Zion Canyon By Bike - Ohhhhh, yeah.

Zion National Park, in southwest Utah, is a real gem. Massive, sheer cliffs line both sides of the deep gorge, and unlike Grand, Bryce or Black Canyon, your visit to this one is primarily along the bottom, where the weather tends to be much nicer than out in the nearby desert. It's not terribly close to a major population center, but it gets a lot of visitors and is not far from an Interstate highway...which means that budget-rate accommodations can often be had in the nearby town of Hurricane, UT. Most of the accessible-by-road portion of the park is at a moderate altitude (4000 ft or below), and even the upper end of the tunnel road (whose tunnel is off-limits to cyclists, alas) is not up into the exhaustion-inducing thin air of Bryce Canyon or Cedar Breaks...and that means the potential for fun is definitely present.

Until its visitor population overran its parking capacity some years back, you used to be able to drive everywhere in Zion Canyon that was reachable by car. Now, except during November through March, the road that runs up the canyon past the main lodge is off limits to most private vehicles. Instead, you get around via free propane-powered shuttle buses...with bike racks. Each bus has a two-bike rack on the front. You can ride a bike both ways on the canyon road, but because that rack's presence means that you don't have to ride uphill if you don't want to, a bike is both fun and practical even for people who aren't particularly athletic - and better than the shuttles alone.

By using the shuttle, you can travel easily (if not always speedily) throughout the most popular part of the park and visit all of the principal interesting sights. Parking is free inside the park (though getting in requires a fee, of course), and the shuttles stop at every legal parking lot. Regardless of whether you bring a bike, you really don't need to drive any farther than the Visitor Center that's just inside the main gate at Springdale. If you do bring a bike, that's the logical place to leave your car. From there, it's an easy and pleasant (and scenic - did I mention scenic?) ride to the Canyon Junction shuttle stop, at which you can easily toss your bike aboard the rack on the front of the next bus, and loaf your way up (literally) to the Shinawava Temple stop at the upper end of the canyon. Once there, it's almost all downhill to get back to Canyon Junction. There's one short uphill stretch between Weeping Rock and The Grotto, but even that's not too bad; no worse than a freeway overpass. On the other hand, if you're riding a one-speed cruiser and don't feel like mashing the pedals that hard, or you're suffering from the cumulative effects of too many pizzas over the years, just stop at the Weeping Rock parking lot and grab the next shuttle to The Grotto to get past that climb.

For most of the downhill sections, it is easily possible for an experienced cyclist to outrun the shuttle buses, but they will occasionally catch up to you on the slower and straighter bits even if you aren't stopping to take pictures. The buses are not permitted to pass a rider in motion, so the cyclist needs to keep an eye (and ear) open for shuttles overtaking from behind, and should be prepared to pull over and stop to let them by. The shuttles are neither excessively noisy nor completely quiet, so if you hear one, it's probably close enough that you need to look for a flat shoulder quickly. Fortunately, that's usually not hard to find, and you can often dodge to the other side of the road to stop if your side's a bit precipitous at the point that the bus catches up to you since there's an amazing lack of traffic. For most of my first run down the canyon, I tried to make sure that I was well and truly between shuttles when I left a given stop, but that may not always be the best approach. Although the buses caught up to me handily on some segments, particularly when I stopped to look at things a lot, I was still easily able to outpace the shuttle bus between Court of the Patriarchs and Canyon Junction. You might not be as swift. On the other hand, you also might be a lot faster; don't worry, you can figure out your best approach to the "ahead or behind" issue in short order. The important thing to remember is that it's not a race; the point is being there and having fun while staying safe. And if you zoom down the canyon too fast, you may get stuck behind a bus anyway; the entire route is a "no passing" zone, so you can only go around them when they're stopped at the scenic points.

The easy downhill running is only the icing on the scenery cake, however. The real fun part (for me, at least) was being able to stop anywhere and everywhere I wanted to look at things and take photos. There are a number of scenic turnouts that the shuttles don't serve, and most people never get to stop at them as a result, but those are hardly the only places of interest. On a bike, the entire road is your turnout, and you can stop for photos wherever you please. Just don't park on the road surface itself!

Bike lockup racks are available at all shuttle stops and at every trail head I visited. The scenic road up through the canyon is open to bikes during the entire year, but the only off-road place they're allowed is the fully-paved Pa'Rus trail which crosses the Virgin River three times (and Pine Creek once) between the Visitor Center and Canyon Junction. Using the trail instead of the road for this section is recommended due to heavy traffic including some large trucks; Utah State Road 9 runs through the park over this route, and some of its traffic is commercial.

You'll almost certainly want to use some of the foot trails as well as riding; there's a lot more of the park than what can be seen from the road, though you'll probably want to spend most of your first day just enjoying the stuff you can do on wheels. The foot trails are mostly far too narrow to either ride or walk a bike along even if that was permitted...which it emphatically is not, so bring a lock; theft can be an issue wherever there are people, and Zion is very popular.

No one was using a bike helmet when I was there, probably due to the lack of threat from drivers on cell phones and otherwise-common hazards. Summer temperatures can be up into the 90s(F), but the humidity is low and there are shady, cool spots aplenty in which to shed the heat. Sunscreen is still a good idea, since skin damage is no joking matter. All of the major shuttle stops have fresh spring water available to refill your water bottle(s) or Camelback, and they actively encourage people NOT to use disposable bottled water in the park; they even sell their fountain drinks in compostable cups. Spring and Fall temps can get downright frosty; plan accordingly!