May 26, part 2 -- Zion Riverside Walk: wet walls

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Here is a link to the interactive expedition map.  (I have added a link to the River Walk trail head.  If you zoom all the way in on the map from that location, you can see how the trail twists and turns and meanders upstream near the river..........)



I mentioned in a previous post that much of the water that hits the tops of rock formations in Zion National Park seeps into the rock, and then seeps out the walls of the canyon.  These wet walls create microclimates that are hospitable to plants that could never survive in the dry desert outside the canyon.


You can see the mineral result of seepage in the next image.

Looking at the same rock background from a different angle, we can see some of the vegetative results of the seepage.

A closer crop of the lower right corner of the above.

Not just the plants, above, but check out the layers of rock in the lower right.....



Closer....  A different shot, showing some of the plants at far left just above.  The yellow flowers are columbine.

Tearing our eyes away from that wet wall for a look at another of the little streams that deliver the water from the walls to the river.  Again, flowing from right to left.

Back to the flowers.  Columbine on the floor of the canyon, rather than on the wall.

A closer look....

A different kind of columbine.

Not just columbine.........

Some of the rock wall was pretty dry.  Some of it was running with water........

If you look at the rock in the upper left quadrant, you can see water streaming down off the rock onto the columbine below.

Closer....

So much vegetation!  So many plants that are very happy here, but which could not survive without the water running down the canyon wall.  I wonder what this place looks like on July 26, rather than May 26 when we were there............  Is all of this gone, once winter's precipitation has all seeped down?

These are random strangers.  I don't like people in my pics, especially strangers, but it was very hard to avoid them if the picture showed the paved path.



Entranced by the plants....  I was as happy as they were to be in damp air!

I don't know what this is. 

You can see how these plants are growing right from the wall.



I think this is a different example of the same kind of plant as above.

Looking up the wall.....

Columbine....

A closer look at one of the red flowers.

I think this is maidenhair fern.......

Some of the rock wall is dry.  Some of it is wet.....

Looking at the plant with the red flowers....  (And its shadows.)

A couple of yards away from the wall (closer to the river), we have this.  It isn't a cactus, but it's not a tender full-of-water plant, either.......

The Virgin River.  Note that there is a path that runs right beside the river, at least part of the way along the River Walk.

The path right next to the wall is paved, as you saw in that earlier image which included two strangers.  If you had a stalwart and muscular individual pushing you, I believe you could go in a wheelchair as far as we went along the River Walk.  The path is paved, it's wide enough, but it's steep in places.

The paved section of the River Walk ends at the "if you want to go further, you will be walking *in* the river" section.  Many intrepid (and/or foolish) souls continued on.  We turned back.

I mentioned earlier that this section of the park was crowded.  I'm sure that compared to a bad day, this is nothing, but this is what it was like.  Steady streams of people going in each direction......



A closer crop of the center of the image above.  The water at the end of May is cold, deep, and running fast compared to what it will be like in July or August.   (Daily reports on the temperature of the river are posted in the visitor's center.)

 

This is a closer crop of the bottom right corner of the above -- note that at least two of these people are deeper than knee-deep in that cold fast-running water.  The bottom is rocks, like the rocks along the edge (see above).  Insecure footing at the best of times......

I had no interest in risking the camera or the phone in the river, nor my posterior on the rocky river bottom.


We turned back.  We did walk back downstream closer to the river (not on the paved path), but not actually *in* the river.......

Here is a link to the next post about the Grand Canyon trip.

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