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A Park Hub Field Guide

Lat 37.2982° N
Long 113.0263° W

Elevation3,666 – 8,726 ft

Utah · Stamp 01 / 63

Zion

National Park · Established 1919

A canyon you walk into, not over. Carved by water, and still being carved.

Area147,242 acres

TrailheadSpringdale, Utah

Visitors4.6M / year

Scroll to begin the ascent

Live · Park open 24 hrs Canyon shuttle: required in season 2 active alerts 58°F · clear Live layer, from the National Park Service

Best windowApr–May, Oct Getting there45 min from St. George · 2.7 hr from Las Vegas Fee$35 / vehicle · 7 days

★★★★★ 4.8 from 2,300+ travelers 890 visitor stories 4.6M annual visitors Grounded in live NPS data

Zion · Mile 01 · The Story

A little river,
an impossible canyon.

The Virgin River looks like something you could step over without spilling your coffee. Ankle deep in places, unhurried, no wider than a two-lane road. And yet this modest little stream has done what no army of engineers could: it has sawed a slot half a mile deep into solid sandstone, and it is still sawing, grain by grain, as you read this sentence.

The arithmetic is almost rude. Give a patient thing enough time and it will humble a mountain. That is the secret of Zion, and it is why the place rearranges people. You do not stand back and admire this canyon from a scenic pullout. You walk down into it, the walls climbing as you go, the sky narrowing to a blue ribbon, until the river becomes the trail and there is nowhere left to walk but straight through the heart of the thing.

Come for the cathedral quiet. Stay for the fact that the water is winning. Read the story, trust the live data above for what is open today, and when you leave, collect the stamp.

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“

These are the Temples of God, built without the use of human hands. A man can worship God among these great cathedrals as well as in any man-made church. This is Zion.

Isaac Behunin · the settler who named the canyon, 1863

Zion Canyon · First Light

"The mountains are calling and I must go."

John Muir

Zion · Mile 02 · The Essentials

Best Things to Do in Zion

Six ways to spend your time, something for every kind of traveler, from the family with a stroller to the canyoneer with a wetsuit.

See

Canyon Overlook at sunrise

A one-mile trail to the view that ends up on every postcard, minus the crowd if you beat the sun.

Everyone · 1 hr

Wade the Narrows

Walk in the river between thousand-foot walls. Go as far as you like and turn around when it stops being fun.

The signature experience

Drive

Zion–Mt. Carmel Highway

Switchbacks, a mile-long 1930 tunnel, and slickrock country on the far side. Worth it for the road alone.

Casual · road-trippers

Bike

The Pa'rus Trail

Paved, flat, and following the river. The one place you can pedal the canyon on your own wheels.

Families · e-bikes

Camp

Watchman Campground

Inside the park, walking distance to the shuttle and Springdale. Reserve early on Recreation.gov.

Campers · book ahead

Explore

Kolob Canyons

The park's quiet northwest half, an hour up the interstate. Same red rock, a fraction of the people.

Baggers · the escape

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Free AI Trip Planner

Plan Your Zion Trip

Answer a few questions right here — we'll map your day, stop by stop, with a route, timings, weather, and a packing checklist grounded in real park data. No account, no leaving this page.

Free preview · no card required

When the Crowds ComeMonthly visitors · tap a year

Illustrative shape · wires to official NPS visitation stats · summer peaks shown in gold

Angels Landing · The Chains

"Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit."

Edward Abbey

Zion · Mile 03 · Trails & Viewpoints

Best Hikes in Zion, by Difficulty

Every trail rated honestly, with distance, climb, and whether you need a permit before you set a boot down.

Riverside Walk

Easy

2.2 mi+57 ft~1.5 hr

Paved and level along the river to the mouth of the Narrows. Strollers and wheelchairs welcome. No permit.

Emerald Pools

Easy–Mod

3 mi+350 ft~2.5 hr

A tiered walk to pools and seep waterfalls under hanging gardens. A little uphill, big reward. No permit.

Canyon Overlook

Easy–Mod

1 mi+163 ft~1 hr

Short, a little exposed, and the best view-per-step in the park. Watch the drop-offs with kids. No permit.

The Narrows (bottom-up)

Moderate

up to 9.4 miriver4–8 hr

Walk in the Virgin River itself. No permit for the day hike from the bottom, but check flow and flash-flood risk first.

Permit · lottery

Angels Landing

Strenuous

5 mi+1,488 ft~4 hr

Switchbacks, then a chained spine with sheer drops on both sides. A seasonal permit lottery is required for the final stretch.

Permit · technical

The Subway

Technical

~9 micanyoneeringfull day

A tube of blue-green pools carved through the rock. Wilderness permit and route-finding, rappels, and cold water skills required.

Permits via Recreation.gov · Angels Landing lottery, Subway & Narrows through-hike wilderness permits

Zion National Park at a Glance

1 Zion Canyon Visitor Center

2 Zion Human History Museum

3 Zion Lodge · Emerald Pools

4 The Grotto · Angels Landing

5 Weeping Rock

6 Temple of Sinawava · The Narrows

Shuttle stops shown in visit order. Build a plan above and this map updates to your exact stops.

