Zion in winter, the good, the bad and the ugly!
We just returned a day early from our Zion in winter trip here is our report…
The good: To say that Zion is good is to **** with faint praise, Zion is awesome, my favorite place on the planet. The drive up to and through Flagstaff and Page was great. Light traffic, good weather and a fair amount of snow dusting all of the peaks. Our site was very nice and the Watchman CG was virtually full, we settled in Monday afternoon knowing we had a very cold night ahead. The low was 21 with daytime highs near 50 with no precipitation.
The park is open year round but during winter some amenities are unavailable. Sadly the museum is closed but should open soon. The shuttle currently is only running on weekends but will commence full operations on 3/19. Tuesday morning we decided to drive our 24’ Class C up to the Temple of Sinawava at the north end of the park. The hiking path there takes you up in to the narrows.
The bad: We were shocked to find the park jammed full of people and vehicles at 0930 and lucked out managing to secure one of the last parking spaces at Sinawawa. We headed up towards the narrows and made it about a mile, the trail was packed with fellow visitors. Suddenly my bride of 52 years tripped and pitched forward doing a full on face plant, I lunged for her but was half a second late. Her sunglasses shattered on impact and severely sliced her upper lip. Blood was gushing everywhere. We used the three cloth covid masks we happened to have on us and they were quickly saturated. A couple on the trail gave us a large handful of fast food napkins and her neckerchief.
I walked Jeanne back out to our coach by which time everything we had was completely soaked. The heavy bleeding continued but now having an unlimited supply of paper and cloth towels I loaded her into the coach and headed back down the park to seek emergency medical attention. At the junction of 89 near the center of the park Rangers were directing the heavy traffic. I flagged one down explaining our emergency and he immediately brought over Ranger/EMT Daniel Fagergren {who happens to be the head Ranger for Zion and yes a very nice letter is on its way to the Nation Park Service thanking Daniel for his incredible professionalism, skill and empathy.}
Daniel was amazing, he directed me to a nearby driveway where I could get our coach off of the road and then brought his large medical kit into the coach to treat Jeanne. He applied antibiotic cream and a butterfly bandage across her lip and managed to slow the bleeding. He offered transport but admitted it would take time and suggested I take her immediately to the ER at the St George Medical center…56 miles away. He gave me directions for the fastest route and backed his unit out across the road to allow me to safely depart. I made it to the ER in just under an hour but then the speed limit on I 15 is 80 and yes, a 24’ C with the V-10 will do 80 {+/-} when you really need to get somewhere in a hurry.
She was still bleeding all the way to the ER but hung in there, what a woman! After X-rays confirmed no broken bones {just badly bruised ribs} and labs confirmed her blood count was fine despite losing massive amounts we waited 4.5 hours for the plastic surgeon to arrive from another facility. He took an hour and 20 stitches to reconstruct her upper lip but his work was meticulous and her prognosis for a full recovery is good. The stitches will come out next Tuesday hopefully with minimal scarring.
We finally returned to our site at 6:15 and we both folded up like cheap card tables. We managed to get a good nights sleep and decided to just stay put and try to recover. The weather was decent and we spent most of Wednesday just sitting around our campfire enjoying the beauty that is Zion. I spoke to the Ranger on duty and gave up our site for Thursday so that someone else could enjoy it. In less than 10 minutes I had two e mails confirming the change and promising my $15 refund in 72 hours. These folks are good!
We left an 7 this morning and had a spectacular drive home arriving at 2:45. Snow was moving into southern Utah and northern Arizona. South of Page and again in Flagstaff we had near blizzard conditions with visibility reduced to a quarter of a mile but wow, it was beautiful. The banzai run to the ER was pedal to the metal and I held a heavy foot for the ride home setting the cruise control at 68 for most of the trip and still managed to get a respectable 9 mpg. Gas going north was $3.99 in Page, coming home $4.39 for regular… closer to $5 a gallon the nearer you got to Zion… sigh.
The ugly: Here are a couple of shots of my lovely wife having a VERY bad day:
:E
The good: To say that Zion is good is to **** with faint praise, Zion is awesome, my favorite place on the planet. The drive up to and through Flagstaff and Page was great. Light traffic, good weather and a fair amount of snow dusting all of the peaks. Our site was very nice and the Watchman CG was virtually full, we settled in Monday afternoon knowing we had a very cold night ahead. The low was 21 with daytime highs near 50 with no precipitation.
The park is open year round but during winter some amenities are unavailable. Sadly the museum is closed but should open soon. The shuttle currently is only running on weekends but will commence full operations on 3/19. Tuesday morning we decided to drive our 24’ Class C up to the Temple of Sinawava at the north end of the park. The hiking path there takes you up in to the narrows.
The bad: We were shocked to find the park jammed full of people and vehicles at 0930 and lucked out managing to secure one of the last parking spaces at Sinawawa. We headed up towards the narrows and made it about a mile, the trail was packed with fellow visitors. Suddenly my bride of 52 years tripped and pitched forward doing a full on face plant, I lunged for her but was half a second late. Her sunglasses shattered on impact and severely sliced her upper lip. Blood was gushing everywhere. We used the three cloth covid masks we happened to have on us and they were quickly saturated. A couple on the trail gave us a large handful of fast food napkins and her neckerchief.
I walked Jeanne back out to our coach by which time everything we had was completely soaked. The heavy bleeding continued but now having an unlimited supply of paper and cloth towels I loaded her into the coach and headed back down the park to seek emergency medical attention. At the junction of 89 near the center of the park Rangers were directing the heavy traffic. I flagged one down explaining our emergency and he immediately brought over Ranger/EMT Daniel Fagergren {who happens to be the head Ranger for Zion and yes a very nice letter is on its way to the Nation Park Service thanking Daniel for his incredible professionalism, skill and empathy.}
Daniel was amazing, he directed me to a nearby driveway where I could get our coach off of the road and then brought his large medical kit into the coach to treat Jeanne. He applied antibiotic cream and a butterfly bandage across her lip and managed to slow the bleeding. He offered transport but admitted it would take time and suggested I take her immediately to the ER at the St George Medical center…56 miles away. He gave me directions for the fastest route and backed his unit out across the road to allow me to safely depart. I made it to the ER in just under an hour but then the speed limit on I 15 is 80 and yes, a 24’ C with the V-10 will do 80 {+/-} when you really need to get somewhere in a hurry.
She was still bleeding all the way to the ER but hung in there, what a woman! After X-rays confirmed no broken bones {just badly bruised ribs} and labs confirmed her blood count was fine despite losing massive amounts we waited 4.5 hours for the plastic surgeon to arrive from another facility. He took an hour and 20 stitches to reconstruct her upper lip but his work was meticulous and her prognosis for a full recovery is good. The stitches will come out next Tuesday hopefully with minimal scarring.
We finally returned to our site at 6:15 and we both folded up like cheap card tables. We managed to get a good nights sleep and decided to just stay put and try to recover. The weather was decent and we spent most of Wednesday just sitting around our campfire enjoying the beauty that is Zion. I spoke to the Ranger on duty and gave up our site for Thursday so that someone else could enjoy it. In less than 10 minutes I had two e mails confirming the change and promising my $15 refund in 72 hours. These folks are good!
We left an 7 this morning and had a spectacular drive home arriving at 2:45. Snow was moving into southern Utah and northern Arizona. South of Page and again in Flagstaff we had near blizzard conditions with visibility reduced to a quarter of a mile but wow, it was beautiful. The banzai run to the ER was pedal to the metal and I held a heavy foot for the ride home setting the cruise control at 68 for most of the trip and still managed to get a respectable 9 mpg. Gas going north was $3.99 in Page, coming home $4.39 for regular… closer to $5 a gallon the nearer you got to Zion… sigh.
The ugly: Here are a couple of shots of my lovely wife having a VERY bad day:
:E
