The 9-6 Trail in Zion National Park
We had the most wonderful time on the “9-6 Trail”, an unmarked, unmapped, and uncrowded walk along the Virgin River in Zion National Park. We can’t give you the trailhead location — you’ll have to figure it out for yourself. The trail is also unnamed, but it should be called the 9-6 Trail. Why? All we can say is IYKYK.
The Virgin River bubbles alongside the trail from the start …
The Pulpit looms above the treetops, but is dwarfed by the canyon walls …
The white rock face of Cathedral Mountain towers over the sandstone on the West Rim Trail …
This tree was bent to the ground long ago, but survived and turned to grow upright …
Angels Landing looks different from below …
The trail was mostly flat, closely following the river …
It was great to have the canyon walls rising all around us …
Here’s the small rock slide that closed the Hidden Canyon trail in 2018 …
In closeup, you can see the trail coming in from the left, and then the rock wall collapse. We had hiked this just months before the rock slide; a chain was fastened into the rock face to help you traverse the maybe 8” wide ledge across that rock face, and it was scary then! …
Because it was uncrowded, we spotted several animals even at midday. There were turkeys scrambling after we mistakenly disturbed their rest under a shade tree, a female duck with her chicks, and a heron stalking prey in the river …
It was a beautiful walk along the bubbling Virgin River …
Do you know now why we think it should be called the 9-6 Trail?