Zion · Mile 04 · The Living Canyon

Wildlife in Zion: Animals You Might See

Tap any animal to learn its story. Soon, the app will let you log what you spot and keep a life list for every park.

The canyon floor belongs to them in the early hours. Watch the big radar ears swivel before the rest of the deer decides you are boring. Most active along the Pa'rus Trail and near the lodge lawns.

Gone from Zion by the 1950s, reintroduced in the 1970s, and now thriving on the slickrock. Scan the cliffs along the Zion–Mt. Carmel Highway. If a boulder moves, it is probably a bighorn.

One of the rarest birds on earth, with a nine-and-a-half-foot wingspan. Brought back from just 22 individuals worldwide. Look for the numbered wing tags soaring off Angels Landing and Kolob's cliffs.

Flocks patrol the campgrounds and river bottoms like they own the lease. In spring the males fan out and strut. Give them room; they are faster than they look.

The park's most confident resident and, statistically, its most dangerous animal, because people feed them and get bitten. Enjoy the audacity from a distance and keep the trail mix zipped.

Dives at over 240 mph off Zion's big walls. Some cliff routes close in spring to protect nesting pairs, which is the best possible reason to be told you cannot climb something.

A big-eyed cousin of the raccoon that works the canyon at night. Almost nobody sees one, which is exactly why spotting a ringtail becomes the story you tell for years.

That bleating you hear near the pools after rain is not a lost goat. It is a frog the size of your thumb, doing an impression of one. Listen for them in the Narrows and Emerald Pools.

Smaller than a grain of rice and found nowhere else on the planet, only in Zion's dripping hanging gardens. The whole species lives in a few wet walls of this one canyon.

Plant Life in Zion: What Grows Here

The green (and in autumn, pure gold) ribbon tracing the Virgin River. Desert travelers once steered by cottonwoods because they only grow where there is water.

Flat-padded and patient, then suddenly extravagant: neon pink and yellow blooms in late spring. The fruit feeds everything from squirrels to bighorn.

Locals call it the Zion lily. Big white trumpets that open at dusk for the hawkmoths and wilt by mid-morning. Beautiful, and seriously poisonous, so admire and move on.

Twisted, half-dead-looking, and quietly ancient. Junipers here can live centuries by shutting down whole branches in drought. The blue "berries" are actually tiny cones.

Up on the plateaus and rims. Press your nose into the bark cracks of a big one on a warm day: vanilla and butterscotch. Every ranger's favorite party trick.

Delicate yellow flowers growing straight out of wet sandstone walls, fed by springwater that fell as rain a thousand years ago and has been seeping through the rock ever since.

Fun Facts About Zion

Fact 01

Zion was Utah's first national park, protected in 1919. Locals had already been calling it Zion, a word meaning refuge, for half a century.

Fact 02

In the Narrows the walls climb over 1,000 feet while the canyon pinches to barely twenty feet wide. You can touch both sides at once.

Fact 03

Look up and you may see a California condor, one of the rarest birds on earth, with a wingspan wider than most people are tall.

Fact 04

The tiny Zion snail lives in the park's hanging gardens and absolutely nowhere else on the planet.

Zion · Provisions

Gear for this parkvia AvantLink

Neoprene socks (Narrows)REI

Trekking polesBackcountry

2L hydration packOsprey

Stay nearbyvia Hipcamp

Riverside sites, Springdale
Walk to the shuttle, cottonwood shade, from $34 a night.

Free Zion checklistdigital · $0

The printable trail and packing checklist in the field-guide style. Take it, join the trail list.

Zion · Mile 05 · From the Field Journal

Go Deeper on Zion

Stories, guides, and hard-won tips from the trail. The full Zion deep dive lives on the journal.

Trail Guide

★ZionPark Hub · Collected

Your passport

One stamp,
one story.

Log the visit, keep your story, and watch the map of all sixty-three fill in behind you. Every stamp has a keepsake worth holding.

Zion · Mile 06 · Where to Next

Keep the Journey Going

Next park

Bryce Canyon

Two hours east, an amphitheater of hoodoos. A natural pairing with Zion.

Open Stamp 05 → The collection

All 63 Parks

See the full map and track every stamp you have earned.

View the map → Plan

Build a Trip

Turn Zion into a road trip with a custom, day-by-day itinerary.

Start planning → Go deeper

The Zion Deep Dive

The long-form guide: every trail, season, and secret, on the journal.

Read it →

Carry the field guide

Offline maps, your passport, and every park in your pocket on the trail.

The Book

Keepsake

The Park Hub field guide

The printed edition, part atlas, part journal, one story per park.

The Shop

Prints · pins · passport

Take Zion home

Field-guide posters, enamel stamps, and the passport book to fill in.

Sixty-two parks remain

"The parks do not belong to one state or to one section... they belong as much to the man of Massachusetts, of Michigan, of Florida, as they do to the people of California, of Wyoming, and of Arizona."

Stephen Mather · first director of the National Park Service

Begin your journey