Sunday, November 30, 2008

Emerald Pools


If you spend a few days in Zion National Park, one of your planned destinations should be the Emerald Pools. A short hike along some very nice trail will reward you with a view of the high canyon walls, red like so much of Utah, over a thousand feet straight up. People were camped on the side of the shear wall, too much to climb in a single day their bivouacs were perched dizzyingly high, a web of safety lines attached to their shelf-like protrusion.
At the base of all that vertical stone is the mirro-like Emerald Pool. A quiet little oasis of lush vegetation and crumbling rock. The fractured, fallen pieces of the cliff, huge chunks of stone, sit all around the water.  The reflections were irresistible.

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