

After yet another set of tight switchbacks, the trail hit the top of the ridge. Or so it seemed. To get to the best viewpoint, you have to travel along Angels Landing. There was one lady who'd been able to keep ahead of me since we left the same shuttle. You can see her in the light blue hat and red backpack, hanging onto the chain in the lower third of the full photo